Alejandro Velasco

If people protest and we feel like we need to resort to repression to quell those protests in order to stay in power, that increases the incentives for me to remain in power, right?

Because the exit costs are really high.

If I am ousted or if I'm removed from the presidency, I might be susceptible to a trial or to ending up in jail, etc., etc., right?

So, of course, at the same time, that increases the incentives of those who say, like, well, the only way that we're going to get rid of this government is to protest or take more radical action.

And so you have this increasing, it's like a ratchet, we're just like constantly ratcheting up the stakes of protest, repression, repression increases exit costs, exit costs increases the amount of determination you have to get that government out of power, which in turn increases repression, which in turn increases exit costs, etc., etc.

You go down this spiral.

of repression, protest, exit costs, repeat.

They had been leaving in different waves in the past.

Anecdotally, and I just want to make sure that I emphasize that it's anecdotal, there's a strong correlation between class, race, and migration waves in Venezuela, such that the earlier waves, going back to even early days of Chavez, is primarily wealthier, professional, cosmopolitan elites.

And then over time, different political events that entrenched Chávez further in power, the elections in 2006, leads to another wave where some people, again, sort of going down the class ladder, make the calculation, well, there's really nothing left for me here, so I'm going to leave.

Then in 2012, another wave of migrants.

Then in 2014, after these repressive protests, another wave of migration, right?

But each one of these waves is going a little bit lower in the class hierarchy, such that by the time you get into the deepest fray of economic crisis, which really begins in earnest around 2016 and then kicks into overdrive in 2017 with the U.S.,

sectoral sanctions against the oil industry, which had long been seen by Venezuelan observers and Venezuelans themselves as the kind of the red line that we didn't know the U.S.

dared cross.

The sectoral sanctions as the tool to try to just bring the economy to its knees and therefore affect regime change.

These prohibitions extend to transactions or activities... There's a vast literature on whether or not sanctions are effective to lead to political change and vast consensus in the literature, not unanimity consensus, is that they don't.

The logic behind this kind of sanctions are meant to induce collective changes.

The greater the pain that is felt collectively, the logic goes, people will blame not the sanctions, but the people who are preventing the political change that are making the sanctions possible.

In this case, the leadership of the country.