Greaves - Municipality and Community in Chile - Building Imagined Civic Communities and Its Impact On The Political PDF

10.
1177/0032329204263070
POLITICS
EDWARD
ARTICLE
F.
& GREAVES
SOCIETY
Municipality and Community in Chile:

Building Imagined Civic Communities
and Its Impact on the Political
EDWARD F. GREAVES
This paper examines the institutions for participatory governance that have been
created in Chile through a case study of Huechuraba, a low income municipality in
the Santiago metropolitan area. The case of Huechuraba suggests that in certain
contexts, the meetings that take place between government officials and grassroots
organizations can become a forum for the state to colonize public space and bolster
the hegemony of the status quo by establishing the parameters of citizenship.
Keywords: decentralization; participation; democratization; local governance;

social movements
Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal
reciprocity, where the rule of law finally re-places warfare; humanity instills each of its
violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination.1
INTRODUCTION
Students of democracy and democratization have argued that participatory

governance at the local level can be an important element in deepening and con-
solidating democracy. Decentralization and the creation of forums for popular
participation at the local level has become an important policy objective in Latin
America in the 1990s, and is seen as a significant step in promoting economic
development and in deepening the participatory dimension of democracy.2 These
policies have been hailed as harbingers of a participatory democracy that
enhances popular sovereignty through greater involvement in decision making.
POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 2, June 2004 203-230

DOI: 10.1177/0032329204263070
© 2004 Sage Publications
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204 POLITICS & SOCIETY
An additional rationale for these policies is that they can be a vehicle for bypass-
ing and/or undermining authoritarian enclaves—provisions designed to freeze
the status quo in place— left behind by pacted transitions. In Chile, Brazil,
Bolivia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Argentina, significant efforts have been made to
turn local government into a space where more robust citizenship practices can be
fomented through popular participation. 3
This paper examines participatory governance in Chile through the prism of
community development meetings between municipal officials and grassroots
community leaders in Huechuraba, a low income municipality in the
metropolitan region of Santiago. The Chilean case suggests that in some spatial/
institutional contexts, participatory governance can be an instrument for the
application of the techniques of “discipline” to the arena of citizenship. That is,
participatory governance can be either transformative or hegemonic. In
transformative participatory governance, mechanisms for popular participation
act as a catalyst for the colonization of local government by grassroots organiza-
tions and for strengthening urban popular movement networks. In hegemonic
participatory governance, by contrast, these same types of mechanisms become
spaces for containing participation within certain parameters, and for
disarticulating movements. The question, then, is why in some cases participatory
governance serves to consolidate and deepen the pillars of hegemony, whereas in
other cases it can become a mechanism for the transformation of public institu-
tions—i.e. for deepening democracy.
PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE IN CHILE
Ironically, it is during the dictatorship that municipalities first came to be seen

as the institutional cornerstone of a new mode of participation in a “protected
democracy”—where popular participation would be largely contained within the
space of the municipality, and where avenues of participation vis-à-vis the central
state would be limited. As early as 1976, the regime had begun to implement
administrative reforms that gave municipal governments a larger role in the
administration of social policy. In October 1982, General Pinochet declared that
the time had come to “juridically organize the direct participation of the commu-
nity in local government.”4 As envisioned by the regime, then, participation had a
distinct spatial location: small, atomized community organizations would act
within local administrative spaces to articulate concrete and tangible demands
vis-à-vis local government. This way, demands would be framed in a particularist
language and would not be “contaminated by the demagoguery of politics.”
The concertacion5 took power in March 1990 in the context of a transition that
was centered around the 1980 constitution, a pact that contained constraints
explicitly designed to make undoing the status quo very difficult. Concertacion
leaders were committed to finding ways to democratize Chile’s political institu-
tions, but at the same time they did not want to directly challenge the fundamental

EDWARD F. GREAVES 205
pillar of the transition. One of the dilemmas faced by concertacion leaders has
been how to “democratize democracy”: how to invite popular participation and
make government more accessible without directly challenging the pact upon
which the transition was based. It is in this context that municipalities became a
focal point of efforts to intensify popular sovereignty.
Some of the participatory mechanisms put in place in Chile at the local level
share features of a model for participation that Fung and Wright call “empowered
deliberative democracy” (EDD), which has the potential to be “radically demo-
cratic” because it encourages ordinary people to participate, to deliberate and to
act.6 EDD, it is argued, can be a vehicle for democratic deepening in part because
it can be a catalyst for the colonization of state power and the transformation of
governance institutions.7 That is, EDD can be an incubator for what Barber calls
strong democracy—”self government by citizens rather than representative gov-
ernment in the name of citizens”8—by extending democratic, grassroots practices
and control into the interstices of the state where bureaucratic, hierarchical and/or
authoritarian modes have generally prevailed. Forums for participatory gover-
nance in Chile share several characteristics of empowered participatory gover-
nance (EPG): they have a practical orientation geared toward involving ordinary
citizens in bottom-up participation and encouraging deliberation and collective
action. One of the cornerstones of EPG is that it provides a forum to “colonize
state power and transform formal governance institutions.”9
EPG evokes a certain counterhegemonic logic because it describes a dynamic
process where grassroots organizations not only solve tangible local problems,
but in the process also act to colonize and define the arena itself—i.e. to deepen
the scope and purview of their role in local government and to build strong
democracy at the local level:
The logic of deepening democracy is one of intensifying popular sovereignty in the politi-
cal sphere, that is, moving from hierarchical forms of elitist or bureaucratic control to
forms of popular self-determination by means of more direct participation in the decision-
making process.10
Ideally, then, participatory governance should not only deepen democracy at the
local level, but should also contribute to an extension of democratic practices to
other spheres of the political and the economic. That is, participatory governance
should be the beginning of a broader transformative process, and not a self-
contained cul-de-sac that acts as a bulwark against further change.
Participatory Governance in Comparative Perspective

The Chilean experience with participatory governance can be contrasted with
a highly successful experiment in participatory governance: the Porto Alegre
experience in Brazil. In the Porto Alegre case, neighborhood councils and other

local associations are invited to participate on an ongoing basis throughout the

year in formulating the municipal budget jointly with the municipal administra-
tion.11 Similarly, in an effort to encourage popular participation vis-à-vis munici-
pal government, policymakers in Chile created mechanisms for grassroots orga-
nizations to participate in local governance. Going by a variety of names—
Participatory Budgeting, Participatory Planning, Community Planning, Commu-
nity Development, Citizen Dialogues—municipalities invite grassroots participa-
tion on a year-round, ongoing basis. The concertacion also redesigned “economic
and social development councils” (Consejo Economico y Social [CESCO]), with
the objective of “creating a mechanism for articulating a relationship between the
organized community and the municipalities.”12 CESCOs are composed of repre-
sentatives of neighborhood councils, local grassroots associations (mother’s
centers, youth groups, senior citizens organizations, soccer clubs, etc.), and local
economic associations.
The objective of these policies is to “transfer to municipalities capacities that
will permit the realization of activities in conjunction with the community and
residents” and to aid in promoting the development of “associational life in the
community.”13 For the past decade, municipal governments—working with
NGOs and state agencies—have been at the heart of attempts to build “civic com-
munities” (comunidades civicas).
Although there are parallels between the Porto Alegre experience with partici-
patory governance and efforts to encourage local participation in Chile, four
dimensions of the broader institutional matrix have been important factors in
stunting the transformative impact of participatory governance in Chile:
(1) First, mechanisms of participatory governance at the local level have done
little to undo the authoritarian enclaves14 left behind by the dictatorship. These
provisions insulate the central government from popular demands and impose
limits on the ability of state and municipal officials to act to promote significant
change.15 Institutions of participatory governance, then, must operate within a
broader environment that encourages moderation and that sharply dampens the
potential for meaningful transformation.
In contrast to their counterparts in Brazil, municipal governments in Chile are
significantly less autonomous vis-à-vis the state. Moreover, there are many limi-
tations that hinder Chile’s municipalities: they have limited autonomy in many
issue areas, and in many cases they lack an adequate financial base (poor munici-
palities depend heavily on resources from the central government), and many of
the funds that they get from the central government must be spent in certain ways.
Participatory governance requires that municipalities have an adequate resource
base.16 There have been many cases in Chile where community development
funds have been cut or suspended entirely due to budgetary constraints. These
deficiencies limit the capacity of municipal governments for real self-government,
thus hampering their capacity to provide autonomous spaces for institutional
transformation from below. In their dealings with grassroots organizations,

