The Governing Left in Uruguay (2005–2015): A Participatory Democratic Experiment

Abstract

An account of the first 10 years of government of a leftist party in Uruguay—the Frente Amplio—focusing on a mode of designing public policies that prioritized participation by civil society organizations suggests that this strategy distinguishes it from the preceding traditional party administrations and challenges the “liberal-democratic” label assigned to it by some of the high-profile specialized literature. Este análisis de los primeros diez años de gobierno de un partido de izquierda—el Frente Amplio—en Uruguay, hace foco en una modalidad de construcción de las políticas públicas que incorporó de manera jerarquizada la participación de la sociedad civil. Se argumenta que representa una estrategia alternativa a la desarrollada por los gobiernos de centro-derecha que le precedieron, que no encaja bien en la categoría “liberal democrática” en la que la sitúa parte de la literatura especializada.

Northern theories and Southern policies. Why the most influential approaches are insufficient for teaching public policy in Latin America

“…In some cases, the incorporation of social actors extended to the execution and monitoring of the implementation of policies in both traditional and novel policy areas. Although these novelties are related to the neo-corporate formats with the longest history, they differ from them by promoting the opening of the negotiation to a larger group of organizations and favoring the visibility of the procedure to all citizens (Author and Busquets, 2019; Ellner, 2016; Hernández Baqueiro, 2016).…”