How Powerful Should Venezuela’s Next President Be?

The next democratically elected president of Venezuela will inherit an office that is simultaneously too powerful and not powerful enough.

Too powerful because decades of centralization have placed extraordinary political, fiscal and administrative authority in Miraflores. Not powerful enough because whoever inherits it will also confront a damaged bureaucracy, weak public services, deteriorated infrastructure and institutions that may still be controlled by political adversaries.

Miraflores was powerful before Chávez

Chavismo radically expanded executive power, but it did not invent Venezuelan presidentialism. Long before Hugo Chávez, the presidency occupied an unusually commanding position over the political system. Oil reinforced that arrangement.

The question is not whether Venezuela needs a strong president or a weak one. It needs to decide what the president should actually be strong enough to do.

Chávez inherited that culture and radicalized it. A new democracy has to be built for the political society Venezuela actually has.