municipal officials often used the lack of autonomy and capacity as an explana-
tion for inability to solve many of the problems facing the community.
Because Chile’s municipalities are deeply enmeshed within (and dependent
on) a broader ensemble of state institutions, the Chilean state has a greater capac-
ity to oversee and influence the activities that take place within the municipalities.
Municipal officials, furthermore, are embedded within a network of state
policymakers, bureaucrats, and representatives of NGOs—many of whom have a
stake in maintaining the status quo—making them unlikely allies in attempts to
radically transform the dynamics of local governance. These types of linkages to
the center undermine the potential of participatory governance because it places
constraints and limitations on the ability of local officials to act as autonomous
vehicles for intensifying popular sovereignty at the local level.
(2) In Chile the decentralization of popular participation, coupled with the
diminished relevance and increasing unwillingness of political parties to act as
vehicles of movement cohesion and mobilization, have been important factors in
diminishing the capacity of popular movements to act as harbingers of transfor-
mation, even at the local level. As grassroots organizations were invited to partici-
pate in local government, and as the linkages between these networks and party
structures became more brittle, the web-like network of organizations—coordi-
nating committees, umbrella federations, etc.—that linked popular organizations
across the periphery of Santiago, have withered on the vine.17 These associational
networks, however, were the nerve center of an emerging subaltern counter-
public, where “subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses
to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and
needs.”18 In the context of a center with limited access, where participation is
organized around the municipality, and where there is no vehicle for mobilization,
the incentive to maintain these broader associational networks is diminished.
Thus, the logic of decentralization has been to fragment movement networks into
discrete, localized struggles that lack coherence and that can be more easily
absorbed. In this context, local participation has had an important (yet often
underestimated) “dispersal effect.”
In the case of Porto Alegre, despite obstacles that it may have confronted, the
Brazilian Workers Party (PT), has been able to serve at the local level as a connec-
tive mobilizing structure around which organizations committed to expanding
participatory democracy can converge to create a subaltern counterpublic, and to
take an active role in defining and shaping the spaces of participatory governance.
The PT is a party that since its inception has been committed to developing and
implementing radical grassroots democratic practices.19 Because the PT is less
bureaucratized and nurtures a bottom-up participatory organizational structure,
the party leadership is “directly tied through a pyramid of mediations to the grass-
roots base” giving the PT a “marked capacity for unified action.”20 The PT, in
short, “reinforces the organizational capacity of social movements” and provides
a mobilizing structure and a space where a public can emerge. As Keck has

argued, at the local level the PT has attempted to “transform individual demands
for assistance into collective demands for urban improvements as social rights.”21
The effort to transform the nature of demands can be seen in the PT’s ability to
build a political coalition in Porto Alegre around the issue of participatory budget-
ing in a way that redefined demands and that gained the support of neighborhood
organizations that had previously been supporters of clientelist political parties.22
(3) Grassroots associations in Huechuraba have less juridical power over bud-
getary and other matters than in Porto Alegre. In Porto Alegre, an elected Munici-
pal Council of the Budget, made up of representatives of grassroots organizations,
“proposes and approves a municipal budget in conjunction with members of the
(municipal) administration.”23 Moreover, a new Brazilian constitution, created in
1988 after the military left power has defined and legitimized new spaces for par-
ticipation that has been important in shaping the contours of the Porto Alegre
experiment.24 Brazil’s constitution gives municipalities significantly more auton-
omy—both financially and in terms of the policies that they can implement.25 By
contrast, in Huechuraba the mechanisms created to empower grassroots associa-
tions vis a vis municipal officials were significantly weaker. In the relationship
between the CESCOs and the municipality, it is the municipal council and the
mayor that have generally had the upper hand: the role of CESCOs has been lim-
ited to rendering an “opinion” on the municipal budget and other planning issues.
CESCOs, then, have no legal basis for making authoritative and binding
decisions.26
(4) The role played by local officials is important. Transformations in gover-
nance generally happen “in close cooperation with state agents.”27 Elected offi-
cials and bureaucrats within institutions of governance and political party struc-
tures can act in ways that can enable or diminish the transformative potential of
EPG. The views expressed and actions taken by municipal officials in
Huechuraba point to the importance of government officials in shaping the struc-
ture and dynamics of participatory governance.
Municipal officials in Huechuraba saw engagement with the community as a
chance to accomplish two objectives: first, to solicit the opinion of community
leaders on local issues, mainly on questions concerning local community devel-
opment. Officials saw these meetings as a chance to interact with community
leaders in order to gain a better understanding of the social terrain of the commu-
nity. Thus, one objective was to make the poblaciones of the community more vis-
ible and knowable, which can facilitate social control.
A second objective reflected the role of the municipality as envisioned in the
discourse of policymakers in the concertacion: to encourage the development of
civic habits and to create spaces for popular participation—that did not over-
whelm the system or challenge the status quo. This reading of the role of the
municipality was echoed by local officials, who saw engagement with the com-
munity as a chance to change the political culture of participants. Municipal offi-

cials from the office of community development (Directorio de Desarrollo

Comunal [DIDECO])28 viewed organized meetings with grassroots associations
as a forum for teaching organizational leaders how to participate in post-transition
democracy. As the Subdirector of DIDECO in Huechuraba put it:
Here the dirigentes get an opportunity to work with the municipal government and to learn
how to participate in democracy. They learn how to work with the authorities of the munici-
pality to improve the community and to exercise their rights as citizens.29
Encounters between municipal officials and the organized community were seen
by DIDECO officials as an arena for teaching citizenship and participation.
Nevertheless, DIDECO officials generally did not view citizen participation as
a vehicle for radically transforming the municipality. Key tenets of strong democ-
racy, such as the idea of direct control over major areas of municipal policy by
popular grassroots associations was out of the question, in part because such mod-
els violated existing legality and in part because—as one member of the munici-
pal council put it—“these people cannot be trusted with such important deci-
sions.” Elected municipal officials were also reluctant to give grassroots
associations a wider latitude in municipal decisionmaking because they viewed
neighborhood council leaders as potential rivals for elective office. Indeed, since
they were first created in 1968, neighborhood councils (juntas de vecino) have
been viewed by elected municipal officials as institutional rivals for power within
the comuna.
Municipal officials resorted to a variety of strategies to attempt to contain and
manage potential points of antagonism. In an effort to isolate the more militant
leaders, municipal officials built a network of relationships with moderate organi-
zations. In doing this, municipal officials established a bulwark against potential
troublemakers, depriving militant dirigentes of potential allies, thus requiring
them to moderate their demands and their behavior.30 The demands articulated by
the more militant associational leaders—which in terms of participation paral-
leled many of the goals of EPG—were seen by municipal officials as too radical
and as a threat to existing democracy.31 Isolating and containing the more militant
leaders has had a ripple effect on the internal dynamics of participatory gover-
nance because it allowed municipal officials to work with moderates in the com-
munity to build what could be described as a local hegemonic bloc that would take
the lead in shaping the parameters of participatory governance.
In Porto Alegre, the practices of participatory governance were shaped in the
context of a municipal government where the presence of the PT was strong. PT
officials imagined popular participation in ways that are more consistent with
strong democracy and that stress grassroots decisionmaking.32 The PT, moreover,
facilitates grassroots transformation from below and provides a catalyst for inten-
sifying popular sovereignty through its internal structures and practices (which

