Community Participation in Health: Reflections on the possibilities of democratizing the sector

Abstract

Social participation in South America emerges strongly in recent decades in Chile and, specifically, from the nineties is conducted at the state level initiatives to implement policies in pursuit of citizen participation, social and community life. The inclusion of this mechanism in governance is used as a key strategy in the processes of democratization and modernization and state in the search for greater efficiency and better governance. The health sector, one of the favourites this policy has many and varied experiences in social and community participation, which could be thought of as democratizing institutions. But are these spaces suitable for generating processes of empowerment and effective participation by citizens and social organizations or community? Based on this question is undertaken a reflection on the key concepts of the semantics of participation and its deployment within the framework of the peculiar combination that is between a democratic tradition weakened in many areas of state action and policy for many years of dictatorship, and authoritarian parent present at the heart of biomedicine.