Das natürliche Produkt Kaffee wird immer teurer, von den negativen Folgen des Anbaus für Umwelt und Menschen ganz zu schweigen. Nun versuchen Forscher, das Genussmittel in Bioreaktoren herzustellen.

Bis zu 90 Prozent der in Europa eingesetzten Antibiotika kommen aus Asien, die meisten davon aus China. Nun will die EU-Kommission Europa bei diesen und anderen Medikamenten unabhängiger machen. Doch der Weg dahin ist ebenso unklar wie die Kosten.

Wenn sich männliche Paviane um ihren weiblichen Nachwuchs kümmern, hat das einen positiven Effekt auf die Lebensdauer. Das zeigt eine aktuelle Studie aus Kenya.

Welche Quecksilberwerte im Blut unbedenklich sind und welche Symptome auf eine Vergiftung hindeuten.

Teils tief unter der Erde liegen die Atomanlagen von Iran. Bei Israels Angriffen wurden mehrere beschädigt. Die wichtigsten Standorte im Überblick.

Few instruments of executive power are as sweeping, as opaque, and as ripe for abuse as the presidential pardon. Under Donald Trump, this power shed its last vestiges of impartiality and morphed into a vehicle of transactional politics. Pardons have become rewards for loyalty, tools of self-interest, and instruments of partisan retribution. Rather than signaling mercy or correcting injustice, they signal allegiance.

In what follows, I will offer two related sets of comments on Donald Trump’s extraordinary use of the executive pardoning power. The first is from the standpoint of a philosopher of criminal law, in which I am an academic specialist. The second is from the standpoint of a political sociologist, in which I am a novice. Even though it affords me less of an opportunity to draw from my scholarly background, I regard the sociological perspective on this topic as more explanatory than its philosophical counterpart. I conclude with brief thoughts about the implications of the sociological dimension of this topic for questions of legal philosophy.

From conduct to loyalty – the philosophical logic behind Trump’s pardons

As regards the philosophy of criminal law, it is easy to misdiagnose the core problem at stake. Some commentators may be concerned that Trump’s exercise of his power to pardon reflects an alarming change in the nature of penal justice itself. Textbooks generally indicate that the criminal law focuses on bad acts (performed with mens rea). Yet the criteria Trump employs to pardon seem indifferent to the crimes committed. What recipients have done is largely irrelevant. Instead, pardons are more typically granted because of who these recipients are. Theorists almost universally oppose this shift in criminal justice from actions to agents. Philosophical orthodoxy, grounded in the principle that punishment should respond solely to culpable acts rather than to the character of the individual, holds that our penal system exists not to punish or reward good or bad persons, but to sanction criminal conduct.

Indeed, it is impossible to detect any pattern in the granting of pardons based on the crimes their recipients have committed. Trump did not, for instance, adopt a general policy of leniency toward those convicted of now-discredited offenses such as marijuana possession. Instead, the individuals he has pardoned were convicted of a wide array of crimes, including some of the most heinous: dealers of massive quantities of hard drugs, rioters who assault federal officers, and con artists who embezzle charitable contributions. Nor were these convictions typically marred by any clear miscarriage of justice in the process – despite vague claims about the weaponization of federal prosecutorial power. The nature of the underlying offenses appears to have played little or no role in the decision to grant clemency.

That said, the apparent shift in criminal justice from actions to agents is not unprecedented and should not itself be cause for alarm among legal philosophers who specialize in the substantive criminal law. It may be crucial to be reminded that the content of the penal code remains unchanged. Pardons do not alter what conduct is defined as criminal – unless one embraces the realist position that the law just is the conduct for which persons will be punished rather than the conduct proscribed in statutes. Moreover, some contrarians hold that persons, rather than acts alone, have always belonged at center stage in a theory of penal liability.¹⁾ Traditional defenses of insanity and infancy (sometimes categorized as exemptions) are clearly grounded in characteristics of the offender rather than in his act. More controversially, excuses in criminal law may be based on qualities of defendants. Lawbreakers who are ignorant, socioeconomically disadvantaged, weak-willed, or otherwise deficient in their capacities are frequently thought to qualify for special treatment. I will not pursue this train of thought here. My point is only that pardons have long been granted because of properties of the offender apart from the nature of their crimes: those who have been incarcerated for long periods of time, have undergone rehabilitation, or have expressed sincere remorse, for instance.

More to the point, a range of familiar criminal justice policies attach more salience to individuals than to their behavior. Like pardons, these policies typically operate at post-conviction stages of the criminal process. Consider, for example, the widespread use of enhanced sentencing for recidivists or so-called “three-strikes” offenders. These measures are clearly less fixated on acts than on agents. I do not suggest that these examples are normatively or theoretically uncontroversial, but they are firmly entrenched in our existing practice, for better or worse.

The U.S. system of gun control represents the best example from the substantive criminal law of a “person-oriented” strategy. For decades, efforts to curb gun violence have focused not so much on regulating the weapons themselves, but on restricting access for those deemed to be dangerous. Individuals subject to domestic abuse orders, drug users, convicted felons, adolescents, and those found to be mentally unfit have all been prohibited from possessing firearms. In such cases, the characteristics of the person matter far more than the type of weapon.

The nature of this approach to gun control is most easily appreciated by contrasting it with our system of drug control.²⁾ The regime of prohibitions throughout the U.S. generally aspires to protect society from the harms of drugs by identifying substances thought to be too dangerous to allow for non-medical purposes. Statutes list specific drugs proscribed for anyone to possess or use, regardless of who is involved. Consumers of specific kinds of drugs, rather than the characteristics of the persons who take them, are the subjects of criminal liability. In this domain, liability attaches to the act, not to the individual’s broader profile. To be sure, neither gun nor drug policy can be considered success stories in criminal justice. But the fact that gun policy is generally “person-oriented” while drug policy is “action-oriented” is seldom mentioned as a cause of failure.

Surely the more worrisome feature of Trump’s exercise of his power is not that it focuses on persons, but on which persons he has chosen to focus. Those who are loyal or have expressed fealty to Trump represent the common thread among the individuals he has decided to pardon. Patrons who contribute to his coffers also gain his favor. It is unthinkable that Democratic offenders would receive benefits. Instead, his opponents are more typically threatened with retribution and made the targets of criminal investigations.

Clemency as governance – the political sociology of Trump’s pardoning power

This brings us to what I believe is the second and more revealing dimension of Trump’s approach: the sociological. Trump’s use of the pardon power reflects a broader worldview – one that aligns closely with what many of his MAGA faithful tend to believe. He is simply doing, more overtly and more effectively, what they suspect all politicians have always done: using public power for private advantage. Much of what Trump has accomplished through his pardoning power does not shock his supporters and stands on a continuum with other parts of his agenda. According to this school of thought, criminal justice, like every aspect of politics, is transactional, allowing officials to reward their friends and to punish their enemies. From this cynical perspective, pardons granted to supporters and withheld from adversaries are nothing new. Trump is simply better at it than his predecessors.

My (hardly original) sociological observation is that Trump would not be able to use his pardoning power in such an openly partisan way but for the complicity of his many enablers. They either share his vision or are intimidated about speaking against it. The foremost enablers are his MAGA base, many of whom seem willing to overlook or excuse nearly anything Trump has said or done. His media allies manage to explain away (or what critics have aptly dubbed “Foxsplain”) any questions about his deeds and persuade their viewers that Trump is uniquely effective in making America great. Republican politicians are in a position to resist, but dare not do so if they face a primary challenge. Congress, sidelined by the expansion of executive authority, has largely abandoned its responsibility by deferring to Trump.

Much has been said of late about the Democratic cover-up of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline throughout his presidency.³⁾ Those closest to the President are said to have withheld what they could plainly see. In my judgment, the conspiracy of silence among Republicans about Trump’s mental state is even more worrisome. I am sure that many of his associates are appalled by his behavior generally and by his exercise of the pardoning power in particular. Few of the elected officials who cowered in their chambers on January 6th can be happy to see their assailants released from prison. One wonders whether significant numbers of elected officials will ever reach the breaking point and withdraw their support. Cracks in Trump’s Teflon armor occasionally open, but close just as quickly.