promote grassroots decisionmaking styles) and by providing a forum for defining

participatory governance in more transformative ways. In short, PT leaders at the
local level have played an active role in working with grassroots organizations to
contest and challenge existing institutions and practices, and to open spaces for
grassroots engagement.33 The structures of the PT, in short, provided a forum for
developing critical citizenship skills. The presence of PT officials at the local
level, in short, provides movements with allies within the institutional structures
of the municipality.
In Huechuraba, municipal councils and bureaucracies are dominated by a bal-
ance of concertacion and Pinochetista officials who—in contrast to PT offi-
cials—sought to disarticulate tangible demands from a broader matrix of social
citizenship. This is also in part an outcome of the binomial electoral system cre-
ated by the dictatorship, which distorts representation and tilts outcomes in favor
of the status quo.34 Municipal officials remain embedded within and either com-
mitted to or constrained by an institutional framework that limits available alter-
natives. In short, in Huechuraba, grassroots movements are deprived of two key
elements that facilitate transformative participatory governance and that are pres-
ent in Porto Alegre: (1) institutional allies that invite efforts to expand spaces for
popular participation, and (2) social networks around which to mobilize and to
nurture more critical understandings of citizenship.
The institutional dynamic in Chile, then, is conducive to hegemonic participa-
tory governance because it fosters a power balance between municipal officials
and grassroots associations that allows for control of the process by municipal
officials who often have little interest in transforming state-society relations. In
this context, grassroots associations have not been able to act as a vehicle for
transforming the “mechanisms of state power into permanently mobilized
deliberative-democratic, grassroots forms.”35 In Chile, it has been the state and
municipal officials that has been able to use local spaces as a vehicle to colonize
popular civil society in an attempt to define the practices of citizenship and shape
the parameters of contestation. Indeed, as articulated by the state, the role of the
municipality is to “teach responsible citizenship.”
THE POPULAR DEMOCRATIC IMAGINARY
The limitations of participatory governance in Chile are reflected in the views

of leaders of grassroots organizations (dirigentes), many of whom were partici-
pants in these institutions. While many dirigentes agreed that the municipality
facilitated access and tried to encourage popular participation, a group of grass-
roots activists also argued that participation within the municipality had become a
tool for managing and manipulating grassroots organizations.
This disillusion is articulated in a document elaborated by the leadership of the
Union of Neighborhood Councils (Union Comunal) in 1999 assessing the status
of local participation. In October of 1999, leaders of the Union Comunal in

Huechuraba met to discuss the problems and dilemmas of popular participation in

postauthoritarian Chile. These concerns were articulated in a document that was
presented at the conference of the Continental Federation of Community Organi-
zations that was held in Santiago in November of 1999. The central thrust of this
document is that as it is currently structured and practiced, local spaces for partici-
pation are not a vehicle for democratization, but essentially amounted to a tool for
social control:
Municipalities in Chile do not have the autonomy or the resources needed to carry out their
functions as participatory spaces. As a result, municipalities have become containment
barriers that limit the demands of the community. . . . In practice, Chilean municipalities
maintain the doctrine of the dictatorship—divide in order to govern and control participa-
tion more easily.36
In the municipality of Huechuraba, the report goes on to argue, “there is no such

thing as real participation.” Similar concerns were echoed at the conference by
the leaderships of the Uniones Comunales of Cerro Navia, Pudahuel, and Lo
Espejo.37 Participation in the municipality, then, was seen by the leaderships of
the Uniones Comunales of these communities in often contradictory terms:
because of its proximity and its ease of access the muni was seen as a facilitator of
participation. Indeed, many dirigentes conceded that local participation had been
successful in distributing some tangible benefits to the community. Yet, because
of the way participation in the municipality was structured—its scope and param-
eters—it was seen as an effective tool of social control. Participation in the munic-
ipality, then, was viewed by many grassroots leaders as an effective tool for keep-
ing more substantive political issues off the agenda and for containing grassroots
activism.
What factors explain this jaded reading of local level participation? Why has
participation vis-à-vis the municipality been inimical to the development of more
robust forms of citizenship and for the colonization of the state? A key part of the
answer to this question can be gleaned by examining the way in which residents of
popular communities envision democracy. I will call this understanding of
democracy the popular democratic imaginary: a constructed landscape of collec-
tive aspirations in the realm of citizenship forged in the interstices of an emerging
subaltern counterpublic, where popular movement leaders appropriated elements
the master term “democracy” and in light of their own experiences, defined their
own understanding of democracy. This imaginary diverges significantly from the
“civic communities” model envisioned by the concertacion.
When asked a question about the central government, a leader of a neighbor-
hood council answered in a way that evokes a vision of the political sphere as an
indecipherable, distant, and alien world:

What do I know about what the politicians do? What can poor people like us do? They
know what is going on, and we don’t, so when they tell us something, we have to have faith
in them because we can’t understand. It is better to leave the politics to the politicians
because they know better. . . . One who is poor and doesn’t have much understanding
[criterio] cannot really know. Politics is too confusing . . . it is best not to talk about such
things.38
When consideration is taken of the fact that this council leader was an active par-
ticipant in the mechanisms of participatory governance created by the municipal-
ity, such comments place in even sharper relief the insulation of local participa-
tory spaces from the broader political sphere—which can only serve to reinforce
the kinds of hierarchical relationships that participatory governance seeks to
overcome.
Yet this same leader later followed up on her comments by making a point
which suggests that beneath what would seem to be a lack of understanding of,
and an aversion to politics is the existence of an alternative vision of democracy:
There is no justice today . . . things didn’t change after Pinochet left power, so how can they
say that there is democracy? If there were democracy, then there would be justice for the
poor and the government would be for us, not just for the rich. This is what real democracy
is . . . government for the people, where people really have power to decide things.
These comments, as well as the document elaborated by the Union Comunal of

Huechuraba, can be understood as kernels of an alternative vision for the role of
the citizen in governance—the popular democratic imaginary.
A random survey of 1,066 residents of five municipalities39 that are classified
by the government as either “poor” or “low income” municipalities suggests that
the popular democratic imaginary diverges from the vision of democracy articu-
lated by the posttransition political leadership. When asked the following ques-
tion: “Is there democracy in Chile today?” more than half of the respondents
answered that a decade after the transition, there was still little or no democracy in
Chile:
n Percentage
No 592 59.1
Yes 392 32.7
Don’t know 82 8.2
Total 1,066
The primary complaint of respondents was that little had really changed since
the 1989-90 transition to democracy. Whatever it is that democracy may be, then,
the institutions in place in Chile in 1999-2000 did not conform to their under-
standing of full democracy.

In order to gain insights into how residents of popular municipalities imagined

democracy, I interviewed ninety-eight leaders of grassroots associations. These
interviews point to two axes that inform the popular democratic imaginary. First,
most dirigentes interviewed (n = 78) defined democracy in terms of socioeco-
nomic equality. Without a more equitable distribution of resources there could be
no real democracy. The posttransition had taught many the lesson that in the con-
text of glaring social inequality effective citizenship can become increasingly
problematic. Thus, one axis of the popular democratic imaginary is centered
around the theme of social equity and social justice—what could be called a social
democratic axis. Social democratic forms of government, however, do not require
a transformation of the bureaucratic state or of the practices of citizenship. Social
democracy, then, is not conditional upon EPG.
A second axis defined democracy in terms of a greater role for grassroots asso-
ciations in decisionmaking and governance—a dimension consistent with EPG.
Slightly over half of the leaders interviewed (n = 51) argued that real democracy
entails a greater role for popular grassroots movements in decisionmaking. They
argued that the CESCO should be given the legal power to make authoritative
decisions concerning the municipal budget. Others sought to empower grassroots
associations in other areas, such as health care. For example, with the encourage-
ment of the municipality, several dirigentes had organized a citizen’s health care
committee (comite de salud) to work with health care officials in the local primary
care clinic in Huechuraba. Yet, they complained that they did not have a real role
in making decisions concerning the clinic: “Instead of really participating, we are
treated like servants [empleados] of the clinic . . . filling in where we are needed as
volunteers” complained one member. Leaders of the committee wanted a real
voice in formulating health care policy in Huechuraba.
It would seem, then, that a bloc of associational leaders imagines democracy as
an amalgamation of social democracy and empowered participatory governance.
Yet, questions about what such a democracy would look like in practice, the impli-
cations of such a democracy, and strategies for action that could lead to such a
democracy have since the transition remained largely unelaborated. Alternative
understandings of democracy were “only a fantasy” because, as one dirigente
asked “when has it ever been that government is for the people? . . . this is only in
dreams, it is better to accept reality.”
MUNICIPALITY AND COMMUNITY:

