Predatory sovereignty: the functional transmutation of the venezuelan state and the reconfiguration of hemispheric power

Abstract

This article develops and applies the concept of “Predatory Sovereignty” to analyze the structural transformation of the Venezuelan state post-2013 and its systemic implications for the reconfiguration of hemispheric power. The phenomenon is approached as a functional mutation of Westphalian sovereignty: not a collapse, but a reorientation of the state apparatus toward the maximization of illicit extraction by a restricted elite, in symbiosis with transnational criminal networks. The theoretical framework integrates classical sovereignty (Bodin), the crime-state symbiosis typology (Lupsha, 1991), structural realism (Waltz, 1979), and organized hypocrisy (Krasner, 1999). The methodological strategy is based on an instrumental single case study of Venezuela, through triangulated documentary analysis of primary sources, judicial indictments and multilateral reports and secondary sources, peer-reviewed academic literature and investigative journalism. It is concluded that Venezuela reconstituted itself as a “toxic asset” whose internal dysfunction is converted into geopolitical bargaining capital, attracting the patronage of revisionist powers and resisting conventional mechanisms of external coercion. This case constitutes an analytical precedent of global scope: Predatory Sovereignty is not the pathology of an isolated state, but the symptom of a systemic transformation underway in international politics, with direct implications for other contexts of state fragility and hemispheric strategic competition.