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The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela. Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market

Buy hardcover (Brill)
Published Feb 2026

Kristin Ciupa

Author: Kristin Ciupa
The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela re-examines oil dependency debates, situated within an analysis of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Process from 1999-2016. Drawing on interviews with Venezuelan politicians, economists, scholars and activists, as well as extensive archival research, the book explores the potential for class struggle to shape national oil development and conditions of oil dependency. It situates Venezuela’s Bolivarian Process within a broader regional shift to the left in Latin America, the structures of the global oil market and Venezuela’s role as oil-exporter in the global economy, popular class struggle in Venezuela arising out of the neoliberal period, and the history of Venezuelan rentier accumulation. Ultimately, the book explores the question of agency in conversation with structural analyses of rent and natural resource dependency.

Biographical Note

Kristin Ciupa is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Regina. She has published on the political economy of extraction in Latin America and Canada, and is co-editor of The Labor of Extraction in Latin America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024).

Readership

The book is especially relevant to scholars and students in Latin American Studies, extractivism, the political economy of oil, and social movements.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction: The New Left and Venezuelan Oil Development
1 Neoliberalism
2 The New Latin American Left
3 Neoliberal Reform and the Caracazo in Venezuela
4 The Bolivarian Revolution and Twenty-First Century Socialism
5 Structure of the Book

1 Rentier Accumulation and State and Class Formation
1 Theorising Oil-Exporting Countries
2 Marxian Theory of Rent
3 International Oil Rents and Pricing
4 The Capitalist State
5 Class Relations
6 Conclusion

2 The History of Venezuelan Oil Development
1 1800–1907: Pre-Oil Venezuela and the Advent of the Global Oil Industry
2 1908–1957: The Birth of the Venezuelan Oil Industry
3 1958–1982: The Pact of Punto Fijo and Oil Nationalisation
4 1983–1998: Neoliberalism and the Internationalisation of the Oil Industry
5 Conclusion

3 The New Left and the Bolivarian Revolution from 1999 to 2016
1 The Trajectory of the New Latin American Left
2 1999–2000: The New Constitution and Moderate Reform
3 2001–2004: Anti-Neoliberalism and Oil Reform
4 2005–2008: Twenty-First Century Socialism and Social Welfare Reform
5 2009–2016: Crisis and Declining Oil Revenues
6 Conclusion

4 Rent Collection and Distribution under the Bolivarian Government
1 Reform and Rent Capture
2 Rent Distribution Mechanisms
3 Conclusion

5 Oil, Class Conflict, and the Limitations of the Venezuelan State
1 International Oil Relations and the Limits of Venezuelan Oil Development
2 The Venezuelan Capitalist and Landlord State
3 Class Politics and the Bolivarian Project
4 Politicising Rent
5 Conclusion

6 Conclusion
1 Neoclassical Economics and the Dutch Disease
2 Institutionalist Perspective
3 Marxian Theory of Rent
4 International Oil Relations, Pricing and Rent Formation
5 The New Latin American Left
6 The Venezuelan State
7 Social Property Relations

List of Interviewees
Bibliography
Index