THE DYNAMICS OF PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE
At the heart of empowered participatory governance is the transformation of

public institutions. A crucial condition, however, is a power balance among orga-
nizational leaders and officials that can lead to real deliberation.40 The institu-
tional context in Chile, as we saw, helps to foster a power balance that allowed

municipal officials to control the process. This enabled officials to shape the con-
tours of participatory governance.
If one crucial element of radical democracy is the “ability to imagine alterna-
tive worlds,”41 a second and equally important dimension hinges on the ability to
project these alternative visions into the public space, and to put them on the
agenda. It is through public talk and deliberation that alternative realities, and
strategies for getting there, can be imagined and elaborated into a fuller discursive
framework. In the absence of public discussions, the popular democratic imagi-
nary can be left to wither on the vine as some unattainable fantasy. Alternative
projects can remain, as Gramsci noted, “embryonic and contradictory,” which
“does not permit any action, any decision or choice.”42
The dynamics of the interface between municipality and community, where
the practices of participatory governance are shaped, illustrate how the delibera-
tive dimension of participation can become a “containment barrier” that keeps the
popular democratic imaginary on the margins of public space. Encounters
between municipality and community helped to keep the popular democratic
imaginary on the margins of public space—to ensure that alternative understand-
ings of democracy and citizenship remained confined to the realm of subjugated
knowledge: “a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate
to their task or insufficiently elaborated.”43 These spaces were used as a forum for
marketing a vision of citizenship and civic participation, where participation was
defined and deliberation was managed in ways that limited the domain of citizen-
ship. In short, a space for citizenship was created that encouraged participation,
while acting—as the Huechuraba report put it—as a “containment barrier.”
In Chile, spaces created with the objective of encouraging citizen participation
and deliberation have been a midwife to a style of participation whose salient fea-
tures are its limited scope and a relative absence of public political discussions
and debates. Indeed, a civic etiquette44—a set of unwritten codes and rules that
establish a routinized pattern of interactions and that frame the parameters of dia-
logue between municipality and the community—set the parameters for meetings
between government officials and the community, acting as a further restraint on
the scope of discussions.
One of the informal rules that underpinned—and limited—the scope of public
deliberation is that political talk (i.e. talk that projects the popular democratic
imaginary into the public domain or that challenges the status quo) is taboo: those
who do so are seen as troublemakers and radicals who are a threat to Chile’s
democracy. These constraints, however, violate one of the crucial requisites of
strong democracy: the absence of preconceptual frames that limit the range of dis-
cussions and solutions.45
The premium placed on politeness, civility, and on sidestepping contentious
issues helped municipal officials maintain existing relationships of power and
disarmed people of their ability to create and frame the context of public life. The

social dynamics could be very disarming: shortly before one meeting, a council
leader angrily told me how he planned to be very tough in his questioning of
DIDECO and SECPLAC officials concerning cuts in the fund for community
development (Fondo de Desarrollo Vecinal [FONDEVE]). Yet, at the meeting, he
was polite and deferential: he asked a question about the FONDEVE, and was told
that due to the recession, the FONDEVE had to be curtailed because “we all have
to tighten our belts.”
Municipal officials, then, were able to act in the context of a favorable power
balance created by the broader institutional/structural context, to use the authority
of office and control over material, juridical, and symbolic resources to frame the
parameters of deliberation in ways that kept alternative understandings of democ-
racy on the margins of public space. Issues such as the poor state of the primary
care clinic, the lack of medicines, the lack of services, and shoddy public housing
were discussed in isolation from a broader political matrix—the matrix of social
citizenship rights—to which they could be linked to advance social democracy.
Meetings also framed the parameters of participation in terms of how citizens
could organize locally to address social problems—without significantly trans-
forming public institutions or challenging the status quo—thus undermining one
of the core objectives of participatory governance.
The PLADECO Meetings

Luzmenia Toro, a neighborhood council leader and a long time grassroots
activist in the poblacion Pablo Neruda, invited me to attend several meetings of
the annual community development plan—Plan de Desarrollo Comunal
(PLADECO)—in Huechuraba (I also attended several of these meetings in two
other municipalities: Lo Espejo and Pudahuel). PLADECOs are representative of
the efforts that have been made by municipal governments, supported by the state
and international organizations,46 to develop mechanisms of participatory gover-
nance. PLADECO meetings illustrate the dynamics of citizen participation and
allow us to explore the relationship between local government and the organized
community in popular sector municipalities. The salient characteristic of
PLADECO meetings was that although they allowed participants to make deci-
sions, the dynamics of the meeting ceded to municipal officials the role of
establishing the parameters and limitations of grassroots participation.
PLADECO meetings took place periodically at different locations around the
comuna. Organized with the purpose of discussing issues concerning community
development, the dynamics of these meetings illustrate how in an unfavorable
institutional context—in which local officials are the spearhead of the status quo,
where grassroots organizations are fragmented and atomized, and where free
spaces in which alternatives can be publicly articulated—”participation” can
become ritualized, managed, and defined to produce a civic etiquette that narrows
and constrains the scope of public debate. PLADECOs illustrate how in certain

institutional contexts, participation can become an application of the techniques

of discipline to the field of citizenship: participatory forums become spaces where
an attempt is made to mold and shape a habitus of citizenship.
One of the most important characteristics of these meetings is that the ques-
tions that would be decided in the context of the PLADECO did not affect the
broader dynamics of the neoliberal development model. The question to be
resolved at PLADECO meetings was how to spend community development
funds (FONDEVE), that had been allocated to support projects designed by com-
munity organizations with the help of NGOs and social workers—and that consti-
tute a relatively small part (7 percent) of the municipal budget. More substantive
community planning in reality took place in meetings between the mayor, the
municipal council, and technocratic planners in SECPLAC (the department of
planning), and in meetings with representatives of the Subdirectorate of Regional
Development of the Ministry of the Interior.
Broader (and in the end more decisive) questions concerning the social rights
of citizens and general direction of society were being decided in arenas that were
distant and insulated from the neighborhood councils and the social workers at the
municipality. These questions were being decided by powerful economic actors
that saw Huechuraba as an ideal area for the location of many of their industries.
They were being decided in the insulated labyrinths of the state or corporate
boardrooms by policymakers and by powerful economic interest groups. Peu-
geot—the French automobile manufacturer, for example, had recently moved its
main operations center in Chile to Huechuraba. Other industries were also con-
templating relocation to Huechuraba. Municipal administrators welcomed these
industries because they are seen as a sign of progress and modernity, and because
it would expand the resource base of the municipality. Average citizens, however,
had little to do with these broader dynamics of neoliberal development.
Neighborhood council leaders, however, were concerned with these broader
issues. They were concerned about the increases in unemployment because it
affected many of them directly. They worried that people would have no way to
feed their families. They were also concerned about the privatization of state ser-
vices—such as water and electricity—and how this would affect them. Dirigentes
were also concerned with the problem of overcrowding in homes due to the scar-
city of public housing. Pilar Magaly worried about possible pollution and the
effect that this would have on her poblacion. Magdalena and Raul worried about
the future of their homes, as Huechuraba became a center for industry. Would
industries eventually crowd out the homes of the pobladores of Huechuraba?
Yet, at PLADECO meetings these issues and concerns never came up. Instead,
the purpose of the PLADECO quickly became evident: to decide how to spend
approximately $US200,000 in funds that were available to spend on several local
community projects that were made available through the FONDEVE. The ques-
tion that would be decided by community leaders is whether funds—already ear-

marked for distribution to community organizations—should be spent on park

beautification, on traffic lights, or on refurbishing community centers.
The director of DIDECO spoke to the dirigentes who were present at the meet-
ing, telling them that the objective of PLADECO was for community organiza-
tions to participate in deciding how to spend community development funds
(approximately 7 percent of the budget of the municipality):
You know that every year, the municipality distributes community development funds, and
it is up to the citizens of the comuna to democratically decide how to spend these funds. At
this meeting we will begin to make decisions on how to use community development funds
to benefit Huechuraba.
Thus, from the beginning of the meeting, the purpose of the dialogue between the
municipality and the organized community had been narrowed and the parame-
ters of discussion and conversation had been established by the representatives of
DIDECO. Instead of being an open-ended discussion about the future of the
comuna, then, limits were established that ensured that many issues that con-
cerned the dirigentes would remain off the table—thus circumscribing the
domain of popular participation. Limiting the discussions and deliberations at the
meeting to the issue of how to spend the FONDEVE funds left a whole range of
potentially contentious issues unexplored and narrowed the domain of the public
sphere. In order to keep these issues off the agenda, municipal officials from the
outset defined meetings as “nonpolitical” (apolitico), where real questions—not
politics—would be addressed.
More important, however, was the dynamics involved in defining the parame-
ters of popular participation: the role of grassroots organizations was essentially
to select from a menu of prearranged choices. Meetings were not about engaging
municipal officials in public minded and politicized debate about the future of
Huechuraba, or to question municipal or state policy—or policymaking styles—
in any substantive way. The objective was to focus on “close to home”47 issues and
eschew broader political debates in favor of developing solutions—in the form of
projects (proyectos)—that citizens themselves could readily implement and that
would contribute to developing civic communities.
The tangible questions that were decided by the participants are relevant issues
that have a measurable impact on the welfare of citizens, and that constitute the
essence of a local politics. Deliberations over whether to refurbish a park or to put
in more street lights are indeed at the core of a local politics, and are essential to
active citizenship. The problem, however, is that in the context of Chile’s institu-
tional matrix, participatory governance acted to contain popular participation
within the conceptual space of the limited forms of participation envisioned in lib-
eral democracy, thus stunting its transformative potential. Because grassroots
organizational leaders confronted municipal officials as fragmented entities that
lacked cohesiveness, it would be DIDECO officials who would take the lead in

