Participatory institutions of communication policies in Latin America. Models, barriers, achievements, and challenges

This article evaluates the capacity of participatory state institutions of communication policies created in this century in Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay to face the capture by political and economic elites. Through a comparative approach, it analyzes the regulation and its performance based upon official documents, specialized bibliography, and interviews. It does so from the methodological guide provided by disaggregated variables of the concept of citizen participation. The evaluation is organized from the axes of: diversity and implementation; incidence, autonomy and transparency in regulations and in their performance. The selected cases allow the analysis of different legislations, participatory organisms, and political processes. The paper concludes that the participatory organizations achieved, occasionally, to limit the capture of policies or to generate valuable antecedents in that search, at least temporarily. However, the activity of these entities failed to prevent the capture of the policies by economic and political elites. Therefore, they did not reach enough influence to substantially modify the communication system. Despite this, it may list a set of unintended and difficult -to -measure positive outcomes linked to the enrichment of democratic and civic practices. It recognizes models of participatory institutions, constraints in implementing such processes, and political and economic obstacles in these organizations.