Citizen Participation and the Political Order Resulting From Administrative and Constitutional ReForms

The work aims to reflect on citizen participation and its achievements based on the administrative and constitutional reforms experienced in Venezuela and Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. Methodologically, a documentary review is conducted to establish the relationship between citizen participation as a pillar of administrative/constitutional reforms and their achievements aimed at re-politicizing citizenship or a more democratic political order than the model of representative democracy. The contexts are analyzed in the cases of Colombia and Venezuela to establish the changes favoring the new political order. Besides, information and data produced by social scientists and public and international organizations made available in open-access systems were examined. In brief, citizen participation shows a strong legislative-formal development; however, political and economic dynamics have ended up erecting barriers to its political achievement, becoming even a notable weakness of the model that, in principle, is based precisely on the existence of dense and sustainable citizen participation.