The institutionalization of social control in Ecuador: the possibilities and tensions of participatory mechanisms

Abstract

At the end of the nineties, Ecuador experienced a period of political crisis in which representative institutions were questioned. During a process in which the political class became discredited, two constitutional reforms instituted citizen distrust as a social control over power: the Civic Commission for the Control of Corruption (1998); and the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control (2008). This text examines the framework in which social control operated during the period of Rafael Correa’s presidency, stressing the tensions of participatory institutions with representation and the majority exercise of power and exposing the implications of the new arenas of citizen participation to analyze State democratization processes