establishing the parameters of grassroots participation, depriving grassroots orga-

nizations of the possibility of “colonizing the municipality.” Representatives of
grassroots organizations, then, were not protagonists in defining and shaping the
arena of participation. Because they did not challenge these parameters, partici-
pants ceded to municipal officials the task of defining the domain of popular par-
ticipation and of publicly contextualizing issues. As one of the more militant
participants sarcastically muttered under his breath:
Our reward for good behavior (i.e. not challenging the status quo) is getting to decide
whether we want to spend FONDEVE money on a soccer field or a park . . . this is the way
they want it because it keeps everyone quiet and makes their job easier.
The dynamics of PLADECO meetings provide a metaphor for the broader

relationship between community and municipality: while inviting and encourag-
ing participation, it also allowed municipal officials to control and manage the
public stage; to colonize, contextualize, and define issues; to define what was
realistic; and to create the public appearance of a consensus that was based not on
effacing, but on reorganizing, reframing, and managing potential conflicts. The
PLADECO, then, is one of the myriad of local spaces where municipalities
encourage and foment a “volunteer-civic” style of citizen participation which, as
Gramsci48 observed, is the hegemonic image of good citizenship in liberal
democracies.
REORGANIZING PARTICIPATION AND THE SPACE OF CITIZENSHIP
Like the Porto Alegre experiment, meetings in Huechuraba had a didactic

component. Indeed, one of the goals of participatory governance is to in some
way redefine understandings of citizenship, participation, and governance. In
Porto Alegre, the didactic environment that was fostered was one in which popu-
lar understandings of democracy could be more fully explored, articulated, and
acted upon. In Huechuraba, by contrast, the ability of municipal officials to take
the lead in defining the parameters of governance allowed for the implementation
of a didactic project that has become a standard blueprint in the attempt to orga-
nize the space of citizenship. This entailed breaking participation down into a
series of ritualized steps, in which municipal officials were able to control the
process.
DIDECO officials went to great lengths to make the case to the participants
that the PLADECO and the type of participation that takes place at these meetings
constituted the epitome of democratic participation. As the director of DIDECO
told participants:
Here you as citizens of Huechuraba will decide what is best for Huechuraba. This is what
living in a democracy is about. You will decide how the government does things.

Another municipal official stood up in front of the assembled dirigentes at the

meeting added that “we are now living in a democracy, and the citizens of the
community have a right to decide issues that concern the development of
Huechuraba.”
A salient theme of meetings was community harmony and consensus. The
meeting began with a video produced by the municipality that showed how the
community had progressed since the transition to democracy: roads have been
paved, electricity is now standard in most communities, and water service has
been provided to almost all residents. The video also highlighted the role played
by the grassroots organizations in fostering community development and in
assisting the municipality in getting these things done, and made mention of the
community development projects that have recently been completed; cleaning up
a waste disposal site, the construction of several sports facilities and community
centers, etc. Citizens were also told that their voice counted and that by working
together with the municipal government, Huechuraba could be a better place for
all residents.
An implicit subtext of the municipality’s presentation was that only through a
cooperative relationship between the community and municipal government
would future progress and development be possible. Community organizations
were pictured as a source of support for municipal government, and the relation-
ship between community and municipality was portrayed in terms of a broad
based consensus on the broader parameters of the status quo. The video
attempted, in sum, to present an image of Huechuraba as a harmonious civic com-
munity of “like minded equals” who shared common objectives.
The video presentation set the tone for creating an environment in which bring-
ing up divisive or acrimonious issues would be almost impolite and improper.
Indeed, there were occasions when grassroots leaders would reprimand their col-
leagues for “politiqueria” (political talk) that was seen as divisive and as not con-
ducive to solving problems. Thus, dirigentes—particularly those that had built
informal alliances with municipal officials—helped to censor talk that questioned
existing institutional arrangements.
The narrative of the harmonious, civic minded community that was presented
by the municipality, however, obscured many conflicts and antagonisms that sim-
mered beneath the surface: it did not discuss, for example, the grinding poverty of
those who were living in the campamentos49 in the mountainous foothills on the
edge of the comuna, and who were unrecognized by the municipality because
they were not a corporately established community. Since the inception of the
campamento, the municipality has been waging an active campaign to have the
campamento eradicated. Leaders of the organizations in the campamento were
not invited to attend the PLADECO because they are not recognized as a legiti-
mate member of the comuna.

Municipal officials, as Luzmenia would later tell me, used the existence of the
campamento as a political tool in their strategy of “divide and conquer” vis-à-vis
the rest of Huechuraba’s communities. By arguing that the campamento was
threatening to divert resources that would otherwise be used for “legitimate” com-
munities, the municipality helped sow the seeds of division between the
campamento and the rest of the community (many of which had themselves
begun as campamentos in the late 1960s). Indeed, several community leaders that
I spoke to about the campamento resented the presence of the campamento in the
comuna and saw the leaders of the campamento as troublemakers who would sap
the resources of the rest of the legitimate communities of Huechuraba. Some even
referred to them in class terms as “people of low class” (gente de mala clase).
Following the video presentation, the assistant director of DIDECO asked the
participants to identify five issues that were of greatest concern to the community.
She cautioned them, however, that
the first step in being an effective dirigente, is to identify the problems that most concern
the community and that you can realistically handle . . . remember we have only a limited
amount of money to spend and we must decide how to spend it democratically.
The first step in the process of exercising effective citizenship, then, involved a
tacit acceptance of the premise that the ability of the state to solve problems is
limited.
Each participant was then asked to write down two or three issues that most
concerned him/her. This was followed by a period of deliberation and discussion
about the issues that had been chosen as the most pressing problems facing the
community.
After some deliberation and with some guidance and input from municipal
social workers, the dirigentes came up with five general issues that were of great-
est concern to them: crime/drugs, welfare services, the environment, health care,
and education.
After a consensus was reached concerning which five issues were most impor-
tant, community leaders were divided into five task groups (grupos de trabajo),
each of which was charged with responsibility for focusing on one of these spe-
cific issues, and to come up with a set of proposals to solve the problem. Each
group sat in a small semicircle and had a social worker working with them to assist
them in coming up with solutions. The social worker carefully guided the discus-
sion so that the proposals that were developed were realistic and relevant to the
issue. Whenever deliberation about an issue delved into the realm of the political,
social workers guided the discussion back into the space of neoliberal citizenship.
Whenever someone framed problems in a way that politicized the issue, they were
treated by municipal officials as whiners and malcontents who engaged in fruit-
less chatter, because—as one official later told me—“these problems have no

solution . . . we can’t nationalize health care, we can’t increase salaries, we can’t

