Citizen Participation and the Construction of Citizenship

The objective of this work is to reflect about citizen participation and the construction of citizenship, processes that entail democratization in the global, regional and local society, central themes in the theoretical debate of political science today. It is assumed that these concepts are an intersubjective construction (dynamic and changing) of social perceptions in the political area; that is, they try to explain how citizenship is constructed, fundamentally at the local level (the real area of approach between politics and daily life) to which the citizen participation mechanisms, norms and instruments refer, with an eye to establishing their effect on citizen identity and imagination (new meanings for social and political co-existence). These processes of constructing citizenship at the local level are thought to model political relationships that can drive democracy. Conclusions are that the new practices and definitions regarding citizen participation can contribute to training a citizenry that moves toward a democracy associated with new meanings for citizen life identity.