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In 2009, the Organic Education Law was enacted despite protest because university connective structures enabled organizational brokerage that the opposition could not sustain against state cohesion and political power. In 2010, the University Education Law was blocked when limited brokerage fostered a more homogenous opposition and the state faced Chávez’s declining national influence. Fieldwork evidence from Caracas in 2012 supports this argument.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/brokerage-political-opportunity-and-protest-in-venezuelan-higher-education-reform-storm/599687/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/brokerage-political-opportunity-and-protest-in-venezuelan-higher-education-reform-storm/599687.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"jayni","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":14},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What were the two education reform episodes examined in the paper?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"The paper compares the approval and implementation of Venezuela’s Organic Education Law in 2009 with the attempted approval of the University Education Law in 2010.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Why did the government implement the 2009 Organic Education Law but not the 2010 University Education Law?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The government could implement the Organic Law because the opposition’s brokerage networks were diffuse and weak, while the state had stronger organizational cohesion and political power. In 2010, more robust and homogenous opposition—supported by differing brokerage and political opportunity conditions—made the new law politically unviable.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How do organizational brokerage and political opportunity structures interact in these outcomes?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"Organizational brokerage affects how effectively opposition groups coordinate claims against the state, while political opportunity structures shape the likelihood and costs of collective action. The interaction of these factors produced a government victory in 2009 and raised potential costs in 2010.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},599687,1792089251,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":14,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":52,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":143},3985747859343,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","Brokerage, Political Opportunity, and Protest in Venezuelan Higher  \nEducation Reform  \nElliot Storm  \nUniversity of Toronto  \nThis paper explores two episodes of contention in the ongoing conflict between the Venezuelan government and the country’s autonomous universities. In August 2009, Venezuela's National Assembly approved and implemented the controversial Organic Education Law. Sixteen months later, the Assembly approved the similarly polarizing Law of University Education. Days after this bill was passed by the legislature, however, Hugo Chávez refused to sign it. This paper explains that the government was able to implement the Organic Law but not the University Education Law because of changes in the universities’organizational strength and the wider political opportunity structure. The connections brokered between oppositional groups were diffuse but weak in 2009 but more homogenous and robust in 2010. The stronger opposition, combined with a reduction in the government’s political power after 2009, made the higher  \neducation law politically unviable and all but forced Chávez to rescind it.  \nIn August 2009, the National Assembly of Venezuela passed a new Organic Education Law that, in addition to changing other elements of the national education system, reformed the internal electoral structure of the country’s five autonomous universities [1]. The law was viewed by many members of those universities as a violation of university autonomy, but was enacted by President Hugo Chávez despite their protestations. Shortly thereafter, in December 2010, the government introduced a new University Education Law that was intended to assist with the\"construction of a socialist society\" (Art. 2.2). Unlike the Organic Law, however, the University Education Law was not implemented. Although it was approved by the National Assembly, President Hugo Chávez declined to sign it and instead sent it back to the legislature, where it effectively died. This was an unexpected turn of events, for the government did not face any formal institutional constraints that prevented it from implementing the law. Why did the government decline to pass the University Education Law when it enacted the Organic Education Law just sixteen months earlier?  \nIn what follows, I approach both reform initiatives as examples of contentious politics or episodic, collective interactions between government and the public based on competing claims (Tarrow, 1994; Tilly & Tarrow, 2007). I focus on two key dimensions of these contentious interactions. First, I examine how existing connective structures within the university system facilitated organizational brokerage, i.e. the establishment or enhancement of new connections between groups. When brokerage occurs, groups making claims against the state are expected to be more effective in their coordinated collective response (Gorski, 2003; Tarrow, 1998; Tilly & Tarrow, 2007) . However, the efficacy of brokerage also depends on factors external to the organizational features of the opposition. Accordingly, I also examine the role of political opportunity structures, the specific characteristics of the political arena that condition how likely people are to participate in collective action, including changes in the ruling elite and shifts in the balance of national political power (Tarrow, 1994 p. 85) .  \nBased on evidence collected during fieldwork in Caracas in 2012, I find that the different outcomes in 2009 and 2010 are due to variation in the organizational strength of both the  \nuniversities and the state. In 2009 the autonomous universities engaged in extensive brokerage with each other and with non-university social sectors, leading to heterogeneous and diffusely © 2015, Current Issues in Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Current Issues in Comparative Education 17(1), 17–26.  \nStorm  \norganized opposition that could not match the state's organizational cohesion and","cbCaiowFdlOhhxQS","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiowFdlOhhxQS","pdf",187878,"English","# Political transformation and university reform in context\n## Brokerage, political opportunity, and protest in higher education reform\n## Organizational strength and policy outcomes in 2009 vs 2010","[{\"question\":\"What were the two education reform episodes examined in the paper?\",\"answer\":\"The paper compares the approval and implementation of Venezuela’s Organic Education Law in 2009 with the attempted approval of the University Education Law in 2010.\"},{\"question\":\"Why did the government implement the 2009 Organic Education Law but not the 2010 University Education Law?\",\"answer\":\"The government could implement the Organic Law because the opposition’s brokerage networks were diffuse and weak, while the state had stronger organizational cohesion and political power. In 2010, more robust and homogenous opposition—supported by differing brokerage and political opportunity conditions—made the new law politically unviable.\"},{\"question\":\"How do organizational brokerage and political opportunity structures interact in these outcomes?\",\"answer\":\"Organizational brokerage affects how effectively opposition groups coordinate claims against the state, while political opportunity structures shape the likelihood and costs of collective action. The interaction of these factors produced a government victory in 2009 and raised potential costs in 2010.\"}]","Brokerage, Political Opportunity, and Protest in Venezuelan Higher Education Reform - Storm | PDF",25]