Patron-client relations between economic elites and individual politicians apply for the most basic regulatory favors such as import licenses, tax breaks, diplomatic appointments, and government bids and contracts. The names of the Ministers of Finance until 1998 were easily identifiable, among them the names of powerful families who have traditionally owned economic conglomerates: Mendoza, Boulton, Phelps, Blohm, Sosa, Vollmer (Middlebrook, 2000: 120-21). The protection of elites' interests by partisan members at the individual level has permitted the government to divide and conquer, impeding the formation of corporatist structures, or formal representation.
The 1980'S: " Breakdown of Legitimacy, Efficiency, and Efficacy of Traditional Political System"
Michael Coppedge resumes the pathology of Venezuela's partyarchy in three main tendencies: a loss of political direction, corruption, and parties' obsession with control (Domínguez et al, 1996: 8). With the threat of expulsion, almost none party leader dared to suggest new ideas for the party line, rather, those who remained in the party were the ones who kept quiet in order to assure their permanence in the organization. This situation reflected the unchangeable character of the two parties' political thesis. The thesis developed in the sixties for political parties to exist has not been updated since then, even though the times had changed widely.
Corruption skyrocketed in the late seventies, accompanied by the oil bonanza and the effects of partyarchy. Oil revenues grew 54% during the first Pérez government (1974-79), and amidst incredible wealth, public officials increased their personal assets (Domínguez et al, 1996:8). Impunity grew rapidly in tandem with corruption in the judicial system, the universities, and most of state institutions that were highly politicized along party lines.
The tendency since the 1980's in Venezuela has been to highlight deficiencies of the political system, and its inability to guarantee a better standard of living for the country's growing population (Komblith, 1995: 58). The major critics and demands focus on the same aspects that permitted political parties to establish certain order: electoral system, too much powerful parties, suffocation of civil society by parties, and personalization of voting process (pp.60-63).
Specifically, political crisis began when economic problems exploited in the mid seventies. Unchecked deficit spending caused annual inflation to reach from 5% to 20% in 1979. Later, during Luis Herrera Campins's government (1979-1984), the Bolívar was devalued by 40%, which was extremely traumatic for middle class Venezuelans. The day of the devaluation was named Black Friday (February, 18, 1983) (Middlebrook, 2000: 125). Yet, economic crisis reached its zenith during the second Pérez's government (1989-1994). President Pérez appointed a team of radically pro-market technocrats to his economic cabinet - they were known as the "IESA Boys ," analogous to the "Chicago Boys" of Pinochet's Chile. The economic team designed a market economy package named " El Gran Viraje," the Big Turn, announced on February, 1989. The package severely disrupted the private sector, practitioners of reverse clientelism were cut off from their access to the state, and market competition opened widely for national businessmen. A consumer prices increase of 85%, and the fall of GDP in 7,8%, joined to the general discontent with the "tyranny of the majority" style of Perez government , broke out in the widespread massive upheavals of Caracazo, on February 27, 1989 (Middlenrook, 2000: 128-130).
The brutal government repression of the disturbances - which resulted in approximately 400 casualties (Gruber, 1993: 8) - put in clear evidence the loss of legitimacy of the government. Following Linz's and Stepan's definition of the concept, the Pérez government lost its legitimacy when appealed to the use of force to obtain citizens' obedience. Moreover, there was an evident loss of belief in, and support for all political actors in regime, which led to an erosion of legitimacy. Since 1989, peoples of each one of the country's social classes came into a broad disbelief in the political system, which in turn led to an accorded support and sympathy for military intervention.
The loss of efficacy and effectiveness of previous governments proved evident in the poll conducted by Michael Coppedge in 1993 (Middlebrook, 2000: 130-135), through which Venezuelans recognized some issues related to bad economic performance: corruption was the first issue mentioned by the interviewed, and most of them blamed the clientelist style of AD and COPEI for the economic crisis. The second issue that people linked to bad economic performance was the effect of partidocracia. They expressed a high disillusionment with the two traditional parties (voting abstention rose to 41% in 1993, so far the highest in the country's history) . In the same survey, Venezuelans expressed that four things had to be changed: 1) President Perez, 2) Corruption, 3) the cogollos, and 4) the economic package (Middlebrook, 2000: 132).
Another study conducted by Alfredo Keller (a prestigious Venezuelan economist), confirmed that by the end of 1993, 15% of more radical Venezuelans were potential supporters of a coup d' etat, or some other break with the past (Middlebrook, 2000: 133). Such happened when lieutenant colonel Hugo Chávez attempted the February 4, 1992 military coup, and also when a second military uprising occurred in November the same year. Military intervention as a poder moderador arose once again in Venezuela after thirty years of military professionalism and alienation from politics. The events of Caracazo proved nothing but parties' incapacity to channel citizens' demands, and to control political participation, which in turn provoked political violence. According to Linz and Stepan, this violent scenario is likely to break out in military intervention. In this regard, Miriam Komblith and Daniel Levine stress that for the Venezuelan party system to survive, three challenges must be addressed: coping with economic scarcity, accommodating demands for new channels of participation, and more importantly, controlling the military (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995: 69).
MILITARY PARTICIPATION IN POLITICS
Controlling the military proved to be the hardest of all challenges, as evidenced during the last five years (1998-2003) . The February, 4, coup attempt was engineered by a group of middle-rank officers whose commitment to an uprising dated back at least ten years rooted in strong nationalism, opposition to corruption, and the emergence of a new leadership generation (Mainwaring et al, 1995: 71). The main reasons that the group of military officers claimed for the coup were: " the high level of corruption in all spheres of the country, the privileges enjoyed by some government officials, the lack of punishment to people who were widely known as guilty of taking public money, the economic measures that deepened poorness of the Venezuelan low classes, the privatization of fundamental state-owned companies, the impossibility of most Venezuelans to fulfill their basic needs, the inefficiency of the health system, and all public services, and finally the inability of the government to defend the country's sovereignty over the Gulf " (Ortega et al, 1992:4058). For all these reasons the coup leaders gained astonishing popularity, and become something of popular heroes, which not only posed a challenge to democratic politics and the prevailing party system, but also proved crucial division among the country's armed forces.
Employing populist and extreme nationalist rhetoric - characteristic of populist caudillos of the forties and fifties, Hugo Chávez won the presidential elections in December 1998, breaking thus with a forty-year long tradition of civilian presidents . President Chávez was elected by a large majority of 56, 2% of the total vote, as well as his party "Fifth Republic," Quinta Republica, won majority of the seats in Congress . Frequently lamenting the poverty and hunger that so many Venezuelans were suffering, president Chávez threatened to cut off conservative interests, and eradicate the corrupt long party establishment, by removing the safety net of reverse clientelism that the two dominant parties had build up over decades (Coppedge, 2000: 135).
