Artículo de revista
Citizens at the forefront of the constitutional debate: Voluntary citizen participation determinants and emergent content in Chile
Fecha
2022Registro en:
PLoS ONE 17 (6): e0267443
10.1371/journal.pone.0267443
Autor
Raveau Morales, María Paz
Couyoumdjian, Juan Pablo
Fuentes Bravo, Claudio Eugenio
Rodríguez Sickert, Carlos Andrés
Candia, Cristian
Institución
Resumen
In the past few decades, constitution-making processes have shifted from being undertakings
performed by elites and closed off from the public to ones incorporating democratic
mechanisms. Little is known, however, about the determinants of voluntary public participation
and how they affect the outcomes of the deliberative process in terms of content and
quality. Here, we study the process of constituent involvement in the rewriting of Chile’s constitution
in 2016. A total of 106, 412 citizens in 8, 113 different local encounters voluntarily
congregated in groups of ten or more to collectively determine what social rights should be
considered for inclusion in the new constitution, deliberating and then articulating in the written
word why should be included. We brought our data to statistical regression models at
the municipality level, the results show that the main determinants associated with increasing
citizen participation are educational level, engagement in politics, support for the government,
and Internet access. In contrast, population density and the share of Evangelical
Christians in the general population decrease citizen participation. Then, we further analyze
the written arguments for each collectively-selected constitutional rights. The findings suggest
that groups from socioeconomically developed municipalities (with higher educational
levels and where the main economic activities are more distant from natural resources), on
average, deliberate consistently more about themes, concepts, and ideas compared to
groups from less developed municipalities. These results provide an empirical ground on
the driver factors of voluntary citizen participation and on the benefits and disadvantages of
deliberative democracy. Hence, results can inform the organization of new deliberative
processes.