In an interview today, one of my interview subjects talked a bit about the reasons for the decline of an important participatory forum here in Carhuaz. In between comments about "kids today" and questions about life in the states, she said that there were two reasons for this decline.
And as it turns out, this middle class Peruvian from a small town in the Andes is a rational choicer.
First, there is a cost associated with participating in such an organization, both in terms of time and in terms of money (in many cases, at least). These costs can deter many people from getting involved in the first place.
However, there are benefits to belonging to such an organization—among other things, there is the opportunity to press for policy change at the local level in a particular form that may be more advantageous to you. This is a real possibility in a small place like this, where you might be one of only a couple real movers and shakers in the political scene.
So basically, your probability of joining such an organization would be a function of the utility you were likely to receive from joining. But if your opportunity to shape policy is lower, than there is less of an incentive to join, because you lose that piece of the utility you would get from participating.
So broadly, if you have a mayor or local government uninterested in what your organization has to say, there will be fewer people interested in participating.
As such, one might argue that the presence of a strong civil society is contingent upon the existence of a fair degree of give and take between government and civil society. A democratic government might need a strong civil society to be effective, but a strong civil society also needs government.
This is a little different from my take on government in the rural areas, where there is no state presence, so your probability of participating in a “participatory forum” that resolves local problems might be much higher.
I’m an anarcho-communitarian again.
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