Undoing accountability – the authoritarian drift

At present, only courts appear both willing and able to do the dirty work of blocking major elements of Trump’s agenda. Even so, judges hesitate to intervene in what remains – at least formally – a core executive prerogative: the pardoning power. At some point, however, the rule of law itself is threatened when pardons are dispensed in such a partisan fashion. The outer legal limits of this power remain largely untested, in part because no executive has ever pushed the boundaries so far.

Imagine, then, a world in which Republican lawbreakers are routinely pardoned as a matter of course, while Democratic opponents find themselves subject to selective prosecution. In such a world, loyalty to the president offers de facto immunity, because supporters could confidently rely on a pardon whenever they break the law. His detractors would be unwilling to speak out because of fear of retribution. How close have we come to this world today? It is unclear to me that the Constitution prohibits this state of affairs, although constitutional lawyers may find the resources to prevent it. Here, as elsewhere, the Trump presidency engages in behavior previously regarded as unthinkable.

Until more of his voters turn on him, I would expect Trump to continue to wield his executive authority far beyond anything we have witnessed in the United States to date. His use of the pardoning power is simply another example of his unfettered ability to put his transactional conception of governing into practice. Thus I do not understand his use of pardons to represent a major departure from his general style of governing.

The logic is consistent: benefit friends, punish foes. To date, his Republican base seems satisfied, or even thrilled, with his demeanor. Those who enable this approach – whether through silence, complicity, or active support – share responsibility for the consequences. What is at stake is not merely political decorum, but the integrity of the rule of law itself. The sociopolitical conditions that explain Trump’s appeal thus have profound ramifications for legal philosophy, particularly in the criminal domain. When criminal justice becomes a partisan weapon, the very notion of equal accountability under law begins to unravel.

The post Pardons, Criminal Theory, and Political Sociology appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

In Poland, the narrow defeat of liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski by the ultra-conservative Karol Nawrocki in the June 1st presidential election marked a turning point. The possibility of restoring the pre-2015 constitutional order has effectively vanished. But this does not mean Polish democracy is doomed.

Poland’s European partners must recognize the dramatic shift Polish voters delivered. Rather than fixating on the formal legality—or illegality—of the dizzying array of judicial reforms and counter-reforms enacted since 2015, the time has come to encourage all sides to pursue a national constitutional settlement. This new framework must address not only judicial independence but also the deeper social and political polarization now defining Polish life.

A primer on Poland’s constitutional crisis

To grasp the significance of the presidential election for Poland’s constitutional future, we should recall how we got here. For nearly a decade, Poland has faced a constitutional crisis rooted in a series of formally unconstitutional and substantively undemocratic moves by the government of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party and its ally, President Andrzej Duda.

After taking power in 2015, they swiftly packed the Constitutional Tribunal with loyalist judges—three appointed in clear violation of the constitution. In 2017, they illegally shortened the term of the National Council of the Judiciary, replacing judges’ representatives with political appointees. Today, more than 25% of Polish judges, including a majority in the Supreme Court, have been nominated by this discredited body.

Further laws continued this authoritarian trend. PiS created two special chambers in the Supreme Court—staffed exclusively by the disputed judges—and transformed the prosecution service into a loyalist structure. Chief judges at all levels were purged.

The situation changed in 2023, when a broad opposition coalition led by former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk won parliamentary elections. After a historically delayed transition, President Duda reluctantly granted Tusk the mandate to form a government. A tense period of political cohabitation began.

New Justice Minister Adam Bodnar moved to reverse eight years of PiS judicial “reform.” He replaced the Deputy General Prosecutor—despite a last-minute PiS amendment requiring presidential approval for such changes—and the Cabinet refused to publish rulings of the PiS-captured Constitutional Tribunal. Some saw these moves as too aggressive, others as too timid; PiS and Duda called them outright lawless.

Ultimately, the liberal coalition has always known that repairing the damage to Poland’s judiciary requires deep statutory reform. Numerous proposals have been developed—many discussed on this blog. All share one goal: reversing the effects of PiS’s 2015–2023 illiberal rule.

