Is he really the villain?

Venezuela is a two-party political system with a bimodal distribution near the extremes. The radical left is currently governed by President Nicolas Maduro, successor of Hugo Chavez. The right extreme, on the other hand, was originally lead by Henrique Capriles and it is now under the umbrella of Mr. Leopoldo Lopez. Guided by radically opposing ideologies, the Venezuelan population is divided in these two parties. The government advocates a socialist ideology, whereby the economy has experienced rocketing inflation, nationalization of private companies, plummeting currency, and increasingly short supply of food, medicine and other consumer products. Alternatively, the radical opposition believes in democracy and a free market economy.

Downs explains in his paper that a two-party system of this distribution will pose a threat to democracy: “whichever party wins will attempt to implement policies radically opposed to the other party’s ideology… This means that government policy will be highly unstable…” Indeed, after 14 years of an unstable socialist regime, the rightist mass demands the government to take action for fixing the economy and addressing social problems like insecurity. The problem lies in reaching a consensus on how the right should demand this government action.

Unlike Mr. Lopez, Henrique Capriles believes that protests and demonstrations will not achieve a change of government. Instead, he advocates for a legal electoral exit (scheduled for 2015). The extremist right is stronly criticizing Capriles, claiming he has submitted himself to the government by not supporting the opposition’s protests. But maybe Capriles is the one that understands Downs’ argument. Capriles is strategizing to move away from the radical right towards the medium-voter. While Maduro and Lopez are both hoping to increase their support at the extremes, Capriles is aiming to move voters to the center of the distribution by uniting the radical speeches under one goal: a future for Venezuela. If Downs’ political cycle holds true, then centralizing the population under a normal distribution is Venezuela’s best bet on exiting the black hole of a socialist revolution.