Direct and Deliberative Democracy Effects: Venezuelan Case

Given the growing use of mechanisms of direct democracy such as referendum and initiatives and the development of forms of popular participation mainly named as deliberative democracy such as participatory budgeting and neighborhoods assemblies, witnessed since the end of the twentieth century in representative democracies, the question that arises and have long been debated: are those systems complementary or mutually exclusive? To seek answers to this question we propose that hould be analyzed the use of each of these tools and their effects. Thus, the proposed study of a specific case, Venezuela, can be explained, firstly, because it is a country where direct democracy mechanisms and deliberative democracy have been introduced and used in considerable amount over the last 2 decades, and also because it is a democracy, which despite some attempted coups d`etat , consolidated over more than 50 years. The objective of this work is to understand how the use of these mechanisms blended the traditional representative system, evaluating the role played by civil society, as well as whether there was a change in the performance of elected representatives. Thus, it is intended to determine whether or not there is a real transfer of power and decision setting of the political agenda for civil society, in what would be a shared system of political organization. For this work will be used mainly on research Latinobarometro analysis of democracy in Venezuela over the last 20 years as well as analysis of scholarly works produced and documentary sources of the Venezuelan government.