Participación ciudadana en la construcción de políticas públicas. Entre la realidad y la utopía

Abstract

A first idea about the exercise of power concerns overcoming the limited vision of defining power as a relationship between two parties in which one party has dominion over the other. In reality, the exercise of power is more complex. The exercise of power corresponds to the mobilization of biases and strategies, which are often not obvious. This leads to the reduction of decision-making to only those topics that interest the ones with power. To unravel these procedures, we need to clarify the current power relations and determine the issues that are ‘questionable’ for those who are ‘indisputable’. Who exerts power creates social and political conditions for organizing participation schemes and achieving a legitimate dominion over the population. In the process of constructing public policies, we can identify citizen participation as a key element for the creation of a democracy of better quality. The new Ecuadorian legal framework, raised expectations about the possibility of involving people in this process. This paper aims to analyze the role played by the institutional framework to limit or promote citizen and citizen participation. Furthermore it aims to unravel the links between social agents, motivations, prejudices and stereotypes, such as emotional, cultural and social burdens that the citizen entails being involved in the participatory process.