De la descentralización territorial a la descentralización participativa en Venezuela.

Along with the promotion of a market economy, the Venezuelan state promoted a process of political territorial de-centralization that has suffered changes with the approval of a new constitution. The purpose of this paper is to study citizen participation in sub-national governmental levels in the de-centralization model. The results indicate that: 1) decentralization was applied during the nineteen-nineties with little citizen participation and with parallel pressures from civic societal organizations looking to obtain participation, 2) a new constitutional framework at the end of the 1990s established the bases for citizen participation on sub-national levels, 3) a law promoted by the government was approved for Local Planning Councils and a law for Community Councils, which gives power to the formulation of sub-national public policy in organized societies, in order to advance in the application of participation established in a new constitutional framework, 4) a process of formation for the application of new legal conditions promoted by sectors of the National Assembly, the National Government, and base organizations in society, 5) obstacles to its application were presented by local governments, and other sectors antagonistic to the national government. The conclusion was that during the early 1990s a territorial de-centralization of power occurred which negated citizen participation, while towards the end of the same decade a process of participatory decentralization of organized society occurred which encountered restrictions on the part of the promoters of the previous decentralization model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]