Examines why some democratic innovations succeed while others fail, using Venezuela, Ecuador, and Chile as case studies.

Citizens' Power in Latin America takes the reader into the heart of communities where average citizens are attempting to build a new democratic model to improve their socioeconomic conditions and to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives. Based on groundbreaking fieldwork conducted in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Chile, Pascal Lupien contrasts two models of participatory design that have emerged in Latin America and identifies the factors that enhance or diminish the capacity of these mechanisms to produce positive outcomes. He draws on lived experiences of citizen participants to reveal the potential and the dangers of participatory democracy. Why do some democratic innovations appear to succeed while others fail? To what extent do these institutions really empower citizens, and in what ways can they be used by governments to control participation? What lessons can be learned from these experiments? Given the growing dissatisfaction with existing democratic systems across the world, this book will be of interest to people seeking innovative ways of deepening democracy.

Pascal Lupien is assistant professor of political science at Brock University. He is author of Citizens' Power in Latin America: Theory and Practice.

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"This book is an important contribution to the field of comparative and Latin American politics and a rich empirical contribution to the often-lofty theoretical debates on democratic theory and participatory democracy." — Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies