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In this article, we argue that the speeches and policy documents from the later period of Hugo Chávez's presidency exemplify 'transnational populism', a form of populist discourse that defies the close association between populism and nationalism that frames the scholarly literatures on both populism and Chávez. We explain why Chávez's populism took this distinctive form by reference to the history of international political thought in Latin America and the political context surrounding the creation of the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, ALBA). We suggest that while transnational populism may actually amplify the threat that other scholars have argued populist leaders pose to democratic institutions, it also offers an important corrective to how scholars think about the relationship between populism, democracy and international politics, suggesting that international institutions capable of restraining powerful states are essential to stabilising democracies in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chávez government introduced a ‘Bolivarian’ national curriculum to promote radically different understandings of Venezuelan history and identity. We place the fate of this reform initiative within the broader study of state formation and nationalism. Scholars have long identified mass schooling as the key institution for socialising citizens and cultivating national loyalties, and many states have attempted to alter the nationalist content of schooling with these ends in mind. Venezuela constitutes an ideal case for identifying the specific conditions under which transformations of official national ideologies do and do not gain broader resonance. Using evidence derived from textbook analysis and semi-structured interviews with educational officials and teachers in Caracas, we highlight a new argument, showing that intrastate tensions between the central government and teachers, heightened by a well-established cultural machinery and by teachers’ increasing exclusion from the Chavista political coalition, explain the limited success in government efforts to implement Bolivarian nationalism through the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]