Neighborhood Committees
The urban and rural Neighborhood Committees are organizations with a long history in Ecuador, and are even mentioned as beginning the rebellions against the Spanish Crown in the eighteenth century, leading to the precursory movements of Independence. During the 20th century, these Committees played a decisive role in generating pressure on the authorities to meet the demands of basic services. They have been essential players throughout the city, becoming influential factors for municipal policies and political participation in local and national concerns, through political parties, popular mobilizations or as voters. Since the consolidation of the urbanization process in Ecuador, these organizations have played a prominent role in building support bases for the various movements and political leaders. However, by 2017, the constitutive statute of some of these organizations stated that they could not participate as partisan political actors. According to official statistics, participation in neighborhood committees are higher in rural vs. urban areas, and tends to be higher among men, indigenous people and people over 35 years of age. Often, in turn, these committees are the instrument selected by the popular and low-income sectors to overcome their pressing needs. As an example, according to the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (Span. MIES), in the province of Pichincha there are 636 neighborhood committees that work or manage, access to basic services, legalization of land or the attainment of public works, such as roads, parks and other community equipment.
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
- regular
- Mode of selection of participants
- open
- Type of participants
- citizens
- Decisiveness
- democratic innovation yields a non-binding decision
- Co-Governance
- no
Means
|
Ends
|
