ABSTRACT
Since the return to democracy, the field of civil society in Latin America has been a very active one, promoting new forms of organizations, of politics and of civic forms of engagement. Processes of social innovation contributed to renew and expand the practice of democratic representation in various and original ways, from the emergence of rights and accountability politics to the establishment of different forms of policy councils that promote the active participation of civil society organizations (CSOs) in policy-making. Traditional ways of understanding civil society’s contribution to democratic politics were challenged by the rise of those novel forms of citizen participation, forcing political scientists and sociologists to reflect on the particular contribution that new forms of collective action made to the political process. On several occasions, innovative forms of intervention have questioned the standard frame for analyzing the role of civil society under democracy and called for an expansion of the conceptual toolbox for thinking about the role of CSOs in contemporary Latin America.
