The need to learn to participate: neocorporativism and bureaucratic response in the institutional participation of the Local Forums of the Madrid City Council

Abstract

The Local Forums of the Madrid City Council, as a mechanism to encourage participation in an institutional manner, are not a novelty as public policy (Sintomer and Ganuza, 2011), nor in their deliberative consequences. Making a review of the theoretical framework on the «internal deliberative impact» (French, 2017: 55) of the processes of institutional participation —Avritzer (2000), Talpin (2012), Cardoso et al. (2011), Ganuza y Francés (2012) and Martín y Fernández (2018)— two concepts —neocorporativism and bureaucratic retreat— already proposed by the Ioé Collective in the mid-80s during the first «participation by invitation» period are collected. , which have also had their echo during the 15M «participation by irruption» period in the so-called culture of political efficacy (Razquin, 2017). This situation shows that there are different conceptions around what is meant by participation (García-Espín, Ganuza and De Marco, 2017: 57) to which are added the difficulties to be an open and unifying space for citizens in general that do not fall into the technical specialization of participation. Taking the case of the Local Forums of the City of Madrid will point out the need to learn to participate by motivating and explaining what this participation consists of and giving tools for the —not always so simple— citizen deliberation.