Intermediation and Representation in Latin America

Actors and Roles Beyond Elections

Gisela Zaremberg, Valeria Guarneros-Meza, Adrián Gurza Lavalle, Gisela Zaremberg, Valeria Guarneros-Meza, Adrián Gurza Lavalle

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319515373
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319515380
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book shows how the introduction of  intermediation is relevant in studying political and public policy processes, as they are increasingly accompanied by grey spaces in public and non-public arenas that cannot be categorized as purely representative or purely participative. Instead, 'hybrid' mechanisms are developing in the policy-making process, which bring in new actors who either are unelected while being required to represent or advocate for the common good of others or are directly elected but challenged by identity/rights-based issues of the people they are required to act in the best interest of. By proposing a conceptual frame on intermediation and addressing five different Latin American countries and a wide range of case studies —from human rights, labour relations, neighbourhood management, municipal bureaucracies, social accountability, to complex national systems of citizen participation—this volume shows the versatility and validity of a tridimensional frame,  the "cube of political intermediation" (CPI) as a tool for analysing public policy and understanding contemporary democratic innovation in Latin America. 

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Acronyms
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Chapter 1: Introduction: Beyond Elections: Representation Circuits and Political Intermediation
• Chapter 2: Political Intermediation and Public Policy in Brazil: Councils and Conferences in the Policy Spheres of Health and Women’s Rights
• Chapter 3: Establishing Intermediaries in Developing Mechanisms of Citizen Participation in La Silsa, Caracas, Venezuela
• Chapter 4: Political Rights and Intermediation: Municipal Decentralization and Democratic Innovation in Uruguay
• Chapter 5: Bolivia: “Social Control” as the Fourth State Power 1994–2015
• Chapter 6: Citizen Security in Mexico: Examining Municipal Bureaucracy from the View of the Intermediation–Representation Debate
• Chapter 7: Conflicts of Representation and Redistribution in the Mexican Labour World
• Chapter 8: The Political–Legal Representation Circuit of Human Rights Politics
• Chapter 9: Conclusions and Future Research Agenda
• Index