force industries to hire people . . . .”
This, then, was the second step in shaping the space of citizenship: redefining
the way that issues are publicly framed in ways that support the hegemonic image
of citizenship and participation. For example, problems with communicable dis-
eases in the poblaciones are not due to poverty and the low level of government
funding for fighting such maladies, it is the lack of effort on the part of citizens to
keep their homes clean. A proposal to combat communicable diseases would
involve funding community clean up efforts and campaigns to inform members of
the community about how to keep their homes clean. An antidrug proposal in the
municipality of Pudahuel funded a local soccer field and soccer equipment
because the availability of sports facilities provided youth with outlets for activity.
While these types of projects ostensibly address problems facing popular com-
munities, they also serve to build a particular type of citizenship, participation,
and public sphere.
Social workers instructed the dirigentes to think of tangible things that citizens
could do to help them address the problem with which they were concerned and to
remember that available money was limited. Each task group was encouraged to
come up with ideas for community projects that would address the particular issue
to which the group was assigned. Group discussions were moderated by a social
worker from DIDECO. Social workers listened to the deliberations of each of the
groups and occasionally interjected to keep the discussion of these issues within
the discursive space of the neoliberal imaginary.
I first sat with the group that was concerned with the environment. It is impor-
tant to point out that the questions of industrial encroachment and pollution that
had been raised in the Union Comunal meetings did not even come up at the
PLADECO. Instead, community leaders proposed ideas to clean up the munici-
pality that did not challenge the future of Huechuraba as an industrial center or the
environmental practices of industries. One participant suggested that a
microbasural (empty lot used informally as a garbage dump) be cleaned up by
residents and that funds be used to hire a truck to haul the refuse away. Another
proposed that the municipality provide materials so that citizens could clean,
refurbish, and beautify local parks. Yet another suggested that money be spent for
teaching courses on ways in which citizens could maintain the environment.
There was not one proposal advanced in the public sphere that in anyway chal-
lenged the neoliberal imagery of citizenship, participation, and the role of the
state.
After the meeting, those who had participated in the environmental group were
asked why issues such as the relocation of industries to Huechuraba was never
discussed. One dirigente told me that they understood that this was not a possible
solution, and that is why they never brought it up. Luzmenia and Margarita, two of
the more militant participants in Huechuraba, told me that if they brought these

issues up at the meeting, their projects might not get funded. Bluntly put, “if
someone makes waves, their poblacion might not get the project that they
requested.”
I then sat with the group that was charged with health care issues. This, I
thought, would be an area where there would be some discussion because one of
the persistent demands of poblador health care committees has for the state to
take more responsibility for health care. Health care is widely seen as a key
responsibility of the state, and as a fundamental social citizenship right. Yet, not
one of the proposals had anything to do with the state’s role in health care or with
the rights of citizens to health care: one proposal called for the consultorio50 in
Huechuraba to be open for more hours during the week. Another proposal sug-
gested that money be spent on a van to go to different communities in the munici-
pality and vaccinate children. Yet, another proposal called for funding exercise
classes so that people could participate in community gym classes. All of these
proposals were not controversial and did not challenge the neoliberal
“consensus.”
When one participant proposed that the government devote more money to
FONASA—the state health care system—in order to make more medicines avail-
able in the consultorio, she was told by the DIDECO social worker that was mod-
erating her group that the PLADECO was not the place to decide questions about
national health care spending. This was a question for planners in the Ministry of
Health to decide. The purpose of PLADECO was to see how community associa-
tions, using the resources available, could make a tangible difference in the com-
munity through citizen participation. The way to influence the decisions made by
the Ministry of Health was to vote or to submit a petition to the ministry. The sug-
gestion—as the woman who made the suggestion for increased funding for health
care later recognized—was that citizens really did not have a role to play (save for
voting in elections or writing petitions) in deciding these broader issues. Because
nobody else spoke out in support of the suggestion made by the lone “dissenter,”
her suggestion seemed out of place and improper.
When I later asked Luzmenia why these broader concerns in the areas of the
environment and health care had not been brought up, she pointed out that “they
[the municipality] can’t solve these problems . . . they will simply tell us that the
municipality can’t solve these questions, and that we should deal with what can be
solved.” She then went on to point out how a few years ago they had gone to the
municipality to demand improvements in public housing programs only to be told
to go the ministry of housing to seek a solution to the problem. These sentiments
were echoed by other council leaders who were at the PLADECO meeting. Thus,
while the municipality is accessible and allows for popular participation, the areas
over which it has scope still remain limited, which also serves to limit the impact
that groups can have vis-à-vis the municipality.

CIVIC COMPETENCE, “PROJECTIFICATION,”

AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Almond and Verba have suggested that local government may be a propitious
space for the development of citizenship by acting as a “training ground for civic
competence.”51 Certain forms of participation, however, can contribute to a
shrinking of the public sphere.52 In Huechuraba, DIDECO officials encouraged
community leaders to focus on achieving tangible objectives and to eschew
potentially divisive and contentious political discussions (i.e. to divorce participa-
tion from politics and to located it at the level of the particular). Political talk
(pejoratively referred to by officials as “politiqueria”) was defined as an obstacle
to getting things done and its absence is associated with achieving objectives.
There are advantages to focusing on tangible objectives: focusing on “getting
things done” and eschewing politicized debate can provide a sense of empower-
ment because real things are accomplished—a new community center is built, a
plaza is refurbished, or a new sports facility is built. Yet, these accomplishments
can also bolster hegemony because they provide visible support for the argument,
advanced by municipal officials, that if only citizens organized and worked with
the municipality, with NGOs, and with state agencies such as FOSIS, everyone
would be better off. Associational leaders developed a feeling of “civic compe-
tence”—the sense that by working together, citizens can have a tangible influence
over government policies.53 Achieving tangible objectives (while sidestepping
potentially divisive and conflict-laden political issues) can give organizations a
sense of civic competence because it fosters a perception that things are getting
done and that participation produces results.
These modes of participation, however, can contribute to the crystallization of
what Eliasoph calls a “culture of political avoidance,” where participants avoid
politicized and potentially conflictual discussions in favor of achieving tangible
and feasible goals—which are often those set by power holders. These achieve-
ments often do little to transform existing institutions and may help freeze in place
current arrangements.54 Participants develop a sense that they have achieved a
measure of influence vis-à-vis the municipality precisely because they have
steered clear of confronting thornier problems. Gaining access to community
development funds (which is viewed as an indicator of influence in municipal
affairs) becomes associated with maintaining a safe distance from the machina-
tions of politics, where the rewards of participation are less certain. Thus, while a
sense of civic competence is fostered, the potential for secondary associations to
act as an agent of institutional transformation is dampened because there is a built
in incentive to avoid and act upon more critically minded talk. As one participant
put it: “it is best not to make waves [hacer olas] for the mayor and the
municipality.”
One council leader, in pointing to a newly completed “multicancha” (a
multiuse concrete field that contains a basketball court and a minisoccer field) in

her community, gave expression to these sentiments when I asked her about her
political affiliation:
No, I have no political loyalties . . . it is bad to get involved in politics . . . as you can see,
when you participate without politics you get things done for the community. All one gets
with politics is discussion, fighting, and wasting time. . . . The only time I get involved in
politics is when I vote because voting is the law. Why should I get involved in politics? . . .
We get more done without politics.55
She then went on to criticize more militant community activists—those who chal-
lenge the system—for being “too politicized” and for “creating too much con-
flict.” The point that she was making was that tangible improvements in the com-
munity did not require involvement in politics or more critical forms of
citizenship. To the contrary, avoiding politics is a sine qua non of community
development. Political questions are best left to those who know about these prob-
lems (the policymakers). In her view, improvements in the community since the
transition were to a large extent the outcome of participating in ways that ignored
contentious questions and that focused on realistic objectives—i.e. within the
domain defined by officials. Yet, when I then asked her about the extent of her
organization’s influence within the municipality, she proudly pointed to the chil-
dren that were playing on the multicancha that morning as evidence that her junta
de vecinos56 had considerable influence in the municipality and that, despite its
flaws (such as a lack of resources), the municipality listened to people who knew
how to organize and participate.
Thus, a sense of efficacy, citizen involvement, and empowerment had been
fostered while building a culture of political avoidance—which is the starting
point for a form of participation that bolsters the status quo. When council leaders
were asked the question of what participation in their organizations had accom-
plished, many pointed to a newly refurbished community center, to a basketball
court, to new street lights, or the pavement of a road as tangible evidence of the
accomplishments of the organization. Many dirigentes, then, had come to mea-
sure the success of their organizations in terms of their ability to gain access to
community development projects for their “pobla.” More importantly, these suc-
cesses hinged on not getting involved in “politiqueria.”
Thus, while creating a sense that “we are getting things done,” public minded
talk and more critical forms of citizenship that can provide the basis for appropri-
ating and defining issues is squelched in favor of pursuing what is feasible within
the parameters of citizenship in a neoliberal polyarchy—in this case community
development projects. “Los proyectos” (community development projects
funded by the state through NGOs and municipalities) have become a hallmark of
grassroots participation in postauthoritarian Chile. Indeed, in the posttransition, it
is possible to speak of a certain “projectification” of participation and citizenship:
the focal point of active citizenship is centered around activities associated with

