Only the People Can Save the People

<p><b>Examines the egalitarian creative and inclusive practice of radical democracy in contemporary Venezuela.</b></p><p>In a global historical moment of growing mobilizations against inequality corruption and exclusion <i>Only the People Can Save the People</i> illustrates the necessity and challenges of more egalitarian approaches to collective life from one of the most tumultuous and compelling experiments in radical democracy. Donald V. Kingsbury examines twenty-first-century Venezuelan politics from the perspective of constituent power-the egalitarian creative and inclusive practice of radical democracy. In the aftermath of neoliberal structural adjustment Venezuelan politics have been increasingly reconfigured according to principles of <i>autogestión</i> (self-management) social movement autonomy protagonistic and participatory democracy and anti-capitalism. However inherited and intensifying challenges arising from Venezuela's status as a petrostate the class and racial divisions that define its society and the difficulties of defining what Hugo Chávez termed socialism for the twenty-first century have resulted in a tumultuous process of social change. Informed by ethnography contemporary and comparative political thought and global political economy <i>Only the People Can Save the People</i> demonstrates how constituent power is shaping collective identity political conflict and infrastructural space in contemporary Latin America.</p>