Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America
Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change

Explains how and why some national mandates for participatory policymaking develop into powerful institutions for citizen engagement.

Lindsay Mayka (Author)

9781108470872, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 February 2019

320 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

'Latin America played an innovative role in the global diffusion of participatory reforms in recent decades, but as Lindsay Mayka shows in this insightful book, these reforms varied widely in their effectiveness and levels of grass-roots engagement. This book is a must-read for scholars and policymakers alike who want to understand the larger institutional environments that make popular participation meaningful, inclusive, and responsive to citizens at the grass-roots.' Kenneth Roberts, Cornell University, New York

While prior studies have shown the importance of participatory institutions in strengthening civil society and in improving policy outcomes, we know much less about why some participatory institutions take root while others do not. This book explains the divergent trajectories of nationally mandated participatory institutions' 'stickiness' by highlighting the powerful and lasting impacts of their origins in different policy-reform projects. Mayka argues that participatory institutions take root when they are bundled into sweeping policy reforms, which upend the status quo and mobilize unexpected coalitions behind participatory institution building. In contrast, participatory institutions created through reforms focused on deepening democracy are easy for entrenched interests to dismantle and sideline. Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America draws on rich case studies of participatory institutions in Brazil and Colombia across three policy areas, offering the first cross-national comparative study of participatory institutions mandated at the national level.

1. Introduction: the puzzle of participatory institution building
2. Theoretical framework: participatory institution building through sweeping sectoral reform and policy entrepreneurs
3. The origins of participatory reforms in Brazil and Colombia
4. Brazil's health councils: successful institution building through sweeping reform
5. Brazil's social assistance councils: the advances of a broad but divided coalition mobilized through sweeping reform
6. Colombia's planning councils: the limits to participatory institution building without sweeping sectoral reform
7. Colombia's health committees: failed participatory institution building in the absence of policy entrepreneurs
8. Lessons for institutional change, interest representation, and accountability.

Subject Areas: Regional government policies [JPRB], Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Politics & government [JP]