Authoritarian rebalance 

Maduro served as president of Venezuela for more than 10 years before he was ousted Jan. 3 in a U.S. military operation that brought him to America to face narco-terrorism charges.

Trinkunas, a senior research scholar at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), discussed the possibility of Venezuela transitioning to democracy, especially given the opposition's overwhelming victory in the 2024 presidential elections. But an authoritarian rebalancing looms large, he noted.

“We have to remember that all the institutions of power and all the electoral offices in Venezuela below the president are held by supporters of the regime,” he said.

Trinkunas recalled political scientist Alexander B. Downs’ book, “Catastrophic Success,” which examined the negative consequences of foreign-imposed regime changes and highlighted that such interventions often lead to civil war and violent removals of leaders.

“About one-third to 40% of all regimes installed by a foreign intervention end up in civil conflict within 10 years,” Trinkunas said. And, almost half of leaders installed by foreign powers withdraw from or are pushed from office before their terms are up.

He foresees a divergence between the interests of the intervening power, the U.S., and Venezuela’s power elites and population under the proposed arrangement. “The people with the guns stay employed.” And they may not be eager to cooperate if it involves sharing Venezuela’s mineral wealth with the United States government.

Díaz-Cayeros said, “Nothing has changed in the basic underlying economic conditions of Venezuela that has forced an exodus of 8 million people.” Days after the arrest of Maduro, the government in office is still the same government that came into office through an electoral fraud, he added.

Status quo interests

Curiel, a research scholar at CDDRL, research manager for the Democracy Action Lab, and a native of Venezuela, described the ecosystem of armed actors in Venezuela and outlined how both state and non-state security forces have the incentives and capabilities to preserve the status quo. 

“They’ve had arrangements that have been important for their survival, up until now. And so, there’s a question that these groups face with the loss of Maduro and [his wife Cilia] Flores,” she said.

To the extent they perceive their arrangements are under threat, they might respond with violence or engage in chaos, Curiel added. This is further complicated by the fact that different armed groups are loyal to different members of the governing coalition, creating competing power centers.

Fuentes, a CDDRL visiting scholar and Venezuelan native, noted that the situation in Venezuela remains extremely fluid and that it is still too early to determine whether Maduro’s removal will lead to authoritarian rebalancing or a genuine democratic transition. He argued that policymakers face a real tension between two objectives: stabilizing the country while accounting for the complexity and fragility of the Venezuelan state, and recognizing that stabilization without a clear commitment to democratic transition as the ultimate goal is not sustainable.

“The stability is not going to happen unless you promise and commit to the final goal of a democratic transition,” said Fuentes, a lawyer and policy expert from Venezuela.

He explained that the regime’s basic instinct is to resist and survive any U.S. involvement in the way its key ally, Cuba, has done through the decades.

Zambrano, a Stanford law professor and CDDRL affiliated faculty member who grew up in Venezuela, said he was guardedly optimistic about a democratic transition and supported the military operation that removed Maduro. As for the legal implications of the capture of Maduro, he cited prior examples of the U.S. taking military action in Kosovo, Libya, and Panama, among others, without Congressional approval and in apparent violation of international law.

The international law prohibition on the use of force “has been violated [maybe] 40 times” in the last few decades, he said. “This is one more violation. Is that good? No, that’s not good, but it’s not a drastic change the way the Russian invasion of Ukraine was,” because the latter implicated the international prohibition on the annexation of territory. Moreover, in Venezuela’s case, the Venezuelan people welcomed the U.S. intervention.

Kronick, an associate professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and Stanford alum, observed that U.S. officials at a January 3 press conference didn’t mention democracy and totally dismissed María Corina Machado, whom she described as “Venezuela's most popular politician and the driving force behind the opposition candidate in last year's presidential election.”

The 2024 Venezuelan presidential election was highly controversial, given that both the opposition showed incontrovertible evidence, widely verified by the international community, that the election was stolen by Maduro and that the opposition actually won by a landslide.

Kronick said the acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, is clearly not a democratic activist and has been a key member of the regime for years. “It’s a little bit hard to be optimistic about the prospects for democratization,” given her current role.

