The Community Councils (CC) are representative and deliberative bodies for citizen participation. They engage communities to propose, debate, formulate, decide, manage and evaluate public policy projects. They have entities for administration and financing, civic control and execution. They can be made up of between 150 and 400 families in urban areas, with a minimum of 20 families in rural areas, and 10 families in indigenous communities. For its operation, a community council chooses spokespersons or representatives who must receive 30% of the votes of adults over fifteen years or 20% in a second round. These representatives are in charge of forming work committees and can serve for two years with the possibility of reelection or revocation of the mandate by the assembly. The work committees deal with matters pertaining to health, family and gender, economy, security, housing, alternative means, and education, among other matters. Final decisions are made in the citizens' assembly and must receive the support in the presence of at least 30% of residents or 20% in a second round. Its financing depends directly on the Central Government, which has transferred billions of strong Bolivars to these instances. In 2009 there were about 30 000 community councils and it is estimated that more than eight million people have participated in them
Formalization: is the innovation embedded in the constitution or legislation, in an administrative act, or not formalized at all?
Frequency: how often does the innovation take place: only once, sporadically, or is it permanent or regular?
Mode of Selection of Participants: is the innovation open to all participants, access is restricted to some kind of condition, or both methods apply?
Type of participants: those who participate are individual citizens, civil society organizations, private stakeholders or a combination of those?
Decisiveness: does the innovation takes binding, non-binding or no decision at all?
Co-governance: is there involvement of the government in the process or not?
- embedded in the constitution/legislation
- Mode of selection of participants
- Type of participants
- citizens civil society
- democratic innovation yields a binding decision