pursuing community development projects: going to the “muni” to seek projects

out, writing out project proposals, competing for projects, and working with
NGOs that administer projects. “Los proyectos” have served to create an arena of
ritualized participation in popular municipalities.
Community development projects are also used by municipal officials as sym-
bols in defining participation. When a new community center was built in the
poblacion Jose Maria Caro in the municipality of Lo Espejo, representatives of
the municipality, FOSIS,57 and NGOs that had contributed funds to the project
showed up and cut the ribbon dedicating the new center. The mayor and the repre-
sentatives of FOSIS made speeches, in which they lauded the role played by the
citizens who participated to bring the community center to the poblacion. The
group of council leaders who took the time to fill out the project proposals—i.e.
who volunteered their time and energy by making the trips to the municipality and
to FOSIS in order to make the community center a reality—were presented as the
epitome of good citizenship: a person who works for the community out of a sense
of civic pride, and who can cooperate with fellow community members and
municipal government to achieve tangible and demonstrable goals, while helping
to build horizontal networks of civic cooperation that nurture social capital.58 The
women of the neighborhood council who volunteered their time and energy were
given a citizenship award by the mayor. A large sign outside the center reminded
passers by that the community center was made possible by FOSIS, the
municipality, and the hard work of the citizens of the community.
The mayor spoke to the pobladores59 and told them that the community center
shows that despite the lack of resources of the municipality, by working together
with the municipality and the government, people could make real improvements
in their community. The community center, he argued, showed what could be
achieved through democratic government and through the actions of good citi-
zens. The community center was also tangible evidence that the municipality was
working for its constituents. Good citizenship also meant steering clear of politics
(i.e. of discussing alternatives). As the director of DIDECO put it:
This community center wasn’t built by politics [politiqueria], it was built because these
women worked with the municipality and FOSIS to make it a reality . . . this is what FOSIS
and the muni are all about . . . working together to make a better community.60
In short, the community center allowed municipal officials to effectively articu-

late and flesh out the official imagination of participation and citizenship.
From one perspective, the construction of the community center can be seen as
a triumph of active citizens. Viewed from another perspective, however, such ritu-
als can be disempowering because they define participation in a way that limits
the role of citizens by encouraging them to stay clear of politics, and thus under-
mines the “public sphere effect” of participation. The civic etiquette at these meet-
ings limited the role played by community organizations in policymaking not by

the overt act of exclusion, but through a form of inclusion that centered participa-
tion around a core set of activities that kept citizens on the margins of more
substantive issues.
CONCLUSION: HEGEMONIC PARTICIPATORY

GOVERNANCE AS DISCIPLINE
The Chilean case suggests that in certain given contexts, mechanisms of partic-
ipatory governance can serve to deepen hegemony. Local spaces for participatory
governance are embedded within an institutional matrix that limits the possibili-
ties for intensifying popular sovereignty. Spaces for grassroots participation can
become the trenches and earthworks that insulate the broader social order from
challenge (which, as Gramsci noted, is the essence of liberal capitalist democ-
racy). They can also become spaces for the construction of a specific set of power
relationships through processes that Foucault referred to under the rubric of “dis-
cipline.”61
Discipline, observed Foucault, “makes individuals; it is a specific technique of
a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exer-
cise.”62 Mechanisms of power, as Foucault argued, are productive—not repres-
sive. In the space of citizenship and participation, discipline does not act as an
instrument of repression, but instead, it empowers people to act in productive
ways that support the current hegemony. Discipline therefore establishes the
“constricting link between an increased aptitude and an increased domination.”63
In the arena of citizenship, the techniques that fall under the rubric of discipline
are wielded in the service of the project of attempting to foster habits of citizen-
ship—a civic culture—that will buttress the social order. Thus, in Huechuraba
community development projects sought to empower citizens to act and to foster a
sense of civic competence (the productive dimension of power and discipline). At
the same time, however, the structures of hegemony were deepened by containing
the scope of active citizenship within the confines of these insulated spaces. In
certain contexts, the increased aptitudes that come with the learning of citizenship
skills—the ability to write petitions, to oversee the implementation of a commu-
nity development project, to work with and through the municipality, and to work
with other groups in the community—can empower citizens in ways that buttress
and perpetuate the system.
The organization and articulation of administrative space has been crucial in
shaping the parameters of participatory governance. Hegemonies are founded on
“spatial strategies of dispersal, of divide and rule, of geographical disruptions to
the forces that threaten its existence.”64 Making the municipality the focal point of
popular participation in the context of an insulated state—thus weakening the
mobilizing structures of popular movements—has been an important step in the
spatial reconfiguration of the networks that gave popular movements their vital-

ity. In a context where the vital connective tissues of popular movements tran-
scended the local, the physical/jurisdictional boundaries of the municipality cre-
ate a spatially defined administrative grid that distributes grassroots associations
and rearranges the conceptual space in which citizenship is practiced.
The space created by the municipality also has a panoptic dimension that privi-
leges such projects. Panopticism, as Foucault argued, is the primary technique
through which disciplinary power is able to function. One of the effects of bring-
ing popular movements into the municipality was an enhanced capacity to moni-
tor the activities associated with citizenship through a panoptic view of the com-
munity. In the Chilean case, then, making municipalities the focal point of popular
participation has increased state capacity in two dimensions: (1) it has allowed for
penetration and colonization of spaces that might otherwise be used for advancing
alternative projects, which has (2) enhanced the state’s ability to appropriate and
define the parameters of participatory governance in accordance with its own
agenda.
Municipal officials, particularly DIDECO officials, were the direct agents of
the disciplinary process: it was they who worked closely—on an almost everyday
basis—with grassroots leaders. Yet, it is important to note that from a broader per-
spective, municipal officials are the outermost ring of a regime of power that is
undergirded by a network of actors who work within the context of an ensemble of
institutions that articulates local officials to the existing regime of power. Popular
movements, then, do not confront the municipality as an autonomous entity that
they can capture, colonize and transform: in the Chilean context, the municipality
is the outermost trench—to use a Gramscian metaphor—of a broader series of
trenches and ditches.
Because it is deeply enmeshed within the broader structures of the state, the
municipality serves as an articulating mechanism between the state and popular
communities. The dynamic of insulation at the center, access at the periphery, and
popular movement fragmentation, has accomplished two seemingly contradic-
tory objectives: it has allowed the Chilean state to more deeply embed itself within
the social matrix of the poblacion, while at the same time further insulating itself
from the latent forces contained within these spaces. Thus, the institutional frame-
work constitutes at once a spatially defined administrative unit that compartmen-
talizes popular movement networks, while also articulating the narrow pasajes
(streets) of popular communities to the state as atomized entities.
While organizational leaders were able to mount local defensive efforts to con-
test these parameters (indeed, municipal-community relations were characterized
by an ongoing low intensity struggle) contestation took place within institutions
whose outer parameters were defined by a hegemonic bloc of actors. In the
absence of coherent mobilizing structures and subaltern counterpublics—where
alternative projects can be nurtured and acted upon—the ability to act to expand
and intensify popular sovereignty in Chile will remain confined and fragmented.

