Democratic Action (Venezuela)

Democratic Action (Spanish: Acción Democrática, AD) is a Venezuelansocial democratic and centre-leftpolitical party established in 1941. The party played an important role in the early years of Venezuelan democracy, leading the government during Venezuela's first democratic period (1945–1948). A decade of dictatorship under Marcos Pérez Jiménez followed, which saw AD excluded from power. With the advent of democracy in 1958, four Presidents of Venezuela came from Acción Democrática from the 1950s to the 1990s during the two-party period with COPEI.

Since 2000, the party's general secretary has been Henry Ramos Allup. In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, AD backed the opposition electoral alliance Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), which managed to grasp a supermajority. AD won 26 constituency representatives out of 167 seats in the unicameral National Assembly, making it the second-largest party in opposition to Nicolás Maduro. In July 2018, AD left the Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition.