Consultation for Peace (EZLN)
The Consultation for Peace was convened in August 1995 by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Span. EZLN) to hear the opinion of civil society on whether it agreed that the EZLN would drop its arms and become a party or political force. The EZLN commissioned the Civic Alliance, and the dissemination was completed by the National Democratic Convention, created in Aguascalientes, Chiapas in July 1994. The consultation had six questions: 1) Do you agree that the main demands of the Mexican people are: land, housing, work, food, health, education, culture, information, independence, democracy, liberty, justice and peace? 2) Should the different democratizing forces unite in a broad opposition front? 3) Should a thorough political reform be pursued in terms that ensure: equity, citizen participation, including non-partisan and non-governmental, respect for the vote, reliable pattern and recognition of all regional, local, and national political forces? 4) Should the EZLN become an independent and new political force? 5) Should the EZLN join other forces and organizations and form a new political organization? The consultation was a success because more than one million people gave their opinion in more than 10 thousand voting boxes throughout the territory.
Institutional design
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- Formalization
- not backed by constitution nor legislation, nor by any governmental policy or program
- Frequency
- single
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
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Ends
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