The challenges of participation. The case of urban strategic planning in Argentina

IVANA SOCOLOFF

Sydney (Australia)

Congreso; National IPAA Conference. The future of Public Service: striking the right balance; 2008

Institute of Public Administration Australia

Participation of non-governmental organization (NGOs) in public policy design has been widely spread in the past decades as a technique that is expected to bring efficiency to policies and to combat the “crisis of representation” that affects nowadays democracies around our globalized world. But problems not contemplated by politicians nor experts arise in the implementation of the programs that have local-state-promoted participation. On the one hand, public administrators are challenged in their institutional representation by the participatory representation created when NGO’ leaders are called to take part in the programs. On the other hand, conflict takes place among the organizations in the process of becoming the “real” representatives of “the neighbors” (or “the community”) to the eyes of the administrators. Therefore, not only integration but also unsolved tension appears in the programs analyzed. In this paper, we will examine the urban strategic plans in Argentina (focusing in Buenos Aires, the biggest and most numerous city) and how open participation has been publicly promoted, but many times avoided by administrators and NGO leaders through multiple formal and informal channels. We will describe and explain the creation of new relations between NGO leaders and public administrators and, specially, the building of capacities required so that the implementation of the policies succeeds. Some recommendations to public administrators will also be made to achieve effective partnership in a typical Latin American context characterized by: a recently reborn democracy (in Argentina, after the end of the last dictatorial government in 1983), a crisis of representation (in Argentina, clear during 2001 episodes), a fragmented/polarized civil society, and a spread distrust both in the State and in “the others”.  The work is based on data collected through observation and discourse analyses during 2006-2007.