By Jack Nicas
Venezuela is in another dark moment.
President Nicolás Maduro, the authoritarian leader who has been in power since 2013, has declared himself the winner of another election that international observers have called undemocratic. His security forces have arrested hundreds of political opponents. And new protests against him appear to be losing steam.
Is all hope for democracy in Venezuela lost? Opposition leaders are trying to push forward, and the United States has recognized their candidate as the winner of Sunday’s vote. But Maduro does not appear close to giving up power. What, exactly, would that take?
The answer — according to analysts, political scientists and a review of history — largely depends on government security forces.
The threat from within
In a true democracy, politicians must win support from a majority of voters to keep power. In authoritarian regimes, dictators are often propped up by a small circle of influential figures.
“The less democratic a political system becomes, the more reliant you are on just a very small number of people to maintain power,” said Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist and author of “How Tyrants Fall.”
That means security forces — not the furious protesters on the street — pose the most serious and immediate danger to his tenure, researchers said. “The biggest threat are the men with guns,” Dirsus said.
Between 1950 and 2012, nearly two-thirds of the 473 authoritarian leaders who lost power were removed by government insiders, according to an analysis by Erica Frantz, a political science professor at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism.
To combat that threat, autocrats frequently try what political scientists call “coup-proofing”: They divide security forces into various fragmented units. That can keep any one branch from amassing too much power — and also cause forces to spy on one another.
That, analysts said, describes Venezuela.
Propping up a regime
Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, created a tangled web of military, police and intelligence agencies.
Venezuela’s armed forces, with about 150,000 members, are split between the army, navy, air force and national guard.
There is a national police force and a national militia — partly made up of Maduro supporters with little to no training — that can be called in to take up arms in an emergency.
There are so-called colectivos, or groups of civilians who attack protesters and, according to researchers, are armed by the government.
And there are three separate intelligence agencies, as well as intelligence units within other forces, which surveil the opposition and one another.
For years these forces have quelled protests, hounded the opposition and helped preserve Maduro’s increasingly authoritarian time in power, which has outlasted many analysts’ expectations.
In turn, the government has purchased loyalty by giving senior military officers high-paying jobs or control of state industries.
Why switch sides?
The question then is: What would make the security forces flip?
“People need to believe there’s an actual possibility that he could fall,” Dirsus said. “Only then will the men with guns either stand aside or change sides altogether.”
Researchers said Venezuelan forces were probably considering two possibilities. They can stick with Maduro, potentially keeping power but also risking a collapse of the government and potential jail time. Or they can participate in a transition to democracy and negotiate immunity for any crimes.
Venezuela’s current moment
Given those stakes, what is happening behind the scenes in the Venezuelan government is unclear.
The opposition has made direct appeals to security forces, asking for their support to ensure the election results are respected.
“Members of the armed forces, the nation needs you,” María Corina Machado, an opposition leader, said in a video to the military before the election. “The constitution must be your North Star and guide.”
On election night, as exit polls suggested that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won in a landslide, three top leaders of Venezuela’s security forces struck a balanced tone in a public address.
“The people of Venezuela have gone to the streets, to their voting centers, to exercise their human right,” said Gen. Vladimir Padrino López, Maduro’s longtime defense minister, “voting for the option that each conscience dictates.”
He then said the government would release vote tallies from every polling station. It has since refused to do so.
For Padrino López and the other officers, “it was actually a very calm narrative compared to what we’re used to,” said Andrei Serbin Pont, a Latin America security analyst who has studied Venezuela’s security forces for years.
The next day, the security forces’ response to mass protests was relatively less forceful than in the past. Fewer soldiers and police officers were on the street, and they were generally less combative with demonstrators, Serbin Pont said.
Then, on Tuesday night, as protests raged, the military leaders held another news conference and made clear they were publicly siding with Maduro. “We are in the presence of a coup d’état forged once again by these fascist factors of the extremist right,” Padrino López said.
If any security forces are talking to the opposition, they will desperately try to guard that secret. Venezuela’s intelligence agencies “are really good at seizing opportunities like this to weed out possible dissidents,” Serbin Pont said.
The importance of protests
While security forces are key to Maduro’s fate, researchers said, they can be heavily influenced by protests and international pressure.
Some foreign allies’ refusal to recognize Maduro’s self-declared victory and the U.S. recognition of his challenger as the winner could weaken his standing with the security forces. Large protests could, too.
“If they look out into the streets and see a sea of ordinary Venezuelans opposing the regime, that’s going to change their expectations about the future,” Dirsus said.
But if Venezuela wants to transition to a full democracy, nonviolent protest may also be critical.
A study by Harvard University’s Erica Chenoweth showed that over the past several decades, 57% of nonviolent resistance campaigns around the world had led to democracy, while violent campaigns led to democracy in less than 6% of cases.
“The key factor for democracy in Venezuela is that — should regime change happen — things go down peacefully,” Frantz said. “When there is violence and bloodshed, the chances of a new dictatorship taking control increase substantially.”
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