ABSTRACT
Organized participation has outlived the transitions back to democratic rule in Latin America. This chapter presents the Chilean case study which illustrates that after re-democratization, the transformed organizations constitute a civil society that is diffuse throughout and dense at the lower levels. Organized participation is dense at the lower levels and destitute at the upper tiers because of the fragmentation of social movements and umbrella groups, rendering organizations atomized, locally-focused and often incommunicative due to the lack of a hierarchy or coordinating body. In democratization, causation and change run in both directions. Levels of group participation after the transition have been neither startlingly successful nor a radical failure. Organizations in Latin America, and in Chile in particular, have transformed to adapt to their new political environment by becoming more local and particularistic, as well as less overtly political than during the authoritarian era.