On the other hand, Venezuela has very capable election-vote-counting technology and decades of high-turnout elections, all of which could potentially facilitate re-democratization. 

‘Gangster diplomacy’

In the question-and-answer session, Michael McFaul, former FSI director, described the Trump Administration’s current attempt to take more than $2 billion in oil from Venezuela as “gangster diplomacy” and a “travesty.” 

Díaz-Cayeros said, “This kind of U.S. unilateral action strikes a very deep chord in the Latin American psyche. And it doesn’t really matter if someone is on the left or on the right” in Latin and South America.”

Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, noted that the U.S. arrest of Maduro raises troubling questions about whether Russia would attempt a similar action against Ukraine’s leaders in the future. “What then stops Putin, other than the incompetence of the Russian armed forces, from going in and trying to get (President Volodymyr) Zelensky or any other high leader in Ukraine?”

Kronick suggested audience members read a recent Foreign Affairs essay, “A Grand Bargain With Venezuela,” in which the author argues for a “pacted transition,” a negotiated, power-sharing arrangement, as the most viable path for Venezuela. This would involve an agreement between the current regime and opposition to coexist and gradually democratize, rather than one side seeking total victory.

“Whether you read this and think this is pie in the sky and this is never going to happen, or you think this is what we need to really push for, I think it’s really worth engaging with, so I’ll end with that recommendation,” she said.
 

On October 21, 2025, Ms. Sanae Takaichi, a hardline conservative, became the first female Prime Minister of Japan, marking a historic moment for the country, which has one of the worst records among the world's developed democracies for gender equality. Yet, Takaichi's views on empowering women are complex, and she steps into office at a moment of internal party weakness and intense domestic and regional strategic pressures. On October 28, she will welcome President Trump to Tokyo, where the two leaders will hold a summit meeting.

In the following video explainer, Stanford sociologist Kiyoteru Tsutsui, the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the director of APARC and its Japan Program, discusses Takaichi’s background and rise to power, her cabinet choices, and what they signal for Japan's future. Watch:

Video: Michael Breger

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In the Media

On October 28, 2025, on the heels of the summit meeting of Prime Minister Takaichi and President Trump, Tsutsui joined Scott Tong, host of WBUR's Here & Now, to discuss Takaichi's rise to power and what's next for Japan. Listen:

Motivation

Political parties have long reflected  dividing lines between groups in a society, often called political ‘cleavages’. Examples include workers vs. business owners, Protestants vs. Catholics, and urban vs. rural constituents. Civil society organizations (CSOs) — such as unions, churches, and chambers of commerce — have historically shaped the content and strength of these cleavages.

However, both CSOs and cleavages have changed in recent decades. For one, traditional cleavages have declined in importance, and new divides have emerged, such as between the so-called winners and losers of globalization or between those on one side or the other of the culture wars. In addition, formal CSOs have seen declining membership and reduced political influence, while informal groups and more episodic activism have grown. While CSOs and political parties used to have highly formalized relationships, they now tend to engage with each other more opportunistically and sometimes antagonistically. It seems clear that CSOs continue to influence political cleavages — both old and new — in the 21st century. But how exactly does this occur?

Contribution

In “Cleavage Theory Meets Civil Society,” Alex Mierke-Zatwarnicki, Endre Borbáth, and Swen Hutter examine the varied historical and contemporary relationships between CSOs, cleavages, and political parties in Western Europe. The authors develop a general framework for understanding the relationship between CSOs and cleavage development, providing insights into how contemporary politics reflects long-term changes in the structure of civil society. 

The paper is set against social science research on cleavages, which can be divided into two broad streams. First, classical scholarship emphasized the importance of early 20th-century mass associations, such as unions, in shaping cleavages and party politics. By contrast, newer work, written against the backdrop of a changing CSO landscape, has viewed CSOs as largely irrelevant, arguing that opposition parties shape cleavages via direct interactions with voters. Neither body of previous work provides a compelling framework for understanding how contemporary CSOs — given their fragmentation, informationalization, and politicization -- matter for cleavages.

The authors also shed light on the phenomenon of polarization, which is a key part of democratic backsliding. Indeed, electorates are polarized around several cleavages — economic, religious, and cultural — that populist leaders have used to justify excluding their opponents from politics, portraying them as existential threats to a specific way of life.

