VARIETIES OF PARTICIPATORY INSTITUTIONS AND INTEREST INTERMEDIATION IN LATIN AMERICA
Lindsay Mayka Jared Abbott Associate Professor of Government Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Colby College Center for Inter-American Policy and Research [email protected] Tulane University [email protected]
Abstract: Most scholars assume that the objective of participatory institutions is to deepen democracy, improve the quality of governance, and enhance social inclusion, and existing studies highlight the litany of reasons why participatory institutions fail to meet this high bar for success. We diverge from this literature in questioning whether “success” for all participatory institutions means mobilizing the autonomous participation of marginalized groups to change policy outcomes in favor of the poor. Instead, we consider participatory institutions successful when they meet the political objectives they were created to advance. We develop a typology of four varieties of participatory institutions, which differ based on their foundational logics of interest intermediation and incorporation. Through case studies of participatory institutions in Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador, we show that participatory institutions can successfully restructure state-society relations in a range of ways, including increasing civil society influence over policymaking and government oversight, incorporating new voting blocs into parties’ electoral coalitions, and constraining the influence of disruptive social movements.
Keywords: participatory institutions, good governance, participatory democracy, interest representation, civil society, citizen participation, party-voter linkages, policy change, Latin America
Word count: 11,999 words
Acknowledgements: We are grateful for feedback provided by Ruth Berins Collier, Kent Eaton, Tulia Falleti, Alisha Holland, Ben Goldfrank, Brian Palmer-Rubin, Jessica Rich, Ken Roberts, Rachel Schwartz, Heather Sullivan, Guillermo Toral, and participants in our 2021 REPAL panel. Research for this project was made possible through the financial support of the Fulbright Commission, the Social Science Research Council, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Since the historic wave of democratization during the 1980s and 1990s, inequality, social exclusion, and corruption continue to plague democracies across the globe. The persistence, and often intensification, of these problems has eroded support for representative democracy, cultivating fertile soil for illiberal populist movements from the Americas to Asia. Participatory institutions (PIs) have experienced a meteoric rise over the past three decades as a potential corrective to these trends. PIs are formal bodies that engage individual citizens and civil society actors directly in policy debates and decision-making processes. Building on pioneering experiences in Brazil during the early 1990s, a range of PIs sprang up across every country in
Latin America, eventually spreading to Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America.
Most scholars assume that the objective of PIs is to deepen democracy, improve the quality of governance, and enhance social inclusion. Existing studies highlight the litany of reasons why PIs on the ground fail to meet this high bar for success.1 Yet most PIs are not created with the primary goal of deepening democracy or improving governance, meaning that the failure of many participatory institutions to live up to these expectations should not be surprising. By contrast, we analyze PIs through the lens of interest intermediation, seeing them as vehicles for reshaping state-society relations for a range of political purposes. We take our inspiration from the classic literature on labor corporatism, which highlighted how different corporatist arrangements reflected diverging models of political incorporation seeking to either amplify or constrain the voice of societal interests (Schmitter 1974; R.B. Collier and Collier
1977). Likewise, we argue that PIs can advance diverse political projects, which yield distinct expectations for the form that participation will take and the anticipated effects of PIs on
1 Among many others, see: (Baiocchi, Heller, and Silva 2011; Falleti and Riofrancos 2018; McNulty 2019; Montambeault 2015; Wampler 2007).
1 democratic governance. Depending on the political project behind PIs’ adoption, the meaning of
“success” can veer sharply away from the standards of participatory democracy and good governance. From this perspective, many PIs normally considered failures emerge as instances of success, since they effectively carry out the objectives for which they were adopted.
The goal of this article is to develop a typology of four varieties of PIs, distinguished based on their foundational logics of interest intermediation. We show that two types of PIs are indeed adopted to advance aims consistent with participatory democracy and good governance.
The first type, policy-reforming participatory institutions, are championed by civil society actors who seek to advance their policy-reform agenda from inside the state. The second type, good- governance participatory institutions, emerge from technocratic actors within the state (or donors) seeking to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of public programs by leveraging citizen input and oversight over service delivery. Yet in other cases, PIs are adopted by politicians to advance explicitly partisan agendas. The third type of PIs, party-building participatory institutions, are established by parties as a tool to build stronger linkages to voters and expand their electoral coalitions. Finally, legitimating participatory institutions are adopted by politicians who hope to mollify citizen demands or donor mandates for increased accountability and responsiveness by creating a toothless space for participation, disconnected from real decisionmaking. Like all institutions, PIs evolve over time, and the objectives of their creators often bear little resemblance to the functions they serve after adoption (Peck and
Theodore 2015, xx). Moreover, there is always substantial variation in the subnational implementation of PIs. Nevertheless, we argue that the strategic motivations of those responsible for creating PIs go a long way in explaining PIs’ role in mediating state-society relations. Hence,
2 we focus on the founding logic of PIs, and bracket questions of institutional change, implementation, and unintended consequences for future research.
Our study makes two important contributions to the literatures on participatory institutions and interest representation. First, we challenge the conventional wisdom that defines
PI success according to the standards of participatory democracy or good governance. Instead, we redefine success and failure by emphasizing a PI’s effectiveness in achieving the political objectives behind its creation. We highlight how the political projects at the origin of a PI can shape its potential to achieve the goals of deepening democracy and improving governance, and set a research agenda about the causes and consequences of these four different types of PIs.
Second, we contribute to the growing literature on how citizens and civil society groups advance their interests in contemporary Latin America. Recently, scholars have explored the structures of interest representation by examining transformations in the linkages between civil society groups and political parties (Rossi 2017; Rossi and Silva 2018; Palmer-Rubin 2019; Anria 2018) and ways that state institutions mobilize or demobilize interests in society (Rich 2019b; Mayka and
Rich 2021; R.B. Collier and Handlin 2009). We highlight the importance of PIs as sites for interest representation that either mobilize or constrain organized interests, revealing the ways that PIs can sometimes weaken, rather than deepen, democracy.2
The paper begins by providing an overview of PIs in Latin America. Next, we review the extant literature on PIs to highlight the narrow definition of success used by most studies. We then develop a typology of four types of PIs identified above, which we illustrate with cases from Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, and Ecuador—all cases where PIs have “succeeded”, according to
2 On the role of participatory institutions in interest intermediation, see also Zaremberg, Guarneros-Meza, and Gurza Lavalle (2017).
3 their motivating logic. We conclude by discussing the implications of this typology for future research on PIs and interest intermediation.
