Establishing Intermediaries in Developing Mechanisms of Citizen Participation in La Silsa, Caracas, Venezuela

Abstract

This chapter seeks to discuss the experience of consejos comunales (CCs) and comuna in Venezuela using the cube of political intermediation (CPI) explained in the introduction of this book. Their model seeks to decen- tre political intermediation from political representation. It is argued that while political representation does encompass political intermediation, not all intermediation involves representation. Since 2006, Venezuela’s national government has sought to redefine representation by construct- ing the communal state and introducing mechanisms of participation in parallel to the federal state and government structures. Drawing on empir- ical research (observation and interviews) of CCs and comuna in La Silsa, Caracas, undertaken in 2013, the case enabled the cube’s three axes (rec- ognition, constraints and substantive content) alongside “circuits of repre- sentation” to be tested further. Two circuits in particular—“project” and “people”—are shown to interface and intersect. The chapter highlights that the CPI provides a way of systematising different circuits of represen- tation and the ways that these are enacted in practice. The empirical data also show that the CPI avoids traditional ways of conceptualising repre- sentation rooted in discrete categories such as participation/co-optation. Being able to differentiate such nuances is particularly pertinent in the case of Venezuela where co-optation of participation is a prevalent attribute used in scholarship.