Citizen Participation in Local Regulatory Governance Processes. Analysis of Normative Production in the Municipality of Medellín (Colombia) (2017-2018)

Abstract

In the processes of public decision-making open government initiatives have proven to be valuable instruments for a better quality of democratic decisions. They might contribute with improved decisions, namely, well founded and more legitimate. Broad participation drive to better deliberation, which have epistemic and moral value, as well as transformative value. People feel that they ought to comply voluntarily with decisions rather than out of fear of punishment. This article critically analyzes the participatory mechanism deployed by the municipality of Medellín (Colombia) to receive observations or alternative suggestions in certain decrees before enactment. There have been put in place institutional reforms due to the incorporation of Colombia into the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd). One of them is associated with the component of "normative or regulatory governance" destined to the improvement of decision making process. The examined mechanism is welloriented: its foundation lay in the well-known performances of democratic deliberation in several processes of participatory decision-making. However, its design and implementation has shown several problems. The findings' relevance o the paper transcends our particular subject matter because it shows a way in which might be further adopted a mechanism like this -as well as the defects that it should avoid- in other Colombian and Latin-American cities.