Whether referendums, initiatives, and other mechanisms of direct democracy enhance representative systems is a matter of debate. Skeptics note—among other criticisms—that turnout tends to be low in referendums, often lower than in candidate elections in the same country. If citizens do not care enough to participate, how useful can these mechanisms be for improving the quality of democratic systems? We argue that low referendum turnout has as much to do with parties’ disincentives to mobilize voters as it does with voter disinterest. Prior research on political behavior in referendums has focused largely on Europe and assumes that voters view them as elections of lesser importance. By shifting focus to Latin America, we introduce more variation in the features of political parties that influence levels of turnout. We draw on cross-national evidence, qualitative research in Colombia, and quantitative analysis of municipal-level referendum voting behavior in Brazil. The key to understanding low voter turnout in these settings is the relatively weaker incentives that political parties have to turn out the vote when control over office is not at stake. We demonstrate that, in clientelistic systems, party operatives have particularly weak incentives to get their constituents out to the polls.

The literature on political participation has consistently found that protest positively and significantly correlates with voting. However, Chile can be considered a deviant case to this pattern. During the last decade, Chileans who participated in street demonstrations were unlikely to participate in elections. What explains this anomaly? We argue that this rupture between participation in protest and in elections results from an effective distancing between social-movement organisations (SMOs) and institutional politics. However, this distancing of SMOs from party politics has not been homogeneous. To examine this heterogeneity, we conduct a comparative design of two cases: the labour and student movements. Based on a mixed-methods study that combines interviews with movement leaders and surveys of protest participants in marches, we seek to highlight the mediating role of SMOs in the promotion of different forms of political participation.

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el Foro Nacional de Agricultura Familiar como dispositivo estatal de participación y encuadramiento de los sujetos subalternos rural-agrarios en Argentina. Para ello, retomamos los estudios y debates nacionales e internacionales sobre comportamiento y participación política en áreas rurales. Luego, desde un enfoque etnográfico, analizamos las tramas organizacionales y el proceso de configuración de este dispositivo describiendo las diferentes perspectivas de los agentes involucrados: funcionarios políticos, agentes estatales y dirigentes. Como resultado, elaboramos una tipología de organizaciones a partir de analizar la estructura y el volumen del capital de sus agentes.

Participatory democrats argue that citizen engagement at the local level serves an important educational function. Through involvement in participatory mechanisms, citizens develop various skills, become better informed, and cultivate a greater sense of political efficacy. There has been considerable debate in the academic literature over the extent to which participation can produce these benefits, but deliberative and participatory theoretical approaches have been criticised for neglecting power dynamics within participatory mechanisms themselves, and for overlooking structural inequalities between women and men. Numerous critics have charged that participatory mechanisms tend to mask, but not eliminate, gender inequalities, particularly in societies where these remain firmly entrenched. While the theory on the educational function of participatory democracy is well developed, there remains a lack of empirical work on the impact of participation on women in Latin America, a region that has been at the forefront of democratic innovation. Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, Ecuador and Chile, this article identifies the types of skills that women gain through participation, and questions the extent to which these reproduce traditional gender roles.

This article examines the formation of Admapu – an organisation representing a broad sector of Mapuche society that resisted the actions of the Chilean dictatorship during the 1980s. In political memory, the period of agrarian reform marks a time of hope and strong participation, but here we show how an autonomy project developed within Admapu conflicted with those making political alliances with the Chilean Left. We examine the internal dynamics within Admapu, and argue that at the end of the decade the organisation divided into factions that cemented a rupture with the political system and brought about the formation of contemporary resistance movements.

The power of the elites became the dominant explanation of the extension of the franchise and expansion of the provision of public services. Peru from 1876 to 1940 presents a contrasting case. Although restricting political participation through literacy requirements, Peru saw an increase in literacy and schooling. Nevertheless, the relative power of the national and local elites articulated the national policies resulting in unequal provision of education. Constrained political access of the economic minority, the indigenous population, translated into a widening gap in terms of educational attainment.