HYBRID DICTATORSHIP IN VENEZUELA

Maduro is gone. But is the system gone with him?

On January 3, 2026, Nicolás Maduro ceased to exercise power in Venezuela. For many observers, his removal appeared to mark the beginning of the end of an era. But replacing a ruler does not necessarily dismantle the structures that made his rule possible.

Hybrid Dictatorship in Venezuela investigates precisely that distinction.

José Esteban Oria reconstructs the development of a political and coercive apparatus built over more than two decades and examines what happened to it after Maduro: the Armed Forces, intelligence agencies, police forces, courts, electoral authorities, economic networks, armed groups, and mechanisms of political persecution and control.

Drawing on documents, statistics, testimony, and specific cases, the book traces Venezuela's escalating violence, the OLP and FAES security operations, deaths officially classified as "resistance to authority," the repression of political protests, persecution through personal associations, the Óscar Pérez case, the events surrounding the July 28, 2024 presidential election, and the mechanisms through which a coercive structure can acquire a life of its own-independent of the individual occupying the presidency.

The book advances a disturbing hypothesis: the hybrid dictatorship.

A system capable of changing its leadership, opening spaces for economic and diplomatic normalization, and modifying some of its practices while preserving essential components of the political, coercive, and institutional apparatus inherited from the previous regime.

This investigation does not assume that Venezuela remains exactly the same under new leadership. Nor does it accept that Maduro's departure alone proves that a democratic transition has taken place. Instead, it subjects the country's power structures to four fundamental questions:

What was dismantled?
What was reformed?
What merely changed hands?
And what remains intact?

Finally, oil introduces a new paradox. As Venezuela rebuilds economic and energy ties with the United States, one fundamental question remains:

Can a country achieve economic normalization before achieving political democratization?

Because removing a ruler can happen overnight.

Dismantling a system built over decades is something else entirely.

Hybrid Dictatorship in Venezuela is an investigation into what happens to power when the person at the top changes-but the structures beneath him remain standing.