ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the crisis of market democracy and the emergence of progressive anti-system outsider Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. The nature of the shallowing and narrowing of democracy, the development of an unstable democratic equilibrium, the form and extent of anti-neoliberal protests, party-system collapse, the coalescence of competing social blocs around divergent democratic models, and the nature of outsider-base relations are examined. The chapter concludes by raising questions regarding how such antecedent factors set the scene for, and fed back onto, post-election power struggles between the left-led government, an opposition bloc, and the popular base in Venezuela.
