Democratic Innovation Beyond the State

The Role of Non-State Actors in the Promotion of Citizen Participation in Latin America

Executive Summary

The role of non-state actors in the promotion of democratic innovations has been understudied, and consequently, underestimated. In Latin America, civil society has played an essential role in transitions to democracy and continues to be an essential force after democratic consolidation. Civil society organizations (CSOs), international development organizations (IOs), and private stakeholders (PSs) are important players when it comes to promoting new designs for citizen participation.

This paper relies on data on democratic innovations that evolved in 18 countries in Latin America from 1990 to 2020 to analyze the role of CSOs, IOs, and PSs in the promotion of new designs for citizen participation. It makes three main claims. First, state-led citizen participation decreased after the end of the left turn in Latin America around 2015, making room for non-state actors to innovate by means of digital engagement. Second, the existing patterns and most frequent designs of democratic innovations change as non-state actors take the lead in the promotion of citizen participation. Third, while CSOs are the main non-state actors that push democratic innovation in Latin America, IOs and PSs have been crucial partners to both CSOs and governments. This paper concludes by arguing that as citizen participation migrates to digital platforms in the coming years there will be more opportunity for PSs to partner with both CSOs and governments to improve democracy in Latin America.

Democratic innovations refer to institutions, processes, and mechanisms whose purpose is to enhance democracy by means of citizen participation in at least one stage of the policy cycle (Pogrebinschi, 2023:5). Reformers introduce democratic innovations through electoral, pluralist, and contestatory forms of citizen participation, which can be divided into several categories: deliberation, citizen representation, digital engagement, and direct voting (Pogrebinschi 2023).

Democratic innovations have been typically associated with state-sanctioned institutions (Cameron et al., 2012; Falleti and Riofrancos, 2018). It’s partly accurate to state that democratic innovations in Latin America are state-driven, however, the role of governments in the expansion of new forms of citizen participation in the region has been overestimated (Pogrebinschi, 2023).

This paper claims that the failure to acknowledge democratic innovations led by non-state actors understates their role in the expansion of citizen participation and the consolidation of democracy in Latin America. By analyzing the role of CSOs, IOs, and PSs in the promotion of democratic innovations, I rely on the LATINNO datbase, managed by the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Berlin, Germany, to study 18 countries from 1990 to 2020 and make three main claims. First, I argue that state-led citizen participation decreased after the end of the left turn in Latin America around 2015, making room for non-state actors  to innovate by means of digital engagement. This first part of the paper draws on longitudinal data to trace the increasing number of non-governmental designs for citizen participation adopted across the region. Second, I claim that existing patterns and institutional designs change as non-state actors take the lead. As I show in the second part of the paper, democratic innovations become less deliberative and less focused on responsiveness. Instead, non-state actors rely more heavily on digital engagement and employ citizen participation mostly to enhance government accountability.

The third part of the paper focuses separately on each of the three non-state actors, CSOs, IOs, and PSs, introducing categories to identify and analyze them. I show that CSOs are the main non-governmental actors that push democratic innovation in Latin America, while IOs have been crucial in supporting the implementation of institutional designs initiated by governments and CSOs alike. Moreover, I claim that while PSs have so far played a minor role in the expansion of citizen participation in Latin America, they tend to grow in importance as digitalization increasingly shapes democratic innovations. In the conclusion, I point out trends that indicate a new direction that democratic innovation may take in the future.