the intersection of policy ambition and partisan-power motivation has profound implications for PIs’ role in interest intermediation. When PIs are created primarily to consolidate governments’ political power, as in the Venezuelan case, they can effectively serve the interests of politicians. Ecuador’s PIs were also adopted for partisan objectives, yet took a very different form: they had negligible policy goals and focused primarily on demobilizing potential opponents, rather than mobilizing supporters. Despite the divergent forms that PIs in the two countries took, in both cases they threatened the autonomy of civil society, and helped these regimes move in an illiberal direction—far from fulfilling the promises of deepening democracy pursued by many advocates of PIs.