This week we talk with journalist and author Iain Bruce about the history of the Brazilian Workers Party, their experiments with direct democracy. the political philosophy of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, and the geopolitics of South America. We also discuss the hopes for direct democracy, something I hope to cover further, in future shows.

Iain Bruce is a British journalist and filmmaker. He is the author of ‘The Porto Alegre Alternative: Direct Democracy in Action’, and ‘The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century’, and has made documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC. In the past he has worked as the BBC correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela, as an adviser to Telesur, the Latin American news channel based in Venezuela, and currently finds himself in Qatar plying his trade with Al Jazeera.

You can find him blogging over at: www.venezuelanalysis.com.

And you can buy his books here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Real-Venezuela-Socialism-Century/dp/0745327362/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354139276&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Porto-Alegre-Alternative-International/dp/0745320961/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1354139276&sr=8-10

Enjoy!