Introduction

As our world becomes increasingly globalized and digitized, we are also becoming arguably more disconnected than ever. The forces that connect us, such as the internet and multinational institutions, are mammoth powers growing increasingly far away from the individual citizens involved in them as well as those they serve, ushering in distinct and widespread inequity. Despite this, it has been demonstrated that citizen participation in the state remains a powerful force of seeding accountability and spurring grassroots methods of change. Models of citizen participation crop up around the world and hinge on power-sharing between parties to create more equitable systems from the ground up. Through three case studies from the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, this book will examine the role of citizen participation in bridging the gap between the citizen and the state.

The first chapter will discuss the use of the internet in civil participation. We are increasingly surrounded by electronics and the internet, and with this progression further into a digital age, forms of civil participation are developing alongside it. While traditional methods such as town halls and street protests remain, nowadays websites and instant messaging services too can act as platforms for participation. With this interconnectivity comes the growing empowerment of citizens to voice their opinions and create meaningful change in their communities. Yet, traditional strategies and their methodologies remain very important factors to target and implement important change. Moreover, the disparities in internet access make gathering a representative voice from a community a challenge. Nonetheless, by using the internet as an empowering platform in today’s global society, people can reclaim civil control over their communities and create impactful change.

Citizen participation models also hold implications for fostering citizen autonomy and empowerment in institutions that have a history of discrimination and exclusivity. Within the neoliberal economy, these institutions continue to grow increasingly profitable and thus farther away from the realities of the communities they supposedly serve. The second chapter will explore an emerging model of citizen participation in the medical institution: shared decision-making. This chapter details shared decision-making between physicians and patients as a framework for patient-centered care. Beyond fostering patient autonomy over their bodies and treatment plans, the implementation of the citizen participation model holds promise for seeding wider institutional accountability. While critical to reintroducing democratic processes into the massive and growing healthcare industry, effective implementation of the participation model into this private participation sphere will require an expansion of results-oriented research and institutional transparency.

In the final chapter, we will discuss insurgency as a valid form of citizen participation in an increasingly interconnected and inequitable world. After the installation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, the twenty-first century ushered in new global connections and expanded neoliberalism’s dominance over international economic relationships. We will be looking, in particular, at the indigenous Zapatista movement to understand the ways in which militancy and guerilla war tactics continue to play a role in disrupting the sociopolitical institutions that engender imbalances of power and resources. While rooted in the efforts by Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution of the early nineteen-hundreds, the Zapatista community calls out the growth of injustice under neoliberal capitalism and continues to advocate for indigenous autonomy and cultural practice rights. Zapatista organizing and resistance actively dismantle traditional notions of authority and reclaim agency for Chiapas’ indigenous communities.

Within each participation model discussed in the subsequent chapters, citizen participation provides a constructive space for beginning to both reintroduce citizen voices as well as explore both the possibilities and limits of this participation going into the future. In the three efforts described here, citizens seek greater autonomy through participation, whether using the internet, shared decision-making in the medical visit, or fighting for personal freedom and separation from the neoliberal government. This book will explore the concept of citizen participation in three distinct contexts in order to understand their relevance in reconnecting the individual and the state in the postmodern era.