Since the return to democracy, the fi eld 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 refl ect 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.
