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Venezuela’s Odd Transition to Dictatorship

By Javier Corrales

The end of democracy in Venezuela was predictable, but it was still pretty shocking.

Venezuela proved last week that it can still defy regional trends. By suspending the process to carry out a recall referendum on President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela became the only country in Latin America since the late 1970s to experience the transition to a full dictatorship.

When I started studying Venezuela in the early 1990s, the country was already bucking regional trends. In the 1960s, it inaugurated democracy when most countries were turning authoritarian. Then in the 1990s, Venezuela became an enigma when it failed to stabilize its economy at a time when most other...

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