Transformative Participation in Venezuela

Communal Councils in Venezuela are the last experiment of participatory democracy that the government has created in order to achieve the promised transformation of the revolutionary process started in 1998. Throughout the country thousands of these self-governing units at community level have been formed with the goal of addressing the people's most urgent needs. The creation of a new political elite under President Hugo Chavez Frias, who has been ruling the country since 1998, has created serious social cleavages which have been conducive of high levels of political confrontation. The success of the model of communal councils in the communities depends in part on the maturity of the government to isolate this experiment of popular participation from the political antagonisms lived in the country. This research has explored in the field the reality of this situation and how promising these councils are in the task of achieving a true transformative participation.