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Since 2015, local governments of 30 Mexican states have joined the National Open Government Partnership to enhance openness through mechanisms of transparency, accountability and citizen participation. The objective of this paper is to analyze the frameworks promoted by the State Government of Michoacán on public participation since the adoption of an open government policy. To achieve the objective, press releases from the Michoacán State Government's page were collected and subsequently examined through a framing analysis. Findings indicate that this subnational government has framed public participation in two ways: as a democratic advance and as a transfer of responsibilities to citizens. At the same time, there is a recognition of new public and private actors sharing public decisions with the government. Despite the progress found in this subnational context, the authors warn of serious risks due to the absence of clear rules for the implementation of mechanisms for public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes "Concejo a la casa", the initiative developed by DemoLab, the Open Council Laboratory of Bogota, as the first case of political innovation in Colombia that uses lottery as a selection mechanism for a process of citizen participation. It builds upon both the conceptual framework based on political innovation and lottery, and the descriptive analysis of the data collected by "Concejo a la casa" to explore the relationship between the descriptive representation of randomness and the conditions that enhance the reduction of some barriers and bias related to participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a number of years now, analyses of the political participation of women have warned of a very low presence of these in the various parliaments of the world. The diagnosis of female underrepresentation was a warning sign for different international organisms, which initiating from successive calls started to plan a review of the situation so that various countries would commit themselves to adopt measures to modify it. This paper has the goal of describing the current outlook of women and politics in Latin America, with special attention paid to the Colombian case, focusing fundamentally on the adoption of gender quotas as a strategy of positive discrimination that might contribute to a larger participation of women in the politics of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a current picture of the inhabitants of Bogota, in the light of three main areas: Democratic Culture, Citizen Culture and Policy Culture, which converge on a concept we refer to as the Public Cultures. The analysis of the Public Cultures stems from the Fifth Biennial Survey of Cultures, an instrument developed by the Bogotá city government through the Observatory of Cultures, a bureau of the Secretary of Culture, Recreation and Sports. The response of over 13000 inhabitants in the 19 burroughs of the city are depicted in the 2009 survey. The article presents findings on the degree of tolerance, respect for differences, civic and democratic values, perceived conflicts and political participation of the people of Bogotá. Readers may take this information and subsequent analysis to deepen their knowledge and commitment to building a sense of belonging in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a few years of implementation, the Bolsa Familia Program, which covers more than 12 million families, has become the largest program of income transfer in the world and confirmed the distribution of money as the predominant form of social policy in Brazil. Despite the evidence of the effectiveness of such intervention in the economic sphere, when we look at the relationship between the beneficiaries and the agents responsible for the policy, other research questions emerge. When analyzing the trajectory of this policy from the federal sphere to the beneficiary, one can recognize the diverse paths the implementation of this program takes. This paper inquires about the impacts of this program on citizenship, through the organization and participation (or absence) of the beneficiaries in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]