Processes and Mechanisms

The authors suggest that cleavage development can be seen as the culmination of three processes, which CSOs may influence in key ways. The first is “group formation,” which concerns how individuals come to identify as workers, congregants, or otherwise. The second process is “political institutionalization,” which entails cleavages being embodied in party competition. The third is “political stabilization,” whereby cleavages are reinforced over time by parties.
 

Table 1. Role of civil society across stages of cleavage development.
 

To understand how CSOs might shape these three processes, the authors outline two mechanisms. The first is “linkage,” whereby CSOs communicate group demands and pressure political parties to represent them. Linkage is hypothesized to be more important during the latter processes of institutionalization and stabilization; it was historically important in group formation but less so today because of the aforementioned decline of formal CSOs.

The second mechanism is “social closure,” which concerns how group boundaries are solidified. CSOs are hypothesized to contribute to social closure by bringing group members together and organizing them around shared demands, increasing their sense of ingroup identification. This mechanism is important for group formation as well as  political stabilization.

CSOs still appear to facilitate linkage and social closure, albeit in different ways than in the early 20th century. For example, CSOs are less likely to have formal links to parties but continue to exert pressure by organizing around individual issues, candidates, and elections. Voters’ relationships to CSOs are also more varied, creating divisions within the electorate between highly-active individuals who have a strong sense of group identity and people who are less ‘anchored’ to the cleavage. The authors also hypothesize that some of these dynamics may produce asymmetric changes across the left and right, as the strength and tactics of CSOs vary.
 

Table 2. Implications of the changing structure of civil society.
 

Cross-National and Case Study Evidence

The authors then analyze cross-national data on political parties and voters in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. One data source concerns the extent to which political parties are tied to CSOs and whether they receive large-scale CSO donations. A second source looks at whether party supporters are active in CSOs. Preliminary findings point to important differences between old, class-based parties (especially Social Democrats) and newer parties, with the latter much less tied to CSOs. However, within the new party families, Green parties are more tightly linked to CSOs than far-right parties, but there also exists variation within far-right parties. These patterns demand a more fine-grained analysis of specific cases.
 

Image

Figure 2. Members of civil society organizations among the electorate of political parties in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Note: The figure is based on the Joint EVS/WVS 2017-2022 Dataset (2022). It uses the battery of membership in organizations and partisanship questions. In the WVS, partisanship is measured with ‘Which party would you vote for?’; in the EVS, with ‘Which political party appeals to you most?’ For this figure, the two items are treated as functional equivalents. The percentage of members is calculated from all respondents indicating sympathy towards the respective party.
 

Finally, the authors qualitatively analyze three distinct cases: one New Left party and both old and new far-right populist parties — the German Green Party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Their analysis reveals key differences as regards the importance of CSOs in fostering linkage and social closure. CSOs played a key role in consolidating the Greens and SVP, whereas in the case of AfD, antipathy from German CSOs helped generate a more outsider identity.

The Greens emerged via linkages with left-libertarian social movements in the 1970s and 80s. This included groups supportive of environmental protection and feminism and opposed to nuclear proliferation. CSOs provided ideas and personnel, which helped build a sense of social closure among party supporters. This identity still persists in spite of the subsequent fragmentation of civil society.

By contrast, SVP emerged through connections to Swiss farmers' associations, rural economic networks, and local interest groups. SVP has been radicalizing since the 1990s, becoming one of Europe’s most successful far-right parties and aligning itself with Euroscepticism. SVP’s long history of rural and community penetration has helped strengthen social closure among its electorate.

Finally, AfD emerged in a more fragmented context, via its ties to right-wing protest networks. The party was a top-down vehicle that organized in response to what it saw as Germany’s mismanagement of the Eurozone crisis. AfD lacks dense connections to CSOs and has instead built informal and often volatile alliances with protesters. Many German CSOs — as well as German society more generally — explicitly oppose AfD, which has ironically helped AfD build an outsider identity because its supporters feel isolated and stigmatized.

The case studies vividly illustrate how varied CSO relationships shape cleavages and partisanship in three of the most important Western European parties.

*Research-in-Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.