Conflicto político y diseños institucionales de participación en el caso chileno

Abstract

There are many reasons that highlight the need to foster “participative dimension of democracy”. Some of them are the lack of enough involvement of citizens, the weakening of the traditional ways of representation, the increasingly technocratic character of the decision making process and the predominance of the elitist and delegative conception of democracy in Latin America (O’Donnell, 1993; Avritzer, 2002; PNUD, 2004). In Chile there has raised an enthusiastic debate but with lack of outcomes, despite the variety of legal initiatives and public policies to deal with this issue. But the democratic governance design that has been hegemonic since late eighties has restricted institutional participation to powerless mechanisms, with a mainly consultative character and not linked to the creation of a deliberative public space. The possibility of broadening of such participation needs to align the different efforts. Until now they have been isolated and lacking of a clear political will, just as of standards that could assure their sustainability and institutionalization.