BOGOTÁ, Colombia  With their condemnation on Sunday of the coup ousting President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, governments in the Western Hemisphere from across the ideological spectrum found a rare issue around which they could swiftly arrive at unity.

At the same time, from the Obama administration’s measured response to the reaction of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who put his military on alert over an apparent affront to the Venezuelan ambassador in Honduras, the responses both revealed and disguised fissures over different forms of democratic government that are taking root in the region.

On the one side are countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where voters have given much greater power to their populist presidents, partly by allowing them to extend their time in office and sometimes eroding the function of Congress and the Supreme Court, institutions portrayed as allies of the old oligarchy. On the other side are nations of varying ideological hues, including Brazil, Latin America’s rising power, where resilient institutions have allowed for more diversity of participants in politics, ruling out the so-called participatory democracy that Mr. Chávez, the Venezuelan president, has been eager to promote in the region.

Mr. Zelaya himself pushed this tension with institutions to its limits in his clash with Honduras’s judiciary last week over his call for a referendum intended to clear the way for term limits to be eased. On Sunday, the Supreme Court of Honduras said that the military had acted in accordance with the Constitution to remove Mr. Zelaya.