After a series of negotiations between the governments of the United States and Venezuela, conducted in the strictest secrecy, the opposition and the government signed a partial agreement on October 17 in Barbados to hold elections in 2024.
The fact that the negotiations that began in Mexico in 2021 resumed and the opposition primaries took place a few days later raised expectations about the possibilities of a way out of the country’s serious political situation – the cause of many of its economic problems and social problems.
All previous attempts at an agreement failed when the government had to make political concessions and electoral guarantees to its opponents.
In any case, doubts remain about the feasibility of a negotiated transition in Venezuela. Especially after Venezuela’s Supreme Court invalidated the opposition’s electoral process.
Outside or on (the table)?
What can be achieved outside the negotiating table competes with what is put on the negotiating table. Reaching an agreement depends not only on what happens in the negotiations between the parties, but also on the cost-benefit calculation that each party makes when comparing what they can achieve through the process and what they have on others way to achieve – or maintain –
Many of the researchers dedicated to studying and explaining the key variables of moments of political transition have identified common patterns in processes with very different historical and social dynamics. Among these common patterns is what the American political scientist Robert Dahl called the balance between the costs of tolerance and the costs of repression.
Maintain the “status quo”.
When one is in the presence of regimes that have exercised government in an authoritarian manner and especially for a long period of time (as in the case of Venezuela), any movement towards a change of power becomes a real threat to the interests, assets, Security and freedom for those who benefit from the status quo.
In this sense, a government with an authoritarian orientation that has resorted to the use of violence, violation of human rights and manipulation of the rule of law, and whose key actors could be prosecuted, will face a dilemma if the pressure for democratic reforms or the Power of opposition groups is growing.
In the case of Venezuela, the process of political change must be resolved taking into account the cost-benefit ratio between tolerance and repression.
Tolerance or oppression
The cost of tolerance refers to the level of acceptance of changes that can increase the power of opposition groups and threaten the continuity of government and the prosperity, status quo, freedom and security of elites. state.
The cost of repression is the cost that the government would be willing to bear if necessary, even through the use of force, to prevent elections or other decisions that could bring about political change. These costs are expressed in legitimacy, economic losses (to the country and the government), and even loss of life. All in exchange for staying in power.
Suppression (manifested, among other things, in the form of repression, but also through the opening of judicial, tax, administrative processes, clientelistic manipulations) and tolerance (understood as the willingness to allow a change in actors and rules in the exercise of power) are the two strategies available to an authoritarian regime. But both have costs and benefits.
As the costs of repression become unsustainable for the government or exceed the costs of tolerance, the greater the chances that it will cooperate and enable real electoral competitiveness and political transition.
Rational decision
From a game theory perspective, the Venezuelan political scenario, in which the transition costs for government members can be potentially high, is consistent with the prisoner’s dilemma. That is, their rational decisions lead them to an initial situation of non-cooperation in the process of democratic opening, both in search of the greatest possible individual gain and in order to avoid situations that lead to the other party’s non-cooperation would put them in worse situations. results than they could achieve through non-cooperation.
So we have an initial situation that makes cooperation between the actors involved more difficult: the costs of tolerance do not work in favor of cooperation, because those in power would have a lot to lose if they could not guarantee each other’s cooperation.
If the suppression factor is added to the mix, the opportunities for cooperation are reduced even more, since in an asymmetrical conflict situation the gain that the most powerful party would achieve through mutual cooperation is no more attractive than what it already has through non-cooperation.
High price
In the particular case of Venezuela, the costs of toleration for state actors are very high, as the government risks being confronted with suspected acts of corruption, investigations into internationally prosecutable crimes and human rights violations. And in comparison, the costs of suppression are relatively small.
The potential consequences of possible political change would place many elite government actors in a situation of extreme vulnerability.
Difficult balance
This situation, which combines high costs of tolerance with low costs of repression, leads to an asymmetric game in which one of the parties, the government, has greater incentives not to cooperate.
Resolving the dilemma between allowing or disallowing political change will largely depend on how the government assesses the balance between its potential costs of acquiescing to political change and the costs of maintaining power, if necessary through force.
In a scenario where the costs of tolerance are higher than those of repression, the incentives to cooperate and reach a negotiated settlement for those who can prevail through repression are not and will not be present as long as the balance between the two variables is not achieved changes.
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on The Conversation and is reproduced under a Creative Commons license.
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