Venezuela and the geopolitics of democratization: geoeconomic and sociopolitical effects of us sanctions on the government of Nicolás Maduro (2015-2019)

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the geoeconomic and socio-political effects of the democratizing sanctions imposed by the us government on the government of Nicolás Maduro through executive orders between 2015 and 2019. Geopolitics is employed as a field of study where various disciplines that explore the projection of power in space converge, and Geoeconomics, which focuses on the relationship between economic power and a more abstract space. The results indicate that these sanctions, instead of democratizing Venezuelan politics, are counterproductive for two main reasons: first, they aggravate the economic crisis, and second, foreign intervention through sanctions distorts policy-making in fragile democracies such as Venezuela