Just as he highlighted issues of substance in his analysis of party factionalism in Venezuela, Ellner argued that concrete socio-economic policies, more than Chávez’s style, accounted for the political tensions that led to the coup of April 2002. In the concluding chapter of "Rethinking Venezuelan Politics", Ellner wrote: “The cause-and-effect relationship between popular and nationalist measures of an economic nature, on the one hand, and the… reaction of privileged sectors, on the other hand, was anything but subtle.”