Participatory democracy in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and “undue external influence”

In recent years the focus of comparative legal scholarship has been increasingly attracted to Latin America as a living laboratory for the development and implementation of innovative constitutional systems. The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is an experimental and fascinating constitutional text, striking a fundamental balance between ecology, economy and glocal, counterhegemonic, control of democratic processes, rooted in a history of anti-colonialism and legal-constitutional evolution. But the extraterritorial financial powers, mainly through embargos, leaves central and local political authorities (under the new decentralisation rules) without instruments and not sufficient means to face the economic and social problems, above all following strong social reforms or nationalization policies oriented by the Constitution. Adding to the errors of the central political power, the clear contradiction between the constitutional elements and the political crisis in Venezuela undermines the pursuit of the social objectives dictated in the new Bolivarian constitution, in particular the construction of “protagonico” paradigm and popular power in a new constitutional declination of participatory democracy.