The June 1st electoral verdict

Yet under Poland’s semi-presidential system, none of these legislative changes can take effect without the president’s approval. Every statute must be signed by the president before promulgation. Although his veto is not absolute—parliament can override it with a 60% majority—Tusk’s coalition lacks that margin. The blocking minority belongs to PiS and the even more far-right Konfederacja party.

Moreover, the president does not need to veto a bill outright to kill it. The Constitution allows him to refer legislation to the Constitutional Tribunal before signing. There, the Chief Judge—a zealous PiS ally—can delay proceedings indefinitely.

Given these constraints, rule-of-law advocates were under no illusions: only a liberal president would sign into law the changes needed to dismantle the legal edifice PiS built.

In a significant triumph for democratic renewal, the June 1^st election was generally conducted freely and fairly. While some irregularities occurred on both sides, and the media environment remained polarized, the process bore no resemblance to the abuses seen under PiS rule: no Pegasus surveillance of opposition leaders, no state media functioning as Orwellian propaganda, no brazen deployment of state-owned companies to bankroll government candidates.

In this fundamentally honest ballot, voters delivered their verdict. Having experienced both PiS’s revolutionary governance and Tusk’s liberal counter-revolution, they chose—by a narrow but clear margin—Karol Nawrocki: a fervent PiS supporter, ideologically on the party’s right and close to Konfederacja. Nawrocki is poised to become Poland’s most conservative president since 1989.

The post-election landscape

What does this result mean for the future of the rule of law in Poland? The conclusion is as simple as it is stark: the fight to return to any version of the pre-2015 constitutional order is over.

President Nawrocki will remain in office until at least 2030. Given the advantages of incumbency, he must be considered the favorite to win reelection and serve a second term.

Nawrocki will certainly not sign any of the judicial reform proposals prepared by Minister Bodnar and his legal team. More fundamentally, it is unclear how long Bodnar—or the broader Tusk government—will remain in office. The next parliamentary election is due by 2027. For over six months now, opinion polls have consistently shown that PiS and Konfederacja would win a clear majority if elections were held today.

Even under the most optimistic scenario from a liberal perspective, the next decade will thereby be dominated by a tense cohabitation between a big-tent centrist government and an ultra-conservative, semi-executive president. But a more likely trajectory is, as of now, the American one: a brief, ineffectual liberal interlude, followed by a full return of the far right to power.

Anyone who continues, in this radically altered reality, to speak in business-as-usual terms about restoring the rule of law is, frankly, deluding themselves. The situation demands not restoration, but reinvention—radically new constitutional ideas for radically new political conditions.

Towards a constitutional settlement 

Concrete proposals for a new beginning are already on the table.

Since 2018, we have co-led a cross-partisan group of 130 intellectuals committed to designing a new constitutional vision for Poland. This initiative—known as the Social Contract Incubator or IUS, based on its Polish acronym—has been a rare collaborative space, uniting outspoken critics of PiS like us with its cautious or even committed sympathizers. Our vision was presented in a 2023 book, with a forthcoming English edition. The book outlines a pragmatic yet ambitious model for constitutional renewal. At its core is a new constitutional deal grounded in territorial decentralization and cross-ideological power-sharing.

This approach acknowledges Poland’s entrenched regional divides—between the more urbanized, progressive northwest and the more rural, conservative southeast. It also rethinks one of the most contentious battlegrounds of the past decade: the judiciary.

In our proposal, judicial appointments are removed from the hands of warring national factions. Instead, judges would be selected from a pool of qualified candidates and require endorsement from mayors representing at least 60% of the population in the region where the judge would serve. This grounds judicial legitimacy in local democratic accountability, not national partisan warfare.

Judicial reform could pave the way for broader structural change. Why must school curricula, for example, be dictated from Warsaw? Would it not be more democratic for local communities to decide whether they prefer patriotic education or sex education? In a deeply divided country like Poland, decentralization can transform zero-sum national battles into local debates that reflect the values of diverse communities.

Finally, we propose a new check on central legislative power: a reimagined Senate composed of regional governors and mayors of Poland’s largest cities. Legislation would require Senate approval, creating a more balanced national governance framework. This would be far more effective than the current system, where the presidential veto acts as a blunt, partisan instrument—potent when the president and the Cabinet come from the opposite political camps, and entirely absent when they do not.

