The Glenn Colloquium Series

The Glenn Colloquium Series welcomes Dr. Cathy Rakowski, professor in SENR, who will present Venezuela's Experiment in Participatory Democracy -- The Case of Ciudad Guayana's First Mayoral Administration, 1990-95. Her presentation will begin at 12:30 p.m. in Page Hall room 130. Lunch will be served.

As part of Venezuela's process of political and administrative decentralization that began in the late 1980s, authority over a planned industrial city (founded in 1963) that had been built by and funded primarily through a regional economic development corporation was handed over to a new administrative entity--a mayor's office and newly democratized city council. Over the next 6 years, mayor Clemente Scotto and his team sought to teach politicians and citizens alike how to construct a participatory democracy that included shifting the city's reason for being from "supporting a grand industrialization scheme" that was the cornerstone to Venezuela's goal industrial diversification to "a city that takes care of its people." The talk focuses on the strategies introduced to achieve such a radical shift and problems that arose.

This series is presented by the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.