Local Citizen Assemblies
The Local Citizen Assemblies were conceived as spaces for citizen participation within the Ecuadorian constitution of 2008. They serve the purpose of organizing citizens at the base in order to strengthen and enhance the dialogue and collaboration with public authorities and institutions at the local and national level. Their main focus areas include deliberation, the development of policy proposals tailored for the community and the planning of local accountability mechanisms. Their most salient task is the oversight of development projects in their territory and they constitute the highest authority for local participation systems (be it at the parrochial, city or provincial level). These Assemblies are regulated by the National Law of Citizen Participation and they do not reach binding decisions but rather make recommendations.
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
- embedded in the constitution/legislation
- Frequency
- regular
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens civil society
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- yes
Means
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Ends
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