Intermediation and Representation in Latin America: Actors and Roles Beyond Elections

223 Pages·2017·2.22 MB·English

by  Gisela Zaremberg

STUDIES OF THE AMERICAS
INTERMEDIATION AND
REPRESENTATION IN
LATIN AMERICA
ACTORS AND ROLES
BEYOND ELECTIONS
Editors Gisela Zaremberg,
Valeria Guarneros-Meza
and Adrián Gurza Lavalle
Studies of the Americas
Series Editor
Maxine Molyneux
Institute of the Americas
University College London
London, United Kingdom
Titles in the Studies of the Americas Series include cross-d isciplinary and
comparative research on the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean,
and Canada, particularly in the areas of Politics, Economics, History,
Anthropology, Sociology, Development, Gender, Social Policy and the
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ration of a topic from several different disciplinary angles by eminent
scholars; book-length studies providing a deeper focus on a single topic;
and readers on specific themes. This series is published in conjunction
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Molyneux. For further information, please see: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/
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More information about this series at
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Gisela Zaremberg • Valeria Guarneros-Meza • Adrián Gurza Lavalle
Editors
Intermediation and
Representation in
Latin America
Actors and Roles Beyond Elections
Editors
Gisela Zaremberg Adrián Gurza Lavalle
Campus México Political Science Department
Facultad Latinoamericana de University of São Paulo
Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) São Paulo, Brazil
Mexico City, Mexico
Valeria Guarneros-Meza
Dept. of Politics and Public Policy
De Montfort University
Leicester, United Kingdom
Studies of the Americas
ISBN 978-3-319-51537-3 ISBN 978-3-319-51538-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-51538-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932745
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P
reface
Political democracy around the globe seems to be coming under increas-
ing stress. From the resurgence of the Far Right in Western Europe and
the unprecedented menace of populism in the USA to serious assaults
on fundamental democratic institutions in Thailand and the Philippines,
not to mention the growing influence of unabashedly authoritarian lead-
ers such as Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China, democracy
seems increasingly incapable of meeting citizens’ expectations in the midst
of growing insecurities and widespread disillusionment with political elites.
While the global scale of this democratic disenchantment arguably has
never been higher since the end of the Cold War, it is something that Latin
America as a region has grappled with in various ways for much of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries as it experienced waves of authoritar-
ian violence, civil war, populism and often fitful experiments with political
democracy. The promise of democratic transitions in the 1980s, before the
collapse of the former Soviet Union, quickly gave way to growing signs of
citizen frustration and a lack of confidence in the fundamental institutions
of political democracy. This frustration gave rise to various democratic
alternatives, starting with the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in
1998 and the region’s so-called pink tide, that promised something new:
to generally respect the democratic institutions of elections and represen-
tative government, combining them with a variety of innovative mecha-
nisms for enhanced citizen participation and social inclusion.
Less than 20 years after Chavez’s unprecedented election, the region
seems to have lurched back to the Right, with Venezuela deeply polarized
in the midst of the worst economic crisis in the region, and other countries
v
vi PREFACE
similarly suffering various forms of democratic malaise. Although it is not
yet clear what impact this will have on the new forms of political participa-
tion that emerged during the pink tide, the ideological shift to the Right
in much of the region raises important questions regarding whether these
new institutions will be part of the pink tide’s ultimate legacy or will be
one of the first targets of the more conservative governments that have
replaced it.
This unique history suggests that the world potentially has a lot to
learn from Latin America when it comes to understanding the vaga-
ries of democratic governance, representation and democratic institu-
tions. Intermediation and Representation in Latin America: Actors and
Roles beyond Elections is an important attempt to capture that potential.
While a growing body of literature focuses on the importance of formal
and informal institutions, this is one of the first books to attempt to
systematically understand how they are interrelated by focusing on key
concepts such as representation and intermediation. In particular, the
authors develop important theoretical insights into democratic gover-
nance in Latin America by exploring the ways in which different actors
resort to a variety of “circuits of political representation” that capture the
multifaceted nature of political participation, whether it be democratic
or non- democratic forms of participation, or formal or informal institu-
tions. While elections are important, they are hardly the only mechanism
through which the interests of different actors are mediated. These are
captured graphically through a “cube of political intermediation” (CPI)
that provides the volume with an original theoretical model for under-
standing the multidimensional and multilayered nature of politics. In
this way, the book is path-breaking both theoretically and empirically,
with the discussion of a wide range of cases from a shared theoretical
perspective.
When the project that led to this book started back in early 2013,
Latin America—and the world—was a very different place. The region’s
populations were much more optimistic as economies grew, poverty
declined and even inequality began to reverse itself in the context of
democratic institutions that seemed to be growing in strength. Yet the
relevance and importance of Intermediation and Representation in Latin
America have in no way diminished. Ironically, the volume may be even
more important today, given the general loss of that optimism among
growing segments of the region’s population. The complexity of politi-
cal participation and its relationship to democracy has been something
PREFACE vii
we generally ignore. Growing citizen frustration, if not anger, suggests
that if we continue to do this, it will be at our own peril as the formal
institutions of democratic politics come under increasing assault, and
people start looking for undemocratic mechanisms to at least be able to
cope. As Intermediation and Representation in Latin America reminds
us, there is still a certain resilience to basic democratic practices that
we seem to take for granted. The challenge, however, is to take the les-
sons to be learned and apply them, creating new models of participation
and democracy that are both true to the underlying norms associated
with political democracy and, at the same time, move beyond them in
order to offer the foundation for what could become a “post-liberal
democracy” that will benefit people across the globe, and not only Latin
Americans. Intermediation and Representation in Latin America is an
important step in that direction.
Philip Oxhorn
McGill University
a
cknowledgements
The three coordinators of the book, Gisela Zaremberg, Valeria Guarneros-
Meza and Adrián Gurza Lavalle, are grateful to Facultad Latinoamericana
de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Campus Mexico) for the support during
the production and translation of this book.
Adrián Gurza Lavalle wishes to thank the support of the Center for
Metropolitan Studies (CEM), São Paulo, Brazil, grant no. 2013/07616-
7, and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP).
Gisela Zaremberg is grateful to FORD-Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) Special Project Seventh Cycle (2012) for the sup-
port to strengthen the network of researchers involved in this book. She
would also like to thank the University of San Pablo and the Democracy
and Collective Action Nucleus, in Brazilian Center for Analysis and
Planning (CEBRAP), San Pablo, Brazil, the University of Pennsylvania,
EEUU (especially Tulia Falleti and Emilio Parrado) and the Centre for
Research on Direct Democracy (C2D, in Aarau, Switzerland). In C2D,
Yanina Welp’s careful and insightful comments were especially valuable.
Sabbatical time and stay in these academic centres contributed greatly to
the realization of this book.
ix
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Beyond Elections: Representation Circuits
and Political Intermediation 1
Gisela Zaremberg, Adrián Gurza Lavalle, and Valeria
Guarneros-Meza
2 Political Intermediation and Public Policy in Brazil:
Councils and Conferences in the Policy Spheres of Health
and Women’s Rights 31
Wagner de Melo Romão, Adrián Gurza Lavalle, and Gisela
Zaremberg
3 Establishing Intermediaries in Developing Mechanisms
of Citizen Participation in La Silsa, Caracas, Venezuela 53
Graham Martin
4 Political Rights and Intermediation: Municipal
Decentralization and Democratic Innovation in Uruguay 77
Martín Freigedo Peláez
5 Bolivia: “Social Control” as the Fourth State Power
1994–2015 95
Moira Zuazo
xi