THE GLOBAL SCOPE OF PARTICIPATORY INSTITUTIONS
PIs are formal institutions that include citizens and/or civil society actors directly in government decision-making, either in an advisory, oversight, or decision-making capacity. PIs come in many different forms, including participatory budgeting, in which citizens and civil society actors help determine how to spend state resources; public policy councils, in which representatives of civil society and the state deliberate over and approve budgets and policy proposals in health, education, and other areas; and prior consultation, a process that offers communities a chance to voice their concerns about proposed infrastructure or extractive projects—to name but a few.
While no global census of PIs exists, there is little doubt that their scope is vast. All Latin
American countries, as well as South Korea, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Africa
(among others), established national frameworks supporting participatory policymaking.
Worldwide, PIs of various kinds have proliferated at the subnational level. For instance, one recent estimate tallied 11,825 municipalities or regions across 71 countries that have adopted participatory budgeting (Dias 2018, 9). International development agencies spend billions promoting PIs. The World Bank invested $85 billion in local participatory development in the first decade of the 21st century alone. In Latin America, which pioneered new democratic innovations during the 1990s, governments created over 2,400 PIs. 3 Abbott (2020, 3) estimates that around 4% of the total adult population of Latin America participated in a PI each year
3 Authors’ calculation, data from Latinno.net.
4 between 2000 and 2016—a figure only slightly lower than the 6% of adults in the region who reported participating in a protest or attending meetings of a political party.4 PIs are an established component of citizen participation and governance in Latin America, making the region a particularly fruitful site to explore the different varieties of PIs.
DEFINITIONS OF “SUCCESS” IN SCHOLARSHIP ON PARTICIPATORY INSTITUTIONS
The now-famous experience of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil during the 1990s launched a large body of literature assessing PIs’ potential to address endemic deficits in representative democracy and effective governance. In considering the degree to which PIs succeed or fail, scholars focus on PIs’ capacity to deepen democracy by engaging the autonomous participation of marginalized groups, and their record in translating this participation into increased accountability and more egalitarian policy outcomes.
Democratic theory has long discussed the limitations of representative democracy. First, representative institutions disproportionately reflect the voices of the wealthy and powerful
(Schattschneider 1960). Underrepresentation of the poor is particularly stark in Latin America, given its high levels of social and economic inequality (Roberts 1998). Second, representative democracy allows citizens infrequent opportunities to intervene directly in politics, which impedes the public’s capacity to hold government officials accountable—let alone proactively influence government decision-making (Altman 2011, 4; Przeworski, Stokes, and Manin 1999,
35-39; Rousseau 2018, 140-143). In turn, some democratic theorists argue that representative democracy inherently constrains citizenship by restricting citizen participation. They argue that participation enables individuals to become more responsible citizens with a stronger grasp of
4 Authors’ calculation, data the Latin America Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) Americas Barometer for 2014.
5 the common good (Pateman 1970, 25; Mill 1946, 149-151), and develop the political skills needed to effectively advocate for their interests (Pateman 1970, Chapter 3; 2012; Macpherson
1977, 103-104).
Scholars have advocated participatory policymaking as a corrective in areas where representative democracy underperforms. Some argue that PIs can improve government accountability and responsiveness by bringing government and citizens into closer communication, thereby reducing information asymmetries between the two (Touchton,
Sugiyama, and Wampler 2017, 69). Others emphasize PIs’ purported capacity to increase transparency and citizen oversight, which discourages corruption and creates opportunities to demand accountability (Wampler 2004; Fung and Wright 2003; World Bank 1992).
Through increased responsiveness and accountability, PIs can enhance service delivery and combat long-standing inequalities, as seen in studies demonstrating the impact of PIs on spending on low-income housing (Donaghy 2011) health and primary education programs that serve the poor (Boulding and Wampler 2010), expanding the poor’s access to public goods and social services (Besley, Pande, and Rao 2005), and reducing rates of infant mortality (Touchton and Wampler 2013; Touchton, Sugiyama, and Wampler 2017; Gonçalves 2014).
Scholars of participatory institutions generally share a common starting point: successful
PIs are those that deepen democracy by increasing government responsiveness to the demands of the poor and other marginalized groups (Dagnino, Olvera, and Panfichi 2006; Baiocchi and
Ganuza 2017). Fung and Wright (2003, 5) write that PIs “aspire to deepen the ways in which ordinary people can effectively participate in and influence policies which directly affect their lives.” Likewise, in their exhaustive overview of participatory initiatives from around the globe,
Mansuri and Rao assert as a given that “The purpose of participatory programs is to enhance the
6 involvement of the poor and the marginalized in community-level decision-making bodies in order to give citizens greater say over decisions that affect their lives” (Mansuri and Rao 2013,
5). Thus, “successful” PIs must amplify the autonomous voice of marginalized groups. By contrast, PIs whose participants are disproportionately male, wealthy, or middle-class fail by neglecting to engage the “right” people (Altschuler and Corrales 2012; McNulty 2013; Coelho
2006).
Most scholars also assume that PIs’ objective is to improve service provision and enhance citizen well-being. Wampler et al., for example, argue that “participatory institutions promote citizen participation, which then improves accountability, public goods provision, and citizens’ outcomes” (Wampler, Borges Sugiyama, and Touchton 2020, 35). Failure emerges when PIs lack sufficient authority to translate citizen participation into policy outputs (Gurza
Lavalle, Voigt, and Serafim 2016, 614; Falleti and Riofrancos 2018, 91). A PI that politicians use to distribute patronage is also a failure because it has been “captured” and thus cannot serve as an effective tool for improving service provision for the public (Herrera 2017, 480;
Montambeault 2011, 108; Mansuri and Rao 2013, 5). Successful PIs, in turn, are those that yield more effective and egalitarian policy outcomes.
We build on the insights from a growing body of that literature examines PIs based on the strategic incentives of their creators (Handlin 2016; Abers 2000; Wampler 2007; McNulty 2019;
Montambeault 2015; Goldfrank 2011; Abbott 2021; Rhodes-Purdy 2017; Andersson and van
Laerhoven 2007; Chapman 2021; Goldfrank and Schneider 2006; Lee and McQuarrie 2015).
While these studies consider the potential for partisan logics or civil society advocacy in establishing participatory institutions, most motivate their work by highlighting the potential of
PIs to mobilize the autonomous participation of marginalized groups to change policy outcomes
7 in a more egalitarian manner. We go beyond this existing literature to argue that PIs’ “success” should be evaluated based on the institutions’ records in advancing the political projects behind their adoption. Following this logic, PI success in some cases might mean engaging civil society in developing policy and pursuing accountability—but in others it will involve coopting civil society for electoral purposes, demobilizing citizens, or legitimating poor governance.