Is the settlement possible?

The obvious question is whether an emboldened right would now consider compromising with the liberal camp. After all, amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds supermajority in the more powerful parliamentary chamber, the Sejm. In the current term, that means securing support from roughly a third of right-wing MPs from PiS and Konfederacja.

Surprisingly, early signals are not entirely discouraging about the feasibility of such an outcome. Already a year ago, Konfederacja strongly endorsed a “constitutional reset.” During the presidential campaign, the party’s leader, Sławomir Mentzen has also backed devolving education policy to regional and municipal levels.

As for President Nawrocki, he would be unwise to assume his narrow mandate guarantees a sweeping right-wing victory in 2027. One plausible reading of the election is that voters—having experienced both the PiS revolution and the Tusk-led counter-revolution—prefer divided government.

From that vantage, our proposal may offer precisely what voters want: not a return to total liberal or conservative rule, but a new structure of vertical checks and balances grounded in local power. Should Konfederacja continue to support the reset, President Nawrocki would struggle to remain disengaged. And if he resists, liberals could frame the 2027 election as a referendum on another era of unchecked right-wing rule.

But it takes two to tango.

Reconciliation also requires liberal introspection. Too often, liberal intellectuals have urged Polish politicians to adopt a Bidenesque narrative casting the right as an irredeemable threat to democracy. That message worked—once. It helped mobilize voters behind the broad coalition that brought Tusk to power in 2023. But existential narratives age poorly. Eventually, insisting that only progressives represent Poland’s true democratic values begins to sound self-righteous and polarizing. Conservative voters cannot forever be cast as victims duped by demagogues. At some point, the conflict stops resembling a battle for ideals and begins to look like a struggle against neighbors, friends, and family who simply think differently.

Well-intentioned rule-of-law defenders have not always helped, either. Their focus on formal legality often downplayed the substantial democratic legitimacy of Poland’s conservative project. PiS-aligned candidates have won four of the last five presidential elections. And liberals elsewhere—when similarly empowered—have at times stretched constitutional boundaries in the name of progress. Roosevelt’s New Deal remains a telling example.

If Poland’s allies—especially in legal and academic circles—can shift their goal from rigid fidelity to the 1997 Constitution toward a broader defense of democratic governance and fundamental rights, new paths will open. Our proposal is one such forward-looking, realistic path.

A reason for hope

Indeed, the ferocity of Poland’s constitutional conflict obscures a more hopeful reality: the country’s ideological divide is narrower than it appears. Poland’s opposing camps agree on core geopolitical priorities. Both liberals and most conservatives support EU membership, NATO, and a robust defense posture in the face of Russian aggression. Both value the strategic alliance with the United States.

Domestically, the differences are also less stark than political rhetoric suggests. Tusk has shifted rightward on migration and embraced infrastructure projects once championed by PiS. What remains are cultural and moral disputes—on abortion, same-sex civil unions, and religious education. These issues matter deeply. But are they worth tearing apart a successful nation while a brutal war rages next door?

International actors—particularly EU institutions and legal scholars—should support efforts toward reconciliation. President Nawrocki, though closely aligned with PiS, enters office with a clean slate. Unlike his predecessor, he bears no direct responsibility for the judiciary’s political takeover. That gives him an opportunity to chart a different path.

The Tusk government should meet him with seriousness and respect. If both sides engage in good faith, a constitutional settlement is not a pipe dream. In fact, under current conditions, even ordinary legislation requires cross-party consensus that amounts to a de facto constitutional majority. As we explained earlier, no law can be enacted without both parliamentary approval and President Nawrocki’s signature. A reform capable of clearing that bar would, by definition, have support across Poland’s political spectrum—including parts of PiS and even Konfederacja.

Replacing endless political warfare with reconciliation is not a utopian fantasy—because Poland has done it before. The country’s democratic rebirth in 1989 began with the improbable Round Table talks between the communist regime and democratic opposition. That peaceful transition continues to inspire democrats around the world. If Poles could find common ground with Moscow-backed hardliners, surely they can—and must—find it with one another today.

