Buen Vivir and Twenty-First Century Socialism: Comparative Analysis of Participatory Democracy in Ecuador and Venezuela

Latin America’s democratic transitions of the 1980s and ’90s offered hope that nascent democratic regimes would be more stable and enduring than their predecessors. However, while the cycle of military intervention appears to have been broken, the quality of many, if not most democratic regimes across the region has been low. Public opinion surveys reveal that, in general, citizens in Latin America perceive their democracies to be unresponsive and elite-dominated. Few Latin Americans perceive there to be political equality in any real sense and many desire greater input in political decision-making and greater freedom of expression. The so-called radical leftist leaders that took power in Latin America over the past two decades – and in particular Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Rafael Correa in Ecuador – vowed to attack these shortcomings by fundamentally transforming the nature of democracy and citizenship in their respective nations. Democracy would be characterized by high levels of citizen participation, particularly of historically disadvantaged segments of society, the establishment of a more just economic system that redistributed wealth to those who need it most (and at least in the Ecuadoran case, the transformation of economic activity to make it environmentally sustainable and better suited to the fulfillment of human welfare). The ideals of socialism and Buen Vivir (Sumak Kawsay in Quechua) as articulated by the government of President Rafael Correa embodies these principles well. As stated in the Plan Nacional de Buen Vivir 2013-2017, “the Socialism of Buen Vivir implies a profound democracy with permanent popular participation in the public life of the nation. This cannot be realized without the active commitment of the citizenry and the people.” (p.24). Similarly, the First Socialist Plan (2007-2013) of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela proclaimed that the revolutionary government would construct “a sociopolitical base of socialism of the twenty-first century, which will form a new political culture based in the conscious solidarity of the citizen. It will construct a public sector at the service of the citizen…and will amplify the spaces for citizen participation in public management at all of levels of government” (p.16). Thus, both the Chávez administration in Venezuela and the Correa administration in Ecuador proposed the creation of new, highly participatory forms of democracy, that would make government more responsive to the citizenry and politics more egalitarian and less dominated by elites. To what extent has the Correa regime in Ecuador realized the participatory promise of Buen Vivir? And to what extent has the Chávez (now Maduro) regime in Venezuela realized the participatory promise of Twenty-first Century Socialism? Have these so-called radical leftist regimes facilitated the emergence of more participatory, democratically engaged citizenries, particularly among disadvantaged segments of society? This paper seeks to answer these questions by examining state-society relations in these countries to determine the extent to which civil society organizations are autonomous from state control or intervention, inclusive and pluralistic and imbued with the capacity to shape state policy through citizen participation as promised by Buen Vivir and Twenty-first Century Socialism respectively.