Participatory Democracy in Latin America and Beyond

Catalog description

Democracy is one of the most contested ideas of the modern world. In its original usage democracy referred to self-government or rule by the people. Modern democracy, as practiced in the United States and much of the world, has become increasingly dissociated from this idea. Instead of ordinary people directly participating in political decision-making, democracy is now commonly associated with elections and rule by political representatives. Alternative forms of democracy nonetheless continue to proliferate, in large part due to popular frustration with the limitations of representative democracy. This is particularly true of Latin America, where numerous participatory experiments, in which an attempt is made to align democratic practices more closely with the original ideal of democracy as self-government, have emerged over the last several decades. This course focuses on participatory democracy in Latin America, asking why participatory democracy emerges, how it works, whether and how it has allowed "the people" to govern itself, and what debates it has sparked in the region and beyond.