Resumen

GARCIA-GUADILLA, María Pilar. The Functioning of the Communal Councils in Venezuela: Popular Power or Clientelism?. Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales [online]. 2008, vol.14, n.1, pp.125-151. ISSN 20030507.

Communal Councils (consejos comunales) are community social organizations created at the request of President Chávez in the year 2006, to advance participatory democracy. At the local level, one of the objectives is to improve their quality of life through self-management, in order to provide basic and social community services; at the national level, its purpose is to lead social transformations towards the Socialism of the XXI Century because they are supposed to be the revolutionary subject and the protagonist actor of Popular Power.  While pro-Chavez popular sectors see the possibility of improving their habitat; the middle and upper class political opposition has warned of the dangers of clientelism and corruption.  Are the Communal Councils spaces for democratization and the exercise of popular sovereignty? Are they spaces for the redistribution and decentralization of power or, on the contrary, for political clientelism and populism? Are they spaces for empowering social organizations or spaces for the government to control them?

Palabras clave : Popular Power; Communal Councils; Participatory Democracy; Clientelism; Autonomy.