Participatory systems in Brazil and Venezuela: Origins and twilights of two models

Abstract

The gamut of participatory reforms to include citizens in Latin America has varied widely in scope, content, implementation, and impact. This article compares the cases of Brazil and Venezuela, which were considered as exemplary in the field of participatory democracy by different observers, to ask how and why their participatory systems vary in their design and why they are no longer examples. In short, the differences in design are due to the different origins of the two models, in Brazil’s democratic transition and in Venezuela’s democratic crisis. To explain their varying results, in addition to the obvious negative consequences of the recent economic crises, we argue that, on one hand, Brazil’s participatory system lost its popular roots by shifting to a more organizational approach and scaling up to a macro level, and, on the other hand, Venezuela’s participatory institutions took too much of a partisan approach and focused too much on the micro level.