Direct Democracy and Comunas in Venezuela Under the PSUV

This project explores the political origins, functioning, and outcomes of Venezuela’s Comunas, which are participatory governance units created under the United Socialist Party (PSUV) to institutionalize grassroots socialism and direct democracy. Conceived to devolve power from the state to local communities, the Comunas represent one of the world’s most significant contemporary experiments in subnational democratization under a centralized authoritarian regime. Using public data from Venezuela’s Ministry of Popular Power for the Comunas, the project looks to build a database of the 3,643 reported existing Comunas, with secondary data investigating their political dynamics and connections to democracy and socialism.

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