NOTES
1. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-

versity Press, 1977).
2. Merilee S Grindle, Audacious Reforms Institutional Invention and Democracy in
Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). Jonathan Fox, “Latin
America’s Emerging Local Politics,” Journal of Democracy 5, no. 2 (1994).
3. Ibid. See also Luis Carlos Bresser Pereira and Nuria Cunill Grau, eds., Lo Publico
No Estatal en la Reforma del Estado (Buenos Aires, Argentina: CLAD 1998).
4. Ministerio del Interior, “Primera Reunion Nacional de Dirigentes Vecinales
Discurso Inaugural de S.E. el Presidente de la Republica, Capitan General Don Augusto
Pinochet Ugarte” (Santiago, Chile: Ministerior del Interior, October 1982).
5. The concertacion is a coalition of center-left parties that emerged during the transi-
tion, that has been in power since the transition: the Christian Democratic Party, Socialist
Party, Humanist Party, and the Radical Party.
6. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Deepening Democracy: Innovations in
Empowered Participatory Governance,” Politics & Society 29, no. 1 (2001): 5-41.
7. Ibid., 29.
8. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1985), 151.
9. Fung and Wright, “Deepening Democracy.”
10. Kenneth M. Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Move-
ments in Chile and Peru (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 30.
11. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “Participation, Activism, and Politics: The Porto Alegre Experi-
ment and Deliberative Democratic Theory,” Politics & Society 29, no. 1 (2001): 43-72.
12. Ministerio Secretaria General de Gobierno, “Los Consejos Economicos y Sociales
Comunales Antecedentes Para Su Diagnostico E Informe de un Estudio Evaluativo en
Curso,” Documento Interno de Trabajo no. 3 (Santiago, Chile: Ministerio Secretaria Gen-
eral de Gobierno, September 1994).
13. Ministerio del Interior—Subsecretaria de Desarrollo Regional y Administrativo,
Construyendo Juntos el Nuevo Municipio Programa de Fortalecimiento Municipal (Santi-
ago, Chile: Ministerio del Interior, 1999).
14. Manuel Antonio Garreton, Hacia Una Nueva Era Politica Estudio Sobre las
Democratizaciones (Santiago, Chile: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1995).
15. Peter M. Siavelis, The President and Congress in Postauthoritarian Chile Institu-
tional Constraints to Democratic Consolidation (University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-
versity Press, 2000).
16. Rebecca Neaera Abers, “Reflections on What Makes Empowered Participatory
Governance Happen,” in Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered
Participatory Governance, ed. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright (London: Verso, 2003).
17. This was a consistent point made by many grassroots activists in popular
communities.
18. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of
Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997).
19. Margaret E. Keck, The Brazilian Workers Party and Democratization in Brazil
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992).
20. Rebecca Neaera Abers, Inventing Local Democracy Grassroots Politics in Brazil
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
21. Keck, The Workers Party.
22. Abers, “Reflections.”

23. Garreton, Hacia Una Nueva Era Politica, 47.

24. Zander Navarro, “Democracia y Control Social de Fondos Publicos. El Caso del
‘Presupuesto Participativo de Porto Alegre (Brasil),’ ” in Lo Publico no Estatal en la
Reforma del Estado, ed. Luiz Carlos Bresser Pereira and Nuria Cunill Grau (Buenos Aires,
Argentina: CLAD, 1998).
25. Abers, Inventing Local Democracy.
26. Hernan Pozo “Participacion Local: Metas, Desafios, Perspectivas” (Santiago,
Chile: PAS Documentos de Analisis, 1993).
27. Ibid., 22.
28. DIDECOs are the municipal agencies that have primary responsibility for dealing
with grassroots organizations.
29. Interview with Subdirector of Community Development for Huechuraba, October
1999.
30. Interviews with more militant grassroots activists revealed a panoply of strategies
used by municipal officials to squelch dissent and to generate the appearance of consensus
and harmony.
31. Municipal officials were fairly candid about their attempts to control and isolate
more militant organizations that were seen as excessively politicized and as a threat to sta-
bility and order in the municipality.
32. Navarro, “Democracia y Control Social.”
33. Sonia E. Alvarez, “Deepening Democracy: Popular Movement Networks, Consti-
tutional Reform, and Radical Urban Regimes in Contemporary Brazil,” in Mobilizing the
Community Local Politics in the Era of the Global City, ed. Robert Fisher and Joseph Kling
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993).
34. Siavelis, The President and Congress.
36. Union Comunal de Juntas de Vecinos Huechuraba, “Reforma Politica y
Participacion Ciudadana” (document submitted at a meeting of the Metropolitan Federa-
tion of Neighborhood Councils [FEMUC], November 1999).
37. Interviews with the presidents of the Union Comunal of Cerro Navia, Pudahuel, and
Lo Espejo revealed similar concerns: participation at the local level has become an effec-
tive tool for social control.
38. Interview with neighborhood council leaders in Huechuraba, June 2000.
39. La Pintana, Pudahuel, Cerro Navia, Huechuraba, and Lo Espejo.
41. Anne Marie Smith, LaClau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary (New
York: Routledge, 1998), 9.
42. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and
Geoffrey Nowell Smith eds. (New York: International Press 1997).
43. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-
1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
44. Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life
(New York: Cambridge University Press 1998), 21.
45. Barber, Strong Democracy, 151.
46. Among the international organizations supporting such efforts is the Inter-American
Development Bank, which has provided funds to the Ministry of the Interior for programs
to strengthen municipal government. See Construyendo Juntos el Nuevo Municipio,
Ministerio del Interior-Subsecretaria de Desarrollo Regional y Administrativo Programa
de Fortalecimiento Municipal, 1999.
47. I have borrowed the term “close to home” from Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics.
48. Gramsci, Selections.

49. A “campamento” is a juridically unincorporated shantytown.

50. Consultorio—local community health care clinic.
51. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture Political Attitudes and
Democracy in Five Nations (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1989), 145.
52. Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics.
53. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.
54. Eliasoph, Avoiding Politics. See also Julia Paley, Marketing Democracy Power and
Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2001).
55. Interview with a neighborhood council leader in Huechuraba, October 2000.
56. Neighborhood council.
57. FOSIS, or Fondo de Solidaridad e Inversion Social (National Solidarity Fund), is a
central government agency that works closely with NGOs and grassroots organizations
primarily by distributing funds to grassroots organizations for the implementation of small
community development projects.
58. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
59. Pobladores is a term used to refer to shantytown dwellers and residents of low
income communities.
60. Interview with the director of DIDECO in the Municipality of Lo Espejo, May
2000.
61. Gramsci, Selections; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison (New York: Random House, 1977).
62. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170.
63. Ibid., 138.
64. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 37.
Edward F. Greaves is a visiting assistant professor of comparative politics and

international relations at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida. His regional inter-
ests are Latin America and the Middle East. His research focuses on decentraliza-
tion and democratization at the local level, and the impact that the creation of local
spaces for popular participation has on state power. His most current project exam-
ines the impact that administrative changes in the structure of political space has
had on the public sphere in Chile.

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10.

Municipality and Community in Chile:

Keywords: decentralization; participation; democratization; local governance;

Students of democracy and democratization have argued that participatory

POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 32 No. 2, June 2004 203-230

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PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE IN CHILE

Ironically, it is during the dictatorship that municipalities first came to be seen

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Participatory Governance in Comparative Perspective

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local associations are invited to participate on an ongoing basis throughout the

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cials from the office of community development (Directorio de Desarrollo

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promote grassroots decisionmaking styles) and by providing a forum for defining

THE POPULAR DEMOCRATIC IMAGINARY

The limitations of participatory governance in Chile are reflected in the views

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Huechuraba met to discuss the problems and dilemmas of popular participation in

In the municipality of Huechuraba, the report goes on to argue, “there is no such

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These comments, as well as the document elaborated by the Union Comunal of

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In order to gain insights into how residents of popular municipalities imagined

MUNICIPALITY AND COMMUNITY:

At the heart of empowered participatory governance is the transformation of

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The PLADECO Meetings

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institutional contexts, participation can become an application of the techniques

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marked for distribution to community organizations—should be spent on park

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establishing the parameters of grassroots participation, depriving grassroots orga-

The dynamics of PLADECO meetings provide a metaphor for the broader

REORGANIZING PARTICIPATION AND THE SPACE OF CITIZENSHIP

Like the Porto Alegre experiment, meetings in Huechuraba had a didactic

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Another municipal official stood up in front of the assembled dirigentes at the

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solution . . . we can’t nationalize health care, we can’t increase salaries, we can’t

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CIVIC COMPETENCE, “PROJECTIFICATION,”

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pursuing community development projects: going to the “muni” to seek projects

In short, the community center allowed municipal officials to effectively articu-

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CONCLUSION: HEGEMONIC PARTICIPATORY

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1. Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-

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23. Garreton, Hacia Una Nueva Era Politica, 47.

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49. A “campamento” is a juridically unincorporated shantytown.

Edward F. Greaves is a visiting assistant professor of comparative politics and