The impact of participatory and public communication on citizen's agency and democracy. A case study of the Colombian social movement in defence of water

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Latin America witnessed a crisis of neoliberalism.  The water management privatization policies promoted by the World Bank during the 1990s led to serious social and economic conflicts in the region.  Starting in 2000 with the ‘water war’ in Cochabamba, a ‘new cycle’ of collective action, emerged in the continent against the dominant neoliberal political regimes.  In Colombia, the consequences of water privatization gave way to a civil society campaign advocating for the defence of water as a human right and public good.

Public and participatory communication strategies were implemented by the Colombian water movement to gain citizens’ support, and raise their awareness about the water crisis locally and globally.  This paper focuses on the impact of these strategies on citizens’ democratic participation by analysing the extent to which participatory and public approaches in communication have influenced the exercise of democracy and the way of doing politics in Colombia.  In spite of the ‘traditional’ political competition in the country and the historical apathy toward political participation, the strength of the unifying message of water as a matter of public concern connected different social groups in the country. The communication strategy pushed many people to engage directly in political and mobilisation actions; the global objective of the defence of water was locally adapted by citizens according to the relevance of the topic to their regional problems.  The struggle for water in Colombia also raised wider questions about the ownership of other natural resources, common goods, and human rights that are now central political issues in Colombia.  Colombia is a particular case study because it is one of the few Latin American countries where the neoliberal hegemony was not severely affected by the ‘crisis of neoliberalism’ that changed the politics of the continent.