Introduction :
To understand the people’s movement in Honduras, it is necessary to understand the goal they are striving for: Participatory Democracy.
What is Participatory Democracy?
Wikipedia gives a brief and concise definition of participatory democracy as opposed to representative:
Traditional representative democracy tends to limit citizen participation to voting, leaving actual governance to politicians….Participatory democracy strives to create opportunities for all members of a political group to make meaningful contributions to decision-making, and seeks to broaden the range of people who have access to such opportunities. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_Democracy)
Other names used for participatory democracy are direct democracy and popular democracy.
What do Participatory Democracy Models Look Like in Latin America?
(Pic from NACLA)
Brazil: Participatory Budgets: In Porto Alegro (and 70 other cities in Brazil) the government has instated what is called Participative Budgets. Citizens decide how to spend the budget of received tax dollars under the title “New Investment.” In Porto Alegro this makes up about 13% of the total city budget and the citizens can use it for community projects they deem most important (education, sewer, recreation…etc). Holding assembly meetings (that often hold over 1,000 people), creating neighborhood delegations, and conducting discussions with city councils; the people of these cities propose an allocation for the annual New Investment budget. The final budget must be approved by the city council. Studies by Terence Wood at Victoria University in New Zealand and Gianpaolo Baiocchi at Brown University have shown formidable results such as decreased corruption, and greater quantity of investment for poorer neighborhoods.
Venezuela: Communal Councils: Venezuela has passed laws to allow residents of the same neighborhood to register as a community council, elect resident delegates, and receive federal funding for community projects based on their needs. Here is a clipping about Communal Councils from the blog, Planetizen, “a public-interest information exchange provided by Urban Insight for the urban planning, design, and development community:”
Members of the San Juan communal council in Caracas meet on a rooftop to discuss plans for better services and more rights. Credit: Heather Sarantis
“Communal councils contain between 200 and 400 families in urban areas, and over twenty families in rural areas. All persons over 15 years of age may participate and be elected representatives. Once legally formed, these councils may obtain up to 30 million Bolívares (almost $14,000) to finance small production or service projects in the community. Less than a year after the law was passed, Josh Lerner reported in Z Magazine in March 2007 that there were over 16,000 councils throughout the country, and 12,000 of them had received funding for community projects—including almost 300 communal banks for micro-loans as well as for thousands of other projects, such as street paving, sports fields, medical centers and sewage and water systems.” (http://www.planetizen.com/node/30471)
Columbia: Participatory Planning: In Columbia municipalities create councils of citizens from social sectors, economic sectors, education, ethnic groups, and environmental groups whom citizens nominate to review national and regional plans (laws, investments, acts… etc). According to Professors Clemente Forero and Carlos Sepúlveda of Universidad del Rosario in Columbia, these councils frequently meet in assemblies with the general population to review governmental plans. While the participatory planning councils only have legally binding rights to approve zoning practices, these participatory planning councils have had success modifying national and regional plans to better meet the needs of their area. Here is an excerpt from Forero’s and Sepulveda’s dissertation: Forms of Partipatory Democracy:
The Constitution of 1991 created the National Participatory Planning Council, and a Territorial Council in each of the 32 departments and 1067 municipalities. …In the present scheme, each plan is initially outlined by the executive agency of the municipal, departmental or national government; afterwards, it is debated in the respective Council of Participatory Planning, which gives an opinion on the plan; it is then reviewed by the Executive, and later it is presented to the corresponding legislative body for formal approval as a national law or local statute (according to the level of government).
Councils are integrated by representatives of economic and social sectors, ethnic groups, environmental, educational and cultural organizations, and also of the geographic regions or zones. Diversity of representation is the characteristic of these councils. Election of its members begins with the executive calling on each sector to present a short list of candidates, from which the executive chooses. Opinions produced by the Council on development plans are not legally binding for the executive. Nor is there any coercive legal instrument to oversee proper execution of the plans. Nevertheless, the political influence of these councils has occasionally allowed them to go beyond their purely consultative functions, both at a national level and in those localities where the council maintains close relationship with grass-root organizations. In addition to their function of providing opinions on development plans, participatory councils are also in charge of approving zoning plans in municipalities, a function in which their decision does have a legally binding character.