Spillover of a far-left authoritarian’s victory: Revisiting the 1998 Venezuela election

Authoritarians’ electoral victories abroad are found to affect domestic citizens’ public opinion. Yet, this literature predominantly focuses on far-right politicians. My research addresses this ideological imbalance by analysing a far-left authoritarian’s electoral victory. I argue that a far-left authoritarian’s electoral victory abroad may change citizens’ economic and democratic attitudes. My analysis uses a dataset that was collected in three Hispanic countries amid Chávez’s victory in 1998. Regarding the economic dimension, I find that citizens are more anti-privatization and anti-market after this event. Contrarily, regarding the democratic dimension, citizens are more willing to defend democracy and evaluate domestic democracy more favourably. Additional analysis suggests that these changes in democratic attitudes are not because Chávez was perceived as a "democrat". This research enriches the literature on transnational learning and autocratization by demonstrating that a far-left authoritarian’s victory can likewise cause spillover by changing citizens’ economic and democratic attitudes.