Participatory democracy institutional innovations aimed at bringing citizens back into local governance processes are now at the core of the international democratic development agenda. Around the world, and especially in Latin America, many local governments, from left and right, have implemented mechanisms to formally include citizens’ input in decision-making processes at the local level. How is the assumed democratization potential of participatory mechanisms actually realized in practice? Institutionalized participatory mechanisms are not, in fact, a panacea against all of democracy’s ill ... More

Participatory democracy institutional innovations aimed at bringing citizens back into local governance processes are now at the core of the international democratic development agenda. Around the world, and especially in Latin America, many local governments, from left and right, have implemented mechanisms to formally include citizens’ input in decision-making processes at the local level. How is the assumed democratization potential of participatory mechanisms actually realized in practice? Institutionalized participatory mechanisms are not, in fact, a panacea against all of democracy’s ills. They have had mixed results in practice at the municipal level, between countries but also between municipalities within a single country, as is the case for Mexico’s participatory planning mechanisms and for Brazil’s participatory budgeting programs. Under what conditions is such institutional change more likely to succeed? Drawing from a comparative study of five participatory democracy experiences located in two Mexican cities and two Brazilian cities, the book develops a conceptual and comparative framework to better understand democratic success by looking at the variety of state-society relationships observed within these institutions. It offers a set of theoretical tools that grasp the variety of empirical realities observed in practice, and seeks to explain them. The novel comparison undertaken reveals that if institutional design matters, then how these institutional mechanisms are appropriated by political and social actors is even more important as it conditions the potential for an autonomous civil society to emerge and actively engage with the local state.