Deliberative participation at the local level: paving the way to empowered communities? A case study of two infrastructure projects in Chile

Abstract

Since the ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory and practice in the 1990’s, the idea of bringing ordinary citizens closer to public decisions through reasoned exchanges of arguments has been related to a series of ‘promises’. These expectations have often pointed to a broad revitalisation of the democratic system, and positive outcomes regarding final decisions on public issues, such as consensus and legitimacy. However, the characteristics of the deliberative process may also foster some empowering characteristics for citizens that partake in them and their communities, which have been often overlooked and rarely addressed in an empirical way. This dissertation aims to contribute to the latter avenue, through a case study of two participation processes in Chile, which concerned similar issues, and were developed in comparable normative, administrative, demographic and socioeconomic settings. The difference, however, is that one of them was carried out in an informative-consultative approach, whereas the other incorporated deliberative elements, as public records and interviews show. Through the application of a questionnaire to participants of both processes, it was found that respondents of the deliberative exercise were significantly more positive in their opinion that the participation meetings increased intra-locality and interlocality trust, their perception of individual and communitarian influence in the decisions, and the desire of further involvement in community-benefiting instances. On the other hand, and contrary to expectations, participants of the less-involving process attributed the community a higher degree of responsibility in the maintenance of the works, seemingly due to their poor evaluation of their public counterparts. This case study may help to better understand how deliberative participation can help develop some empowering conditions among citizens and communities at the local level, fulfilling the promise of democratic strengthening. Nevertheless, more investigation in this field is needed to assess the reach of the conclusions of this dissertation.