HOW PARTICIPATORY INSTITUTIONS VARY
This paper develops a typology to explain the different models of participatory institutions, distinguished by their originating political projects and logics of interest intermediation. Our typology focuses on the origins of PIs, rather than their implementation and evolution later on.
Of course, parchment rules do not necessarily determine the actual operation of an institution
(Levitsky and Murillo 2009, 116), and institutions change over time in their form and function
(Mahoney and Thelen 2010). However, understanding the originating logic of a PI is an essential initial step for scholars who seek to explain its trajectory; any analysis of implementation must first identify the contours of the institution to be implemented. Second, understanding the origins of PIs can provide considerable information to account for variation in their operation and impacts. The originating type may determine the political struggles around contesting the implementation of a PI, perhaps giving rise to path dependencies of increasing returns as a PI becomes institutionalized, or reactive sequences as different actors reject the form and function of the PI. We bracket the questions of how PIs are implemented and why they shift from one model to another for future research; our concluding section returns to these questions as we lay out a future research agenda stemming from this study.
Given our concern with the role of participatory institutions in structuring interest intermediation, we draw inspiration from the classic literature on labor corporatism (R.B. Collier
8 and Collier 1977, 1979; Schmitter 1974). To identify different ideal types of participatory institutions, we adapt Collier and Collier’s (1977) conceptualization of varieties of corporatism, asking “who does what, to whom, and how?”
In terms of “who,” we examine which groups are behind the creation of PIs, and who stands to gain the most power through them. In studies of labor corporatism, “who” referred to whether the creation of corporatist institutions was driven more by state interests or labor interests. For participatory institutions, the question is whether state or civil society actors are the main instigators behind PI creation, and who benefits most from their operation. Are PIs created primarily to enhance civil society voice and access in policy processes? Or, do PIs advance the interests of those in positions of power, including political parties, bureaucrats, or donors?
In terms of “what, and to whom,” we explore which political projects are advanced via
PIs, and who the targets of these institutions are. Under labor corporatism, corporatist institutions sought to advance the ISI economic project, and targeted labor unions—seeking to either mobilize unions’ support behind ISI, or to control their potential opposition to it. By contrast, contemporary PIs are not linked to one particular economic model, meaning that their sponsors may deploy PIs for a range of political projects. These projects may include advancing a policy reform agenda, improving efficiency in service delivery, building linkages with voters to mobilize electoral support, or defusing demands by either donors or civil society groups for greater citizen participation in decisionmaking.
In this context, “to whom” reflects the target group that opposes the overarching political project at the root of the PI, and whose power the PI seeks to diminish. In labor corporatism, the target was sometimes labor itself, as the state sought to prevent the mobilization of overly assertive unions that threatened ISI implementation; in other cases, the target was management,
9 as the state strengthened the mobilizational power of unions to counterbalance management’s resistance to ISI. For PIs, the target may be actors within the state that stand to resist the development and/or implementation of public policy, rival political parties that the ruling party seeks to defeat, or civil society groups that pose a threat by demanding greater inclusion.
Finally, in terms of “how,” we examine how PIs incorporate their participants into the policymaking process to advance their political projects. With labor corporatism, the question was how different combinations of structuring, subsidy, and control of labor unions to either limit or expand union access to economic and social policymaking. For participatory institutions, we examine the authority conferred to the PI and the intended autonomy of its participants. For authority, we analyze whether decisions made within PIs matter for the allocation of state resources and/or design of public policy. Some PIs are created with the aim of exercising authority, while others were never intended to have real influence. For autonomy, we consider participants’ capacity to use the PI to advance political demands that diverge from the government’s objectives. Some PIs are intended to coopt participants into the government’s political project, while others require autonomous participants to meet the PI’s objectives.
These dimensions combine to form four varieties of PIs, summarized in Figure 1.
10 Table 1: Four Varieties of Participatory Institutions
Policy-Reforming Good-Governance Party-Building Legitimating Participatory Participatory Participatory Participatory Institutions Institutions Institutions Institutions Brazil’s Health Councils Peru’s Participatory Venezuela’s Communal Ecuador’s Participatory Budgeting Councils Institutions Who: Civil society: reform State/donors: technocrats State: political parties State: political parties Proponent of PI coalition Creation
What: Advance policy reform: Improve service delivery: Strengthen electoral Increase legitimacy: Political Project develop policy proposals, provide information about coalition: build linkages reduce civil society Advanced pressure for user experience, monitor with voters pressure without through PI implementation service delivery conferring access
To Whom: Recalcitrant politicians, Service providers who Opposing parties Civil society groups Targets of PI bureaucrats who resist perform poorly who demand inclusion reform agenda
How: High authority, high Medium authority, High authority, low Low authority, low Institutional autonomy medium autonomy autonomy autonomy Design of PI
11 Some PIs are established based on objectives compatible with the visions of participatory democracy and good governance. The first type, policy-reforming participatory institutions, are illustrated through the case of the Brazilian health councils. Civil society groups instigate policy- reforming PIs with the aim of advancing a policy reform agenda by giving members of policy reform coalitions a seat at the table in designing policies and programs. The second type, good- governance participatory institutions, are represented by participatory budgeting in Peru. Good- governance PIs are advocated by technocratic actors within the state (or donors) to oversee the implementation of public policy, with the aim of increasing transparency and improving accountability. In other cases, however, PIs are created not to advance normative goals but rather to consolidate political power. The third type, party-building participatory institutions— demonstrated through Venezuela’s communal councils—are created by incumbent parties to build or deepen linkages between a political party and voters that participate in PIs. Finally, legitimating participatory institutions, as embodied by the PIs created in Ecuador under the government of Rafael Correa, are created by a government as a merely symbolic display to demonstrate its commitment to “good governance” and willingness to engage civil society actors in policymaking, without actually including these participants in decision-making. “Success” for each type of PIs takes a different form, given the distinct and even contradictory political projects and goals of the four models.
Below, we elaborate these four types of PIs, which we illustrate using four Latin
American cases that serve as a “success” following the logic of each model: Brazil’s health councils, Peru’s participatory budgeting process, Venezuela’s Communal Councils, and the range of participatory institutions established in Ecuador in recent years. These four cases exemplify the underlying logics behind each model, and underscore that “success” takes a
12 different form for reach type, given their distinct and even contradictory political objectives. Our conceptualization is based on our assessment of secondary literature as well as our expertise on these cases developed through extensive field research over the years in Brazil (2007-09), Peru
(2017), Venezuela (2015-2018), and Ecuador (2016).
