Participatory democracy, consensus building and social demands

Abstract

The Mexican elections of June 6, 2021 are a window through which one can observe the complexity of the relationships between the social agents that fight for power, the tensions between the State and society, as well as the forms of citizen participation in an incipient democracy. Organizing the perception of the reality of Mexican society through a discourse that allows not only to recognize it but also to intervene in it seems to be the propitious space for the emergence of new political-social projects through the creation of new political parties, which give rise to different perceptions of social reality. The formation and participation of new political parties in the June 6 election in Mexico allowed the expression of other social actors not represented in the former hegemonic parties (PAN-PRI-PRD), nor of the new hegemonic party with its satellite parties (MORENA plus PT, PVE, PES, PNAL). The greater number of political proposals should have promoted more deliberative democracy; but the result contracted the plurality of the political parties to two large alliances PAN-PRI and MORENA plus their coalition parties