Do Public Sector Innovations Influence the State-Society Relation? Theoretical and Methodological Contributions to Evaluate Participatory Public Policies in Latin America

Citizen participation is a central component among the most innovative ways of managing the public sector. As such, it contributes to the practices of associationor articulation between the actors and the State, enhancing skills, capacities, and social ties, democratizing public management and collaborating in the possibility of moving towards policy co-production schemes. During the exceptional period of the last few years, changes in the development of participatory policies in Latin America have been observed, but also setbacks. The objective of this paper is to present an instrument to evaluate the impact of citizen involvement in policy processes, considering the situation of recent years and its repercussions on the participatory management. To this end, a matrix scheme is used that covers the multiple dimensions of participation in each of the stages of public policy. Contextual elements are also incorporated to adapt the tool to the particularities of each territory. This scheme is based on the results of previous research, an exhaustive bibliographic survey and the comparative analysis of case studies in the region -where subnational and local governments from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil and Argentina are incorporated- in order to have devices to monitor the effects of the innovations produced in the public sector and their impact on the modes of linkage, articulation and coordination between the State and society.