Derecho de participación ciudadana en el contexto constitucional de 2008 del Ecuador

Abstract

The right to citizen participation and the guarantees to exercise it are embodied in the constitutional and infra-constitutional regulations in Ecuador. This study questions how this right has progressed in regards to the period of the transition regime versus the definitive period in the field of institutional integration: The Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control -CPCCS-. It is analyzed, from a multidisciplinary methodological approach, citizen participation as a process of insertion in the institutional framework of the CPCCS. With this approach, the case of selection of the members of the CPCCS is also reviewed, through a public contest of opposition and merits; lists sent by the Executive; and, which later, is transformed into an election process by popular vote, that is, electoral participation. Gender analysis is included in the investigation in the cases of integration of the CPCCS Transitional, Transitory and Popular Election Regime; as well as the composition of the Constitutional Court -CC. Additionally, the actions of the CC are reviewed, as the entity in charge of the highest interpretation and constitutional resolution, basically of two interpretative sentences referring to the Council of Citizen Participation and Social Control Transition Regime -CPCCS RT- and the Council of Citizen Participation and Temporary Social Control -CPCCS T-. In this context, the strengthening of democracy and the right to citizen participation are dimensioned and questioned as part of neo-constitutionalism and the new Latin American constitutionalism, approaching the necessary Open Participatory Democracy with the preparatory phase of a model for verification and selection of authorities with the open government perspective.