Democracy From Above? by McNulty Stephanie L.;

Author:McNulty, Stephanie L.; [McNulty, Stephanie L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.1. ​V-Dem’s Civil Society Participation Index, Peru.

SOURCE: Coppedge et al. 2018; https://www.v-dem.net/en/data/data-version-8/.

Expanded Participation in the Public Sphere?

Have civil society organizations become more active in the subnational policymaking process? The short answer is yes. V-Dem reports that civil society’s participation has increased nationally since 2000, from 0.6 to 0.78, a 30 percent increase (see figure 6.1). This confirms that civil society does seem to be taking advantage of the new forms of participation that have emerged since the reform. However, this national-level indicator masks variation between the different participatory institutions. Therefore, it is also useful to explore the regional and local coordination councils and the participatory budget process separately.

Regional and Local Coordination Councils National officials designed the CCRs and CCLs to create a political space for civil society organizations to become more involved in regional and local policymaking on a regular basis. When Congress debated the idea in 2001, several proposals for citizen councils had been discussed, one of which was modeled after the oversight committees in Bolivia. In the end, the idea of citizen (or civil society) councils was diluted in Congress by several politicians and political parties that feared giving civil society representatives, who are not elected by the general population, too much power (McNulty 2011; Remy 2011). As a result the final design of the CCRs and CCLs included mayors and civil society organizations and did not give these councils binding decision-making power in the local and regional governments; thus, this design ensured that civil society members made up a minority (40 percent) of the governing bodies.

Since then, the implementation of the CCRs and CCLs has been uneven around the country, with some working better than others.24 In very general terms, most analysts and observers agree that the CCRs and CCLs have failed to effectively channel civil society’s participation in subnational governmental planning processes because of their nonbinding and hybrid (that is, a mix of participatory and representative) character (Calderón and Barea Castro n.d.; Defensoría del Pueblo 2006; López Ricci 2014; McNulty 2011, 2013; ProDescentralización 2010c, 2016; Remy 2005, 2011, 2016). For many years, some municipalities did not even set up CCLs. For example, in 2007 CCLs existed in only 78 percent of local governments (ProDescentralización 2010c). Although CCRs do exist in many regions, they are usually very weak. A report on several regions in the Amazonian region finds that in some areas they do not meet, and when they do, they rarely deliberate about substantive issues (ProDescentralización 2016).

One indicator of their weakness is that when CCRs and CCLs do exist and meet, mayors and civil society representatives do not always attend. Interviewees often mentioned to me that mayors do not feel it is an important use of their time. Another problem is that many people, both public officials and CSO representatives, understand neither the role nor the function of this particular institution (ProDescentralización 2010c). These problems have led the watchdog organization ProDescentralización (2011, 148) to write that “in general, the legal deficits, the absence of incentives

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.