Subnational Disparity in the Degree of Civic Participation in Chile: Local Context and Intra-governmental Relationship

• In Event: 282 - Student Forum Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 04. Revolution, Social Movements, and the World

Abstract

Why do some civic associations work while others not within a country? In the
developing world, the relationship between deepening democracy and citizen participation is
an important issue. Previous studies have demonstrated that strong left party,
welfare-oriented government, strong civil society and the degree of decentralizations are
conditions to work civic associations. Actually, however, subnational disparity in working
associations still exists.
The paper analyzes Chilean community association Neighborhood Councils (NCs).
Chile is said to be a relatively strong democratic country among the developing countries but
to have weak democracy at local level. NCs are suitable to do cross-regional and municipal
comparison because they are established throughout the country but the number of NCs are
varied in each municipality.
The study highlights the important role that geographical context and
intra-governmental relationship among local governments (the degree of local governmental strength) play in the number of community organization. To support the argument, this study
analyzes the participation level in neighborhood councils of 345 municipalities from 2002 to
2013, using the Undersecretary for Regional Development data by multilevel analysis. The
results show that capital cities have more NCs than others and weak municipalities have
less number of NCs than strong ones. Through the analysis, the paper encourages our
understanding of how the local politics are in developing country.

Author

• Kayo Hoshino, The University of Tokyo