Paths For Building Strong Participatory Institutions in Latin America

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Abstract
Her work is inserted in the debate on institutional strength, which represented an inflection in the institutionalist studies that, until then, focused on the institutional design as the determinant variable for political results. On the other hand, the idea of institutional strength provides importance to the broader conditions on which the effectiveness and the stability of the institutions themselves might be dependent (LEVITSKY and MURILLO, 2013, 2009). It is based on that benchmark that Mayka (2019) dialogues with the bibliography about IPs, thus providing a precious contribution to the Brazilian studies, mainly taking into consideration the current political changes that make the future of those institutions in Brazil uncertain. After three decades of expansion, what we ask today is to what extent they gathered strength to remain active in a new scenario in which those in power not only express clear preferences for centralized power arrangements, but they also systematically disqualify the democratic institutions as mediators between State and society. When it qualifies and conceptualize the different dimensions, the determinant factors and the possible results of the institutionalization processes of participation, Mayka’s work (2019) provides important inputs for us to scrutinize the institutional strength of the Brazilian IPs based on that scenario.