 

The post A Constitutional Settlement Is Poland’s Only Hope appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

There is a persistent puzzle about why elected autocrats hold on to the pretense of elections. When Nicolás Maduro put himself before the Venezuelan population in 2024, the result was a disaster for the regime, despite the repression of opponents and the heavy manipulation of state resources to favor the incumbent. The electoral count was stopped, the balloting information seized, and Maduro declared himself the overwhelming victor. No serious observer could take the ensuing claim to an electoral mandate seriously.

But our concern, and our sympathies, lie not with oppressive regimes seeking the protective cover of distorted elections, but with the democratic opposition.  Quite simply, what does the opposition stand to gain or lose by participating in an electoral charade in a system that is sliding from competitive authoritarianism into a closed dictatorship.  Our claim is that the decision is not so much a matter of principle but of politics.  For a beleaguered opposition, the question of participation should reflect both pragmatic and strategic considerations of the prospects for democratic resistance.

This year’s elections

Start with this year.  Venezuela held local and parliamentary elections on May 25^th. Unsurprisingly, Maduro’s allies won with an overwhelming majority. Even though Maduro had severely tilted the playing field in his favor, this time, and unlike in 2024, the regime did not have to alter the results from what was evident in the exit polls. This was partly because an important part of the opposition called for a boycott of the elections, and the regime did not face genuine competitors. The regime got more than 82% of the votes for the National Assembly, controlling 253 out of 285 seats. The regime still has a “taste for elections,” even if elections must be a sham.

But why continue with this façade?  What is the point of holding elections at all, especially as Venezuela is locking up opposition figures and completing the transition to pure autocracy? Why does the regime has some ongoing need to proclaim itself the choice of the people?

As regimes change, however, so does the role of the opposition.  Whereas elections may serve as a galvanizing moment in domestic politics under competitive regimes, they clearly do not play that role once the democratic façade is removed.   Not only does this change the function of elections but it also affects how the opposition perceives its role in future electoral processes. As we have argued in a recent essay, many reasons suggest that voting and participating in the electoral contest may be valuable even in closed authoritarian regimes. But as regimes change, so do oppositional strategies. If the opposition could show a credible political platform in the past and encourage citizens to vote in favor of an alternative to the Chávez/Maduro regime, today, putting themselves forward as possible future winners would be a mistake.

Venezuela is not a competitive authoritarian regime any longer

Elections are not always what they appear to be.  There is a difference between choosing among policy goals of competing political parties and simply crowning the next reigning caudillo. Latin America has a long history of presidents operating above the party system with claims of representational authority that focus more on the personal connection between the leaders and the voters. Venezuela reflects this pattern of personalist politics.  Chávez himself initially ran against the mainstream parties and won by a landslide. He quickly won a referendum on constitutional reform and the ensuing election for a new constituent assembly, using an electoral system he had designed to overrepresent his allies. His assembly enacted a new constitution and replaced the National Congress with a unicameral legislature. He also increased term limits and allowed presidents to run for a second term.

But the electoral honeymoon was short-lived.  In the 2002 and 2006 elections, Chávez barely hung on.  Then in 2007, Chávez lost an electoral gamble for a “blank” check removing term limits and other constraints on presidential rule, although he salvaged some of that in 2008.  In each instance, democratic resistance was emboldened.  And yet, the claim of electoral authority was critical for Chávez and provided a natural forum for the charismatic Chávez, a characteristic not shared by the dour Maduro.  After Chávez died in 2013, elections ran against Maduro, who quickly lost his parliamentary majority in the 2015 elections.  As became evident by the recourse to blatant fraud in 2024, Venezuela under Maduro could make no claim to electoral legitimacy.

Elections, whatever their risk, were important for the Chávez/Maduro enterprise on the way up, but perhaps no longer when the threat outweighed the gain.  In the inimitable words of Turkish leader Recep Erdogan, “You ride [democracy] until you get to your destination … and then you step off.”  Under this “streetcar” theory of democracy, what should the opposition do as it looks like the autocrats are reaching the end of the line?

