Four months have passed since US forces captured Venezuela’s sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, and ousted him from power. Maduro’s vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez, quickly moved into the top job and has, under US tutelage, begun a process of reversing her country’s experiment with socialism.

Venezuela’s pivot towards socialism began under the leadership of Hugo Chávez. After entering office in 1999, he initiated a programme of sweeping nationalisations, state-led oil wealth redistribution and increased social spending. Chávez called this process the Bolivarian revolution.

Maduro replaced Chávez as president after his death in 2013. And from there, his administration oversaw one of the most severe economic declines in modern history while simultaneously dismantling democratic checks and balances.

Ideological revision is a perilous moment for revolutionary regimes. Major policy pivots require cautious steering and, without credible and calibrated leadership, they risk overwhelming insular, authoritarian states.

The Soviet Union is perhaps the most illustrative example of this. It collapsed in 1991 under the weight of popular economic grievances mobilised under newfound freedoms of speech and assembly.

Keen to avoid a similar fate, the Chinese Communist party studied the Soviet Union’s downfall over the next decade. It concluded that the Soviet miscalculation was simultaneous economic and political opening, and has thus limited regime liberalisation to the economy.

In Venezuela, Rodríguez appears to be following China’s approach. She has maintained tight control of political........

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