This paper explores two episodes of contention in the ongoing conflict between the Venezuelan government and the country's autonomous universities. In August 2009, Venezuela's National Assembly approved and implemented the controversial Organic Education Law. Sixteen months later, the Assembly approved the similarly polarizing Law of University Education. Days after this bill was passed by the legislature, however, Hugo Chávez refused to sign it. This paper explains that the government was able to implement the Organic Law but not the University Education Law because of changes in the universities' organizational strength and the wider political opportunity structure. The connections brokered between oppositional groups were diffuse but weak in 2009 but more homogenous and robust in 2010. The stronger opposition, combined with a reduction in the government's political power after 2009, made the higher education law politically unviable and all but forced Chávez to rescind it.