On Tuesday, March 1 at 1pm in the Greenleaf Conference Room, 100A Jones Hall, CIPR will host the first event in our Spring Series: Challenges and Opportunities for Democracy in Latin America

Dr. Yanina Welp from the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy in Geneva, Switzerland will give a talk entitled: Participatory myths: promotion by the left and a democratic evolution

Diverse mechanisms of participation have expanded in various parts of the world (referendums and initiatives, sorted assemblies, public conferences, participatory budgeting, neighborhood councils, just to name a few). Why, by whom and with which consequences? A common assumption connects social movements and political parties on the left with the promotion of citizen participation and with the expansion of democracy. However, empirical evidence shows a more complex picture. Instead, participatory institutions could be considered the result of institutional change processes in which political actors struggle over two different things: (1) competing ideas concerning the value of citizen participation (and democratic legitimacy) and (2) the balance of power between actors in a political system as well as the calculation of the benefits they could get (or not) by increasing political participation. The presentation will focus on the Latin American experience.