From the Force of Law to Miracle of Action

Local Governments and Citizen Participation in Uruguay

Abstract

From their origin, the Uruguayan municipal governments incorporated the citizen participation postulate. However, the municipal legislation includes the normative content of this mandate as a generic principle, highly ambiguous and with limited operability. Faced with this, the attempt to legally stipulate mandatory mechanisms that local governments would have to replicate appears as an attractive alternative. This paper points out a set of critical arguments that warn about some potential problems generated by compulsory regulations of citizen participation. Based on the experience of other Latin-American countries, it is shown how this type of legislation ignores core conditions required for citizen participation became a contribution in order to democratize local governments. Especially, it is discussed the importance of the political will as an angular stone for succeed implementation. In the Uruguayan context, it is observed that different intensity degree of municipal authorities’ participative vocations is influenced by the programmatic and discursive traditions of the main political parties of the country. This circumstance would depict an additional obstacle for pro-participation laws application.