Finally, it is important to note that the typology we offer is a descriptive typology that seeks to describe the range of PIs across the four rows in Table 1 (D. Collier, LaPorte, and
Seawright 2012, 218). The four ideal types were derived inductively, though based on an exhaustive review of published case studies and databases of PIs across Latin America.
Accordingly, we believe these four cases exhaust the range of common motivations underlying
PI adoption, though hybrid cases may exist. In turn, given that the primary goal of our case studies is descriptive, we do not need to choose cases that vary in independent, dependent, or background variables (i.e. extreme cases, deviant cases, diverse cases, etc.) (Gerring 2017, 23).
Rather, we choose illustrative cases of the four types of participatory institutions in our conceptualization.
Policy-Reforming Participatory Institutions
Policy-reforming PIs emerge as part of broader struggles over policy reform. Passing legislation is just the first step in advancing policy reform, and ongoing mobilization is vital to sustain reform. Reform opponents within the legislature, bureaucracy, or among vested interests in society, are often in a position to dismantle or undermine the reform during implementation
(Mayka 2019a, 55-56). Reform advocates within civil society may embrace PIs as a tool to respond to any emerging attacks and to safeguard the reform’s implementation (Mayka 2019b;
Rich 2019a, 46; Abers and Keck 2013, 111-112). For instance, Brazil established a series of participatory councils and commissions to channel the expertise of the HIV/AIDS movement in
13 designing AIDS policy, and to ensure that recalcitrant subnational politicians fulfilled their obligations (Rich 2019b, 100-102). In Colombia, a landmark 1993 law guaranteed Afro-
Colombians a series of new rights and established “a plethora of institutions designed to ensure that the state could move beyond symbolic recognition and toward the design, coordination, and implementation of these policies” (Paschel 2016, 154). In Argentina, civil society mobilization resulted in a new workfare program, the Unemployed Head-of-Households Program (Programa
Jefas y Jefes de Hogar Desocupados), which included a national advisory council and local councils to oversee operations and secure effective implementation (Garay 2016, 184-185).
While politicians may create policy-reforming PIs in response to pressure from allied movements in their coalition, policy-reforming PIs do not pursue linkages between participants and parties as their primary aim. In Brazil, social-policy reform and combatting corruption were key goals of both the centrist PSDB and leftist PT governments of the 1990s and 2000s (Garay
2016, 124)—yet proponents of reform within civil society and their allies in the bureaucracy, rather than partisan actors, took the lead in championing new PIs across dozens of policy areas
(Rich 2019b, 12-13; Mayka 2019a, 70; Mayka and Rich 2021). In Argentina, civil society activists took the lead in demanding new PIs in health, pensions, and social assistance (Garay
2016, 165-168), with politicians taking a reactive role.
For policy-reforming PIs, “success” looks like a PI that plays an important role in advancing the reform agenda. Developing this policymaking role requires high authority for the
PI, which may include formal budgetary powers or rule-making authority (Mayka 2019b, 277-
278) or strong informal norms of concertation between bureaucrats and PI participants (Rich
2019a, 52). This policymaking role also requires high autonomy for PI participants so they use their insider position to advance the reform agenda, rather than being coopted into pursuing
14 partisan interests. Contrasting with the standards of the traditional PI literature, participants of successful policy-reforming PIs need not be members of marginalized groups, as long as they support the goals of policy reform. Moreover, the policy reform project may or may not be one centrally concerned with enhancing equity. Failure, in turn, happens if PIs lose their ability to advance policy reform from within the state, either because they are sidelined from decision making, or if coopted participants use their positions to pursue objectives contrary to the reform goals.
Brazil’s Health Councils: A Policy-Reforming Participatory Institution
Brazil’s health councils exemplify the policy-reforming PI model. Established in 1990 as part of a sweeping reform of the health sector, the councils operate at all levels of government as a space for civil society representatives to collaborate with bureaucrats in designing policies and programs and overseeing the implementation of these initiatives.
The proposal for the health councils originated as a strategy to advance health reform.
Throughout much of the 20th Century, Brazil’s health system was regressive, centralized, and neglected primary care. Starting in the 1980s, a group of progressive public health experts known as sanitaristas led a reform coalition, composed of popular-sector health movements, unions, healthcare professionals, and the Catholic Church, in favor of a universal, decentralized, and rights-based health reform (Mayka 2019a, 110-111; Escorel 1999). The reform coalition successfully secured the passage of sweeping health legislation in 1990. However, the new health system remained fragile: the next decade would require additional regulations to determine how to implement decentralization, reach universal coverage, and reorient programming to primary care (Arretche 2005, 295-303). Health reformers faced threats from private sector providers that benefited from the old system (Weyland 1996, 159-162), as well as
15 recalcitrant politicians and bureaucrats who sought to imperil the health reform by dragging their feet, misallocating health resources for private gain, or repurposing rights-based health programs as patronage (Weyland 1996, 165-166). Reformers established the new system of health councils to give civil society an insider role in combatting these challenges.
Given their goal of advancing policy reform, Brazil’s health councils were granted considerable policymaking authority. Responsibilities include setting priorities in the sector, designing policies and programs to address these priorities, deciding how to allocate funds, and overseeing implementation. To execute these responsibilities, health councils have formal policymaking and budgetary authority giving their decisions legal weight. Enforcement mechanisms back up these prerogatives: most notably, subnational health councils must approve the budget to receive federal transfers, giving them veto power over the health budget (Mayka
2019a, 101).
Originating in struggles over health reform, Brazil’s health councils were designed to protect the autonomy of civil society participants. Civil society confederations—not the government—select councilors, and elected officials lack authority to dismiss or replace councilors they disfavor (Mayka 2019a, 101).5 Advocates of the health councils repeatedly emphasize their “suprapartisan” nature, claiming that support for health reform transcends partisan loyalties (Mayka 2019a, 138). It is important that health councilors maintain autonomy and loyalty to the goals of the health reform, rather than to any politician or party.
Brazil’s health councils have had a number of successes, as defined for a policy- reforming PI. In the 1990s, the National Health Council played a vital role in a range of pressing policy issues, most notably in designing the structure of fiscal and administrative
5 25% of council seats are reserved for representatives of various state agencies. The government is able to select and dismiss councilors representing the state, but not civil society councilors.
16 decentralization (Mayka 2019a, 129-130; Arretche 2005, 297, 300). National health councilors backed the goals of the reform coalition and maintained a high level of autonomy, which enabled them to push the governments of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990-1992), Itamar Franco (1992-
1994), and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-2002) to follow through with their legal mandates to carry out health reform. In several states and major cities, health councils helped design new programs and provided a check against politicians who sought to use health resources for other purposes or attempted to block the expansion of healthcare access. For instance, in the 1990s,
São Paulo’s municipal health council exercised its authority to block federal health transfers because then-mayor Paulo Maluf attempted to use public healthcare funds for private contracts in ways that violated the law (Mayka 2019a, 129-130). Nevertheless, their record varies considerably throughout the country: most health councils have a minimal policymaking role, and autonomy is highly variable (Cunha 2007; Gerschman 2004; Labra 2005). Despite these caveats, Brazil’s health councils have had a number of successes in advancing health reform.
Good-Governance Participatory Institutions
Good-governance PIs are established by technocrats to advance transparency, responsiveness, and accountability as part of the good-governance toolkit. Since the early 2000s, donors such as the World Bank and UN Habitat, and NGOs such as Transparency International, embraced participatory policymaking as a means to improve the quality of public administration and combat corruption (Goldfrank 2012; Wampler 2009; Mansuri and Rao 2013). In this model, civil society groups or community members provide input based on their experience as service users better match public investments to community needs and to ensure public funds are spent efficiently and are targeted to the neediest. This model reflects a fairly apolitical view of public administration that emphasizes the power of information to correct inefficiencies, rather than
17 approaching PIs as inherently political venues that mobilize contestation to challenge existing power structures (Joshi and Houtzager 2012).
Good-governance PIs take a range of forms. Citizen-oversight boards keep the public informed about the status of road construction projects in Indonesia (Olken 2007) and to monitor healthcare delivery in Uganda (Björkman and Svensson 2009), seeking to enhance accountability of service providers to the community. Citizen report cards enable program beneficiaries to share information about their experiences and needs, which service providers use to better tailor programs (Paul 2006). Many participatory budgeting initiatives, including those in El Salvador,
Peru, and the Dominican Republic have a technocratic focus and seek to link citizens’ on-the- ground information with budgeting decisions and oversight of expenditures (Bland 2011). In other cases, citizens are brought into oversight and accountability roles through online forms of participation, such as Argentina’s “DemocracyOS” platform that allows citizens to engage in virtual deliberation on public policy, and Uruguay’s “Por Mi Barrio” app that allows citizens to build online databases to channel their needs to the local government (Pogrebinschi and Ross
2019) (Pogrebinschi and Ross 2018).
For good-governance PIs, success means greater efficiency and efficacy in administering public expenditures, including better targeting, increased responsiveness, and reduced corruption. To attain this goal, a PI should have sufficient authority to channel citizen information and oversight into changes in programming. Sufficient authority might entail mandating that government officials must implement PIs, guaranteeing that PIs have access to information on public expenditures and state performance, providing PIs sufficient resources to carry out their work, or imposing rules that ensure PI recommendations are considered by state officials. In contrast to policy-reforming PIs, however, this authority is restricted to providing
18 line-item input on subnational budgetary allocations, or monitoring existing funds or programs, and does not extend to struggles over overarching priorities and the design of public policy.
Participants also should have significant autonomy to ensure that the PI reflects authentic community needs and can push for accountability of public officials. Good-governance PIs fail when they lack access to information, authority to sanction, resources and independence to perform their oversight function, or are ignored systematically by government officials. Failure might also take the form of a PI that operates just as a rubber stamp to legitimate policies from corrupt public officials.
Participatory Budgeting in Peru: A Good-Governance Participation Institution
Participatory budgeting (PB) was mandated for all Peruvian subnational governments in
2003 (Framework Law 28056) as part of a broader decentralization initiative. PB in Peru consists of civil society representatives (individual citizens generally do not participate) meeting in assemblies with government officials to propose projects for the following year’s municipal investment spending. Government bureaucrats hoping to improve the quality of governance in
Peru, and to a lesser extent civil society activists and pro-participation members of Congress, were the primary drivers behind Peru’s 2003 national PB law (McNulty 2011, 42). Within a few years of its adoption, a vast majority of Peruvian subnational governments carried out PB.6
After the fall of President Alberto Fujimori in 2000, Peruvian politicians faced widespread pressure to confront the rampant corruption and poor accountability that characterized Fujimori’s tenure. In response, the government of Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) offered a raft of decentralization measures, including the 2003 PB law. That said, the primary
6 Author’s calculation, based on data obtained from the Ministry of Economics (MEF) and Finance and the National Registry of Municipalities (RENAMU).
19 driver of PB was not politicians feeling pressure to acknowledge popular demands for democratic deepening, but rather good-governance oriented technocrats in the powerful Ministry of Economics and Finance (MEF). In an interview, the MEF’s primary PB champion explained that the agency was motivated by a desire to increase government efficiency and responsiveness:
"[with PB] We are giving citizens more control over public finances. We are not only looking to improve efficiency, but also exercise more control over political authorities...with this [reform] we gain a degree of control over the authorities and avoid decisions that are guided by political criteria” (Nelson Shack, quoted in McNulty 2011, 60). Far from seeking to advance major policy reform through PIs, the MEF’s goals were relatively modest: PB would produce incremental improvements in the quality of local governance.
The MEF intended for PB to have an impact on local-level government decision-making, and thus endowed the system with meaningful—if limited— authority. To ensure widespread implementation of PB, municipal receipt of national government transfers was made contingent on demonstrating that local level investment spending priorities were set through the PB process
(McNulty 2011, 45). This is a stronger enforcement mechanism than virtually any other PI, outside of Brazil. The MEF’s inclusion of various monitoring and oversight mechanisms— including a vigilance committee to monitor project implementation and making the results of PB processes publicly available online— further incentivized meaningful execution (McNulty 2011,
71). As a result, the scope of PB decision-making is considerable: the median Peruvian district
(municipality) between 2005 and 2015 allocated nearly 40% of its total investment budget through PB.7 To further advance PB’s good-governance objectives, the MEF developed detailed guidelines for implementation to ensure the process would advance along apolitical lines and
7 Author’s calculation, based on data from the National Registry of Peruvian Municipalities (RENAMU).
20 thus minimize partisan cooptation. McNulty (2011, 45) explains: “...the process is meant to be orderly and technical. The design reduces possibilities for manipulating the process, corrupt practices, or the government's co-optation of the organizations [that participate].” All that said,
PB’s origins as a technocratic instrument for improving governance—as opposed to a tool for shifting public policy or empowering civil society—limited its role in the policy process. PB has an advisory, not rule-making role, and in practice local governments are free to ignore PB decisions.
Available evidence suggests that Peru’s nearly two decades-long experiment with PB has, in line with its modest ambitions, achieved meaningful, if limited, success. PB has reoriented municipal spending away from high-visibility, low-impact projects like stadiums and toward public works meant to address basic needs facing Peruvian communities (Jaramillo and Alcázar
2013). It has also led to an increase in access to government services (Jaramillo and Wright
2015), a reallocation of government spending toward “pro-poor” projects such as water and sanitation (World Bank 2010) and, according to recent analyses of previously unavailable time- series data, marginally improves citizen well-being when implemented over an extended period
(Abbott and McNulty N.D.).8 In sum, while PB has done little to resolve Peru’s enduring political and social challenges, it nevertheless succeeded in its goal of making incremental progress toward more effective governance.
8 To be sure, some studies find that PB does little to improve the quality of municipal service provision (Jaramillo and Alcázar 2013), and that PB decisions are often ignored by subnational politicians who manipulate the process to suit their own priorities (McNulty 2019, 146; López Ricci 2014, 16). That said, even modest improvements in access to government services, responsiveness, and citizen well-being produced by PIs in a country wracked by severe deficiencies in the quality of governance and democracy are noteworthy.
21 Party-Building Participatory Institutions
Party-building PIs are established as a tool for political parties to build linkages with voters. Under this model, parties create PIs as venues where their supporters can gain access to state resources, mediated by the party; make claims that will be addressed by the party; and organize for elections. PIs may serve as a site for associational linkages that connect political parties with allied interest associations and their members (Anria and Chambers-Ju 2019). For instance, Brazil’s Workers’ Party first experimented with participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre in the 1990s to strengthen linkages with unaffiliated neighborhood associations (Abers 2000,
161-167). PIs can also be used to build clientelist linkages with voters by conferring material benefits to the individuals who participate within these venues, in exchange for their loyalty to a political party (Montambeault 2011). This was the experience, for instance, of participatory budgeting in the Brazilian city of Recife during the 1990s, where the Brazilian Democratic
Movement (PMDB) implemented PB in order to “give a voice and political weight [to the mayor’s]…traditional social support bases through direct access to the mayor’s office as a reward for their constant electoral support…” (Montambeault 2015, 153).
In other cases, traditional parties may create party-building PIs to solidify electoral support in their historic strongholds. In the early 1990s, Bolivia’s ruling Movimiento Nacional
Revolucionario (MNR) held a tenuous grasp on power, winning only 35.6% of the vote in the
1993 presidential election (O'Neill 2005, 130). The MNR hoped that by creating a system of local-level PIs (Organizaciones Territoriales de Base, OTBs), it could direct more resources to rural areas where the party historically performed well, and thus increase its electoral appeal in the countryside (Abbott 2021). Finally, party-building PIs may be created by emergent parties
22 that seek to consolidate linkages with new supporters and expand the party’s territorial infrastructure (McCarthy 2016). We discuss this scenario below in the case of Venezuela.
Party-building PIs channel state resources to supporters or potential supporters. These resources are the building blocks needed to construct voter-party linkages, suggesting that the PI requires authority to allocate these resources to reward supporters. At the same time, since the goal of party-building PIs is to strengthen the party’s electoral coalition, whatever authority PIs are granted should be exercised on behalf of the party. Under this model, then, participation is typically concentrated among party supporters and potential supporters. Most participants are steadfastly loyal to the governing party and thus have constrained autonomy. These PIs are of the government, not of the state.
A successful party-building PI is one that directs state resources to bolster linkages between the party and supporters, and expands the ruling party’s political coalition. Failure for a party-building PI might take the form of a PI that lacks the resources or authority to reward supporters, or if the governing party is unable to claim political credit for benefits offered through PIs. Alternatively, failure might arise if supporters of the opposition begin to dominate the PI and use it to gain access to resources, or if participants maintain staunch autonomy and use this venue to challenge the government.
Venezuela’s Communal Councils: A Party-Building Participatory Institution
The Venezuelan Movimiento Quinta República (MVR)—refounded in 2007 as the
Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV)—created a dense network of neighborhood-level
PIs known as Communal Councils (Consejos Comunales) as a party-building strategy to strengthen its internal organization and consolidate its electoral base. The Councils, established by a national law in 2006 (Ley de Los Consejos Comunales), typically consist of around 200-400
23 families. The councils hold regular community meetings to decide which public works programs the community wants to prioritize. It is estimated that at their height (2010-2013), more than
40,000 councils operated across Venezuela in each of the country’s 1,134 parishes (República
Bolivariana de Venezuela—Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Comunas y Movimientos
Sociales 2013), and that over one-third of the adult population participated.9
The councils were established to address political challenges faced by the MVR after years of intense polarization and political instability. Though the MVR enjoyed both national and subnational political dominance after parliamentary elections in 2005,10 it was famously dependent upon the charisma of President Hugo Chávez. By the mid-2000s, the party had taken relatively few steps toward strengthening its internal structure or consolidating its electoral base
(McCarthy 2016; Hetland 2017). In addition, the MVR faced a series of major extra-electoral threats from the opposition, including a short-lived coup in 2002, an economically devastating shut down of the oil industry (2002-2003), and a failed presidential recall referendum against
Chávez in 2004. These threats convinced party leaders of the need for stronger territorial organization to defend the party against future opposition threats (Handlin 2020, 217). According to our interviews with key officials involved in creating the council system, the party viewed PI implementation as a key tactic to address these treats and to build deeper linkages between the party and the electorate. As one respondent explained, “Chávez wanted to…develop a mass party capable of generating new militants. These new militants would be born in the Communal
Councils…This is why we moved from previous, more limited forms of popular organization to the Councils.”
9 Author’s calculation, data from the Latin America Public Opinion Project’s (LAPOP) Americas Barometer for 2010 and 2012. 10 The MVR’s Polo Patriótico won 81% of the country’s mayoral races in 2004, and, by virtue of an opposition boycott of 2005 national legislative elections, controlled the entire National Assembly.
24 The MVR/PSUV clearly intended for the councils to serve a meaningful role in allocating state resources. While reliable data are limited, national government spending on the councils in
2012 was at least $2.5 billion, which amounted to around 5.5% of total government spending
(República Bolivariana de Venezuela—Ministerio del Poder Popular para las Comunas y
Movimientos Sociales 2013). To be sure, there are sharp limits on the councils’ authority; they only have authority to request funds for specific, generally hyper-local projects, have no input whatsoever in national policymaking, and have little recourse to appeal projects that are denied funding. That said, spending through the councils in 2012 was nearly as great as total government spending on health (6% of total government spending), and nearly half of total government spending on education (10.8% of government spending).11 These were far from symbolic allocations.
