Quality of democracy: the venezuelan case

Abstract

The United Nations Program for Development, in the Human Development Report 2002, notes that many governments democratically elected tend to hold their authority by non-democratic methods, for example, by modifying the national Constitution in their favor or intervening in electoral processes and subtracting independence to the Legislative or Judiciary. Many of these facts have occurred repeatedly in Venezuela. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to define, empirically, the quality of democracy in Venezuela, trying to identify the conditions for the existence of a clear political regime, the existence of substantive access to the State, the rule of law and certain form of organization of Society.