Contra la participación: discurso y realidad de las experiencias de participación ciudadana

Abstract

Since the nineties of the last century, local governments have designed and implemented many initiatives about citizen participation. These initiatives have been presented as a solution to the political disengagement and to the democratic deficit of representative institutions. Nevertheless, an analysis of the current ways of participation in Spanish local governments reveals that the declared aims are too ambiguous and generic whereas they are perfectly compatible with the traditional opacity of Spanish public administrations. On the other hand, citizens simply do not participate, political representatives make profit of these policies as a tool for their own legitimization without transforming them in initiatives to transfer real power to citizens and political parties and organised groups try to occupy these spaces of interaction with civil society.