Social progress and participatory performance in Peru

Abstract

The dependency relationship between social welfare and mobilization in spaces for citizen participation (participatory performance) is a very widespread idea among the defenders of participatory democracy; however, it has not been sufficiently corroborated. In this study, the objective was to determine the level of social progress, participatory performance and evaluate the relationship between them, for the Peruvian case in 2016. Methodologically, a correlational design was adopted, with a probabilistic sample at the national level of 319 districts. In the measurement of social progress, the methodology of the Social Progress Index 2014 was used and for participatory performance the Evaluation of returns and mobilizing effects of citizen participation mechanisms was used, applied to the participatory budget process in 2016. Once carried out the measurement of each variable, its relationship was determined using the Spearman correlation coefficient, which is a recommended linear association measure to determine the correlation between variables that do not have a normal distribution. The results show that social progress and participatory performance in the districts of Peru have an inverse relationship in 2016, with a Spearman Rho of - 0.54. In general, the analyzed districts obtained an average score of 63.34 in the Social Progress Index (medium-low level); and 0.51 in Participatory performance (higher prevalence of districts with lower participatory performance).