Tag: Venezuela

The Constitutional Chamber’s Recent Decisions to Enable Legislative Elections in Autocratic Venezuela

—Raul A. Sanchez Urribarri, Senior Lecturer in Legal Studies, La Trobe University (Melbourne). Email: r.sanchezu@latrobe.edu.au. In recent weeks, the Constitutional Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal (Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, TSJ), issued key rulings in support of President Nicolás Maduro’s regime, in his quest to recover the control of the country’s parliament, overcome the ongoing…

3 July, 2020
Towards a Concept of Constitutional Authoritarianism: The Venezuelan Experience

—José Ignacio Hernández G., Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, Universidad Central (Venezuela); Center for International Development, Harvard University Democracy is in crisis. With this sentence Michael J. Abramowitz introduced the 2018 Freedom House report.[1] In a similar vein, Mark A. Graber, Sanford Levinson and Mark Tushnet recently concluded that constitutional democracy appears in trouble throughout the world.[2]

13 December, 2018
Introduction to I-CONnect Symposium: Venezuela’s 2017 (Authoritarian) National Constituent Assembly

[Editor’s Note: I-CONnect is pleased to feature a special symposium on Venezuela’s Constituent Assembly. The symposium will feature six parts, including this introduction. We are grateful to Professor Raul A. Sanchez Urribarri for partnering with us to host what promises to be an informative, insightful and provocative symposium.]

28 August, 2017
Time and Sequence in Changes of Constitutional Regimes

—Andrew Arato, The New School for Social Research Introduction The concept of the constituent power emerged in the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. Many new constitutions since then were made through variety of non-revolutionary processes. Yet, the normative link between democratic forms of constitution making and revolution, deeply embedded in the notion of…

21 June, 2014
The Constituent Dilemma in Latin America

–Gabriel L. Negretto, Associate Professor, Division of Political Studies, CIDE Since the great revolutions of the late eighteenth century, the central principle of democratic constitutionalism has been that the people, as the supreme authority in a polity, is the only legitimate author of constitutions.

9 September, 2013
The Constitutional Future of Venezuela

—David Landau, FSU College of Law Hugo Chavez’s death poses important questions about the constitutional future of a country that many political analysts have seen as a hybrid or competitive authoritarian regime – that is, somewhere between pure democracy and dictatorship.

31 March, 2013
Egypt and the Forgotten Lessons of Democratic Transitions (Or: Democracy is Hard)

—David Landau, Florida State University College of Law [Editors’ Note: In this forum on Egypt and New Perspectives on Constitution-Making, three young scholars of comparative constitutional law – Ozan Varol, Will Partlett, and David Landau – discuss their recent work on constitution-making and democratic transitions, focusing on Egypt.

11 November, 2012
Venezuela’s Denunciation of the American Convention on Human Rights: A Natural Step for an Illiberal Democracy

–Javier Couso, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile A few weeks ago, on September 6th, the government of Venezuela denounced the American Convention on Human Rights.[1] According to the procedure set by Article 78.1 of the latter, within a year of this official notification Venezuela will no longer be part of this treaty, and thus no longer…

15 October, 2012