Ramirez Montenegro, Verónica; (2020) Participatory Democracy in South West Colombia: Municipal Planning Councils and Victims' Boards. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Given the attempts to improve institutions for participatory democracy in Colombia since 2011, this thesis sought to identify whether and how the institutional adjustments reached so far have contributed to the enhancement of participation. The research focused on two semi-representative local institutions involving deliberative logics: Municipal Planning Councils and Municipal Boards for the Effective Participation of Victims of the Armed Conflict (Victims’ Boards). Planning Councils were a key participatory space when these kinds of institutions were established in the country in the early nineties (first-generation). Victims’ Boards are part of a second group of participatory institutions with improved designs (second-generation). I carried out qualitative case-oriented comparative analysis with elements of a PAR approach, to examine the participatory processes within these two spaces in three Colombian municipalities: Cali, Buenaventura and Corinto. The results show that institutional adjustments such as those in the Victims Boards can improve participatory processes in terms of their inclusiveness, decision-making power and development of democratic tools and values. These effects, nevertheless, are affected by contextual challenges and complementary factors to institutional design. This thesis shares insights about the interactions between challenges, complementary factors and opportunities for further improvement of participatory democracy in Colombia. Empirical evidence suggests that contentious non-institutional participation is crucial for this purpose in the post-2016-Peace-Agreement context. Likewise, there are early indications of the potential that civil-society-led processes have for the transformation of power relations in Colombian territories when they combine repertoires of participatory and representative democracy. All these findings are worth considering in further efforts to democratise democracy and build peace in the country, as the Peace Agreement between the Colombian State and the FARC-EP, and the peace negotiations with the ELN intended to do.

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