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David Smilde, curator of the blog, is a WOLA Senior Fellow and the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations at Tulane University. He has lived in or worked on Venezuela since 1992. He is co-editor of Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics and Culture under Chávez (Duke 2011).

Hugo Pérez Hernáiz is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Rebecca Hanson is a graduate student in sociology at the University of Georgia doing doctoral research on police reform and citizen participation in Venezuela.

Timothy Gill is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research at Tulane University. His research focuses on US foreign policy towards Venezuela and foreign funding for non-governmental organizations.

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Venezuela’s Other Crisis: A Justice System Dismantled From Within

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David Smilde

The folks at World Politics Review invited me to write a piece on the rule of law in Venezuela (opening it from here should get you around the paywall, as will opening it from Twitter), something I have had on my agenda for awhile. In the piece I look at the underlying issues that have given Venezuela its last place ranking in the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index.

Rule of law does not get as much attention as other political and economic issues but runs through everything from the stagnated police reform and prison violence, to lack of private sector investment, to judicial harassment of political opponents. And unlike many issues in which there are plausible arguments in favor of the government’s policies–for example the economy, foreign policy, or participatory regime–defenders of what has happened in the judicial system are few and far between. Perhaps the only bright spot has been the creation of the Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoria del Pueblo) which in actual practice has been a disappointment.

Much of what I write comes from close reading of an analysis carried out by the International Commission of Jurists and published in June 2014 (see the full Spanish language report here, English language executive summary here). Human rights group Provea’s yearly reports are also a good resource. See “Derecho a la Justicia” for every year from 2003 to 2013.

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