Occupying political space? Interpreting Venezuela opposition’s beliefs and actions towards Chavista mechanisms of citizen participation

• In Event: Political Participation and Political Preferences

Abstract

Since 1999, Venezuelan public policy discourse has emphasised citizen participation in public matters. The constitution and subsequent laws enable citizens to become involved in developing plans, policy and projects at community and municipal levels. The paper draws on 10 months of fieldwork, involving ethnography, participant observation and extensive interviews with community sectors and political elites in Baruta and Chacao - two predominantly ‘opposition’ municipalities in Caracas. Using an interpretive institutionalist framework (Bevir 2010; Bevir and Rhodes 2003; Hay 2011; Martin 2015) the paper seeks to provide explanations and a narrative for the way actors in these two municipalities understood, interpreted and performed their respective roles in community/ municipal spaces of citizen participation and state-civil society relations. Consequently, the paper provides a new perspective on actors’ rationales and motivations for participating in mechanisms (such as communal councils and the construction of the ‘communal state’) that they were openly opposed to.

Author

• Graham Martin, Cardiff University