El Salvador

Open Town Hall

The open town hall (?Cabildo Abierto?) is a citizen meeting with the municipal government to discuss and address issues of public interest. They can be called by the Mayor or at request of a citizen initiative backed up by a specific percentage of the municipality's population. As an open assembly, the governors present proposals, challenges or projects of the municipality and are thereby accountable to the public. In some cases, citizens may submit topics and proposals to vote. The origin of this institution goes back to the colonial era, when the first local authorities met with neighbors to deal with public affairs.

Institutional design

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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
sporadic
Mode of selection of participants
open 
Type of participants
citizens  
Decisiveness
democratic innovation yields no decision  
Co-Governance
yes 

Means


  • Deliberation
  • Direct Voting
  • E-Participation
  • Citizen Representation

Ends


  • Accountability
  • Responsiveness
  • Rule of Law
  • Political Inclusion
  • Social Equality

Policy cycle

Agenda setting
Formulation and decision-making
Implementation
Policy Evaluation

How to quote

Do you want to use the data from this website? Here’s how to cite:

Pogrebinschi, Thamy. (2017). LATINNO Dataset. Berlin: WZB.

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