In the early 2000s, the governments of Bolivia and Venezuela sought to reconstitute their states and increase their role in the economy as a way to achieve economic and political inclusion. To accomplish this goal, the initial political projects of both Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez required a fundamental shift in the governance of the petroleum sector, as the economy of both countries heavily relies on oil and gas revenues. Therefore, a central component of their agenda included seizing control of oil and gas production and maximizing appropriation of its rents. Despite these similarities and while enjoying a commodity price boom, the hydrocarbon sector performance shows considerable variation in each country. While Bolivia’s gas production increased over 114% between 2004 and 2014, Venezuela’s oil production declined 19% in the same period, with a marked downward trend starting in 2008. Why did the hydrocarbon sector have such different performances in these two, otherwise similar, left-wing governments? I argue that variations in the hydrocarbon sector performance can be explained by the different constraints imposed on the government by partisan and path-dependent variables stemming from each country development model. In Bolivia, policymaking involved a complex interaction between organized social interests and the MAS ruling party as well as salient trade offs given socio-structural constraints imposed by its natural resource-led development model and the lack of operational and financial capacity of the natural gas industry. By contrast, policymaking in Venezuela became a top-down process due to comparatively weaker ties between the government and its social base, giving the president a higher degree of autonomy in deciding energy policy