Unsurprisingly, much of the opposition called for a boycott of the 2025 elections. By this point, the government had imprisoned many critics, and important opposition leaders, such as Edmundo González, the former candidate who challenged and defeated Maduro in 2024, were either exiled or hiding.  The Venezuelan opposition had proved prudent and pragmatic in the most difficult of circumstances.  No one would ever have confused being an opposition candidate under Chávez/Maduro with attending a garden party.  But, for all the improprieties and threats of previous elections, elections could hold a level of credibility because the opposition could work, make its message visible, sometimes win (as in the 2015 parliamentary elections), and political contestation, even if reduced, was still possible.

Before becoming a closed dictatorship, Venezuela fit in the widespread pattern of competitive authoritarian regimes—ones led by a civilian administration with formal electoral institutions and in which it was widely accepted that voting served as the ultimate source of authority, even though the incumbent regime abused state institutions to seize a relevant advantage. The opposition could continue to challenge as long as it did not pose an existential threat to the regime. A domesticated opposition served the regime’s interest in having enough electoral inclusivity to justify claims to a democratic mandate. For all such regimes, if elections appear too fake (as with 99 percent voting in North Korea), they become a transparent sham, and the basis of support can fade. Once the line is crossed, and elections do not even have the veneer of challenge, the term “competitive” stops being a helpful description of the regime.

Authoritarian elections

As Venezuela completes its authoritarian transition, elections now play a different function. Instead of using elections to broaden its basis of support, giving credit to the regime’s narrative of popular legitimacy, and nullifying the opposition’s challenges, the regime is now using elections to show its authoritarian force. Any hope for elections to provide an opportunity for regime contestation is misplaced. The regime’s reason for holding elections cannot be about its confidence in actually winning them, as is the case with other non-democratic regimes. The regime is too unpopular today, and winning in a competitive election is off the table. Nor can the regime’s reason for holding elections be to build a democratic narrative, as that narrative cannot have credibility. Today, the point for the regime is to demonstrate power, intimidate opponents, and discourage allies from thinking of defecting.

While elections may be a power-consolidating tool for the regime, that alone does not mean that they may not provide a forum for challenge. Regardless of the thin chances of actually winning, participating in elections may benefit a democratic opposition even in closed authoritarian regimes. For one, even bad elections may have a residual democratic value. Elections may provide an opportunity to denounce abuses, bring international observers to gather evidence against the regime, mobilize opponents, normalize dissenting voices, build a space for resistance, and, though perhaps rarely, take advantage of a regime’s miscalculations and defeat it.

Some of those advantages were present in the 2024 elections. In those elections, voting helped challenge Maduro’s international pretenses to popular support and showed the strength of a coordinated domestic opposition.  The election also laid bare the extent to which the regime was willing to weaponize institutions, revealing the truth of a closed dictatorship more similar to traditional modes of authoritarianism than modern and strategic “spin dictators” that avoid violence.

Compared to the 2024 elections, in 2025 the regime’s antidemocratic resort to direct repression through arrests and violence increased.  Because of the 2024 precedent of not recognizing the real results, everyone knew winning more votes was not enough to defeat Maduro.  The opposition boycotted, participation fell below 15 percent, and the result showed voters to respond more to the opposition than to the regime.  Now elections showed how authoritarian the regime had become, instead of providing a patina of democratic legitimacy.

The boycott’s aftermath

This year’s boycott frustrated any claims Maduro might have to a popular mandate.  Right after the voting on May 25^th, Maduro announced that he would present a new law to establish a “communal electoral system” that would conduct “consultations and elections.”  While still unspecified, the new electoral system will focus on “reengineering how people vote,” including a continuous gathering of polls and  opinions from local administrations on social programs and other matters.

The point, as presented by Maduro, is to follow Chávez’s idea of having a “permanent electoral power” that can democratize and transform itself to “walk and speak the language of the people of the street.” Maduro has already established the idea of incentivizing voters to participate by rewarding those “communal” districts with a higher turnout.  If these “communal elections” are to replace traditional parliamentary elections, then it will probably be end of any democratic façade in Venezuela.  The steps taken thus far have removed any prospect of organized political opposition.

As this process unfolds, the opposition will likely turn to other means to contest the stagnating Maduro regime.  Being the electoral opposition is unlikely to be one of them.

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