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This book consists of a group of essays about participatory democracy in Latin America. Participatory democracy is direct citizen participation in the political arena; it is outside the system of elections, political parties and representative institutions. Examples appear in the constitutions of Bolivia and Venezuela; in the community councils of Nicaragua and Venezuela and in the policy conferences of Brazil. They are part of the same revolt against the failures of neo-liberalism that characterized the mass mobilizations of the 1990s and 2000s. This rebellion also toppled governments in Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador. The wave of popular protest is background to the emergence of institutions of participatory democracy. These institutions sprang from the recognition of major defects in electoral democracy. Representative institutions did not represent the marginalized and were unresponsive to their needs. They formed a part of elite rule. Participatory democracy gave voice to the previously excluded. It was seen as a corrective to the rule of rotating elites.
