Political Participation and Democratic Innovation

Abstract

Abstract Latin America democratized during the 1980s following a century of authoritarian breakdowns. In the ensuing thirty-five years, the new democracies were strengthened through different democratic processes such as constitution-making, accountability, and participation that have re-energized the regimes in the regions. This chapter shows how the new rights for political participation created many different ways of combining representation and participation in those countries, without promoting political instability. This breaks with a relatively well-established view of democratic theory which affirms that increased social participation generates political instability. The process of constitutional change impacted the relationship between the political system and civil society, allowing more political and social inclusion. Nonetheless, this process of including new actors in the countries’ social policies were not homogeneous. The democratic innovations that were created, as well as the state willingness to implement these innovations, are also important variables to explain these differences.