Democratic Deliberation and Governance in Local Citizen Participation. The Case of the Communal Councils of Civil Society (COSOC), Bíobío, Chile

Abstract

Citizen participation is an open challenge for a large part of the Latin American states. Its optimal functioning would depend on various factors in addition to institutional management. This article seeks to investigate how the Communal Councils of Civil Society Organizations (cosoc) respond to the requirements of democratic governance and deliberation, proposed as fundamental components for the proper exercise of citizen participation articulated with elements of social and cultural capital. To investigate this approach, we took the case of Chile and the local experience of cosoc (Law 20 500), using data from the project 'Installation of Civil Society Councils and Proposal of Construction of two mechanisms of Citizen Participation according to reality territorial', executed in the Biobío Region, Chile, in 2017. The methodology is mixed, predominantly qualitative, based on the analysis of participatory workshops and the support of descriptive data from surveys. The main results point to the operation and effectiveness of the participation and the value that it acquires based on the conditions of the context and social demand. That is to say, issues such as the information available, the level of associativity, civic training, power asymmetries, etc. All of them are variables linked to the structure and conditions of the promoted spaces and the quality of their democratic processes.