Since the councils enjoyed significant authority, it was imperative that the ruling
MVR/PSUV exert as much control over them as possible. Cooptation by the opposition could undermine the party’s capacity to take credit for council benefits, and might even enable opposition parties to use the councils as an organizing tool against the government. The
MVR/PSUV minimized the risk of opposition cooptation by offering party officials broad discretion to manipulate council activities. Tactics employed to coopt the councils included delaying or denying the legal recognition of opposition-controlled councils, channeling resources disproportionately to councils with pro-government leadership, allocating benefits within councils primarily to government supporters, and using the councils as spaces to disseminate pro-government rhetoric or electoral appeals (Rhodes-Purdy 2017; McCarthy 2012; García-
Guadilla 2008).
11 Author’s calculation, based on data from the Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean.
25 The evidence overall suggests that Venezuela’s councils were remarkably successful in furthering their intended objective of party-building. First, opposition supporters made little headway in seizing control of the councils. Though as many as 25% of opposition supporters participated between 2006 and 2014,12 and while some opposition leaders encouraged participation among their supporters,13 these efforts were oriented primarily toward limiting
Chavista dominance, rather than capturing the councils for their own political objectives.
Second, the councils served as an effective vehicle for bolstering regime support (Rhodes-Purdy
2017), and increasing voter turnout and party activism (Abbott N.D.). The councils almost certainly played a meaningful role in helping the party to mobilize supporters at key moments of opposition protest (for example in 2007 and 2014), and to maintain the party’s core base of support during the country’s historic economic meltdown and accompanying political crises since 2014 (Abbott and McCarthy 2019).
Legitimating Participatory Institutions
Not all PIs are created to give participants influence over state resources or policy decisions. Politicians establish legitimating PIs as a symbolic but hollow gesture to signal a commitment to democracy and openness to civil society engagement for an external audience.
This audience might be voters fed up with corruption and poor government accountability, donors that require participation for grants or loans, or civil society groups demanding inclusion.
Yet, PI creators do not have a vested interest in actually empowering PIs. The pressures to delegate real authority to PIs fade after the moment of adoption, with fewer people paying attention to the messy grind involved in implementing the institutions. Legitimating PIs are often
12 Author’s calculation based on LAPOP Americas Barometer. 13 Interviews with opposition council participants revealed that in first years of implementation some opposition mayors encouraged their supporters to participate in the councils to ensure they would not be dominated by Chavista activists.
26 adopted at moments of intense political conflict to mollify demands for reform. Governments use the promise of PIs to distract attention away from more substantive reforms until the conflict is passed, and civil society is no longer able to mobilize effectively to press for additional reforms.
In other words, legitimating PIs were never meant to contribute to decisionmaking, and instead were established to satisfy onlookers with the appearance of inclusion and responsiveness to societal demands.
These PIs confer legitimacy and reduce pressure on the government to grant civil society groups a real seat at the governing table, since the government can always point to PIs as evidence of inclusion. For instance, according to international law, governments pursuing resource extraction projects must engage in prior consultation with indigenous communities before awarding a concession. Yet as studies of Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia demonstrate, these consultations are often performative rather than genuine instances of citizen engagement
(Falleti and Riofrancos 2018; Jaskoski 2020). In Chile, growing public dissatisfaction about the stagnant political system and rising mobilization among social movements led the government to establish a national system of municipal civil society councils (consejos comunales la sociedad civil, COSOC) in 2011, yet these councils received scant investment after their initial creation
(Fundación Multitudes 2015). Colombia created dozens of feckless PIs in the early 1990s in the face of a major legitimacy crisis and a series of civic strikes throughout the country, in an effort by politicians to demonstrate their commitment to opening up democracy to new voices (Mayka
2019a, 93-96). The national system of planning councils was implemented to some extent, but only because champions in civil society dedicated themselves to constructing these councils on the ground, in the face of government neglect and even hostility (Mayka 2019c).
27 Legitimating PIs succeed when the government defuses pressures for societal inclusion, without actually devolving any power to participants. Given that the purpose of legitimating PIs is to signal inclusion more than to include participants in governance, they are granted low levels of authority. At best, legitimating PIs might be offered a symbolic role in allocating resources or making policy. However, politicians have few incentives to give them real power, which may risk disrupting the government’s agenda. Often, legitimating PIs are abandoned after their flashy moment of creation, having served their purpose. Legitimating PIs may coopt their participants to defuse pressures to institute real changes. However, they might also have high autonomy if their authority is sufficiently low to redirect civil society groups from engaging in other, more effective strategies and tactics that could stymie the government (Perissinotto and Fuks 2007).
Failure under this model, by contrast, arises if PIs somehow gain formal or informal authority to contest the government’s control over the governing agenda (Mayka 2019c). Alternatively, failure might emerge if the target onlookers—donors, voters, or civil society actors—reject the
PI, leaving the legitimacy challenge in place (Jaskoski 2020).
PIs in Ecuador Under Rafael Correa: Legitimating Participatory Institutions
After assuming office in 2007, President Rafael Correa and his political movement
Alianza PAIS (AP) created a host of legitimating PIs that looked impressive on paper, but which were never meant to be implemented in any meaningful way. PIs in Ecuador were created as a largely symbolic gesture to voters and key constituencies within the governing coalition that
Correa and AP were committed to deepening Ecuadorian democracy. Among other mechanisms,
Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution and citizen participation law of 2010 established national and sectoral planning councils to facilitate state-society dialogue around the national development plan; local and regional citizen assemblies to facilitate public deliberation between citizens;
28 municipal participatory budgeting; an “empty chair” in all municipal governments open to a member of the community to participate in debate and decision-making around municipal business; and a so-called “Fifth Power”, known as the Council of Citizen Participation and
Social Control (CPCCS), to promote citizen participation and government accountability.
Correa and AP were swept into office in 2007 with a clear mandate to address deep- seated frustration with the quality of representative institutions. Popular dissatisfaction with previous governments was so strong that it produced large-scale protests in 2005 that helped bring down the government of President Lucio Gutiérrez (de la Torre 2008). Among the key demands of these protesters—known as the Forajidos (“outlaws”)—was greater citizen participation in public decision-making (Ramírez 2005; Balderacchi 2017). Moreover, Correa’s political coalition included a range of prominent activists and intellectuals with longstanding commitments to increasing citizen engagement through PIs. This group expected Correa and AP to deliver on their promise to “build a genuinely participatory democracy” (Suárez 2006) through the enshrinement of PIs in national legislation (Abbott 2021). These pressures underlie Correa and AP’s decision to create the many PIs described above.
Yet while the breadth of Ecuador’s new system of PIs was great, its depth was anything but. Some party activists genuinely sought to use PIs as a mechanism for improving government accountability and responsiveness (Abbott 2021; Nicholls 2014), but the prevailing opinion among influential AP figures, including (and especially) Correa himself, was that the authority of
PIs should be as limited as possible. To the extent they were implemented, PIs were meant to serve a symbolic role, and should not amplify the influence of organized social movements
(Abbott 2021; Ortíz Lemos 2013). This anti-participatory orientation resulted from a combination of the political threat posed by a historically powerful indigenous movement that
29 was skeptical of Correa—and was increasingly critical of the government’s environmental policies and civil rights violations—as well as the President’s personal preference for technocratic governance (de la Torre 2013; Silva 2017; Riofrancos 2020). Rather than open spaces for all citizens to participate in allocating local government resources, Correa and AP focused on providing an empty chair to a single member of the community whose mandate from civil society was unclear, and whose influence in government decision-making was minimal.
Likewise, rather than allow representatives of major social movements and civil society organizations to participate in the “Fifth Power” to promote citizen participation, the choice of
CPCCS members took place through an elaborate (and exclusionary) point system that substituted technocratic selection criteria for meaningful representation of societal interests.
From the perspective of Correa and AP, Ecuador’s new system of PIs was quite successful in achieving their goal of legitimation without devolution. Correa’s efforts to increase citizen participation mollified citizen demands for increased government accountability and responsiveness, and assisted Correa in maintaining the support of pro-PI coalition partners. This is evident in Correa’s consistently high approval ratings and repeated electoral triumphs in 2006,
2009 and 2013. Further, opposition supporters made little progress in mobilizing through PIs, due to PIs’ limited implementation and minimal authority. Additionally, while it is impossible to know what the influence of civil society and social movements would have been in the absence of Correa’s PIs, political stability in Ecuador was relatively high during most of Correa’s presidency, and opposition-aligned movements exerted little influence over government decision-making.
30 CONCLUSION
This article challenges the conventional wisdom that all participatory institutions should aspire to the normative ideals of deepening democracy and bolstering effective governance in ways that help the poor. Instead, we laid out the political logics behind four distinct types of PIs, which each have different goals and definitions of success that sometimes contradict the aspirational standards of participatory democracy and good governance. This paper reveals that some PIs that deemed failures in the past—such as Ecuador’s array of new participatory institutions or
Venezuela’s communal councils—are actually quite successful, given their foundational goals to mobilize and coopt voters for partisan objectives (Venezuela) and to contain and demobilize civil society dissent (Ecuador). In other cases, such as Brazil’s health councils and Peru’s participatory budgeting, PIs were established to empower reform-oriented civil society actors during the policymaking process (Brazil) or increase government accountability and responsiveness (Peru)—goals that more closely match the aspirations of most advocates of participatory policymaking.
This paper sets a new research agenda for the study of PIs as a mode of interest intermediation. First, we challenge the conventional wisdom in scholarship on participatory institutions that defines PI success according to the normative standards of participatory democracy or good governance. Instead, we redefine success and failure by asking whether the
PI achieved the political objectives behind its creation—objectives that often differ from or directly contradict the tenets of participatory democracy and good governance. By extension, we disagree with the starting precept of the PI literature that “successful” PIs require very specific political, social and economic conditions, leading most PIs to fail. Our discussion of PIs in four
Latin American countries suggests, to the contrary, that a number of PIs are successful in
31 advancing the goals for which they were created. In this sense, we take a similar approach to
Kitschelt (2000, 872), who, before the heyday of clientelism studies in political science, urged political scientists with a normative aversion to clientelism to focus greater attention on the phenomenon as a central linkage strategy between politicians and citizens in democratic politics.
Likewise, we urge scholars to relax their hopes for the emancipatory potential of PIs, and instead approach them as a tool for managing diverse electoral coalitions and maintaining political legitimacy in some contexts—as well as improving democracy and governance, in other contexts.
Second, we add to the literatures on participatory institutions and good governance by highlighting how the founding logic behind a PI can shape its capacity to address deficits of democratic representation and unequal access to public goods. For instance, when PIs are created to expand a party’s electoral coalition, they may dramatically increase citizen participation and boost the political efficacy of participants. Yet, we expect that these PIs will allocate benefits on a partisan basis and may reinforce, rather than ameliorate, social and economic inequalities. By contrast, PIs that are created to increase the role of civil society in national policymaking processes will likely do little to increase rates of individual citizen participation or political efficacy. However, these PIs may play a meaningful role in generating public policies that address deficiencies in access to vital government services and bolstering accountability. Future work is needed to explore the conditions that are likely to give rise to the different types of PIs.
This study raises questions about the conditions that enable each model to succeed in its intended effects. We illustrated each variety of PI with a case of “success”—yet this success is not a given. For example, a party-building PI created in the 1990s by a Bolivian traditional party ended up seeding autonomous grassroots mobilization that enabled the emergence of a powerful
32 new political party—the MAS (Abbott 2021). In Colombia, government officials sought to dampen explosive demands for more citizen participation by creating legitimating participatory institutions, including the planning councils, which were given little authority. Yet in the 1990s, dedicated activists constructed this PI despite state neglect and creatively crafted new forms of authority by activating various provisions in other laws (Mayka 2019c). Both of these examples are striking because they signal that for these PIs, failure meant that citizens gained opportunities for autonomous participation that had a real impact on governance—outcomes that align with the hopes of most PI proponents. More work is needed to elucidate the paths towards success or failure for different PIs, particularly for the comparatively understudied party-building PIs and legitimating PIs, where definitions of success diverge sharply from the normative standards of participatory democracy and good governance.
Finally, this paper contributes to a growing literature examining the diverse structures of interest representation and intermediation that connect citizens to the state in Latin America. A number of scholars have examined the shifting linkages between voters and parties, focusing in particular on the connections between organized interests and political parties in processes of party-building (Anria 2018; Rossi and Silva 2018; Roberts 2014). More work should pay attention to the role of PIs in developing linkage strategies to either incorporate or constrain organized interests. As we show, PIs adopted for explicitly electoral reasons may present a threat to the autonomy of civil society—meaning that cooptation is a sign that the PI is working as intended. From this lens, “successful” PIs might impede the emergence of more democratic modes of interest intermediation. Future work is also needed to understand how different types of PIs might affect longer-term outcomes such as the structure of party competition, regime type,
33 and state capacity, similar to Collier and Collier’s (1991) landmark study of how different models of corporatism set Latin American countries on different regime paths.
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