New Institutions for Citizen Participation in Latin America: Addressing Unanswered Questions

February 21, 2018 12:00PM Millikan Room, E53-482

Research on participatory institutions in Latin America has been mostly grounded in case studies of few local level and small-scale experiments, such as the participatory budgeting. Very little comparative research has been done on other institutions designed to increase citizen participation in the policy process. This limitation of the scholarship leaves several important questions unanswered. What types of institutions for citizen participation exist in Latin America today? Is citizen participation in those new democratic institutions State-led? Are participatory institutions a product of left-leaning political parties? Is institutional innovation aimed at including citizens restricted to the local level? And finally, are participatory innovations bound to be ineffective institutions that interfere with representative democracy? This presentation will address these questions drawing on a new database comprising over 2,400 cases of participatory innovations across 18 countries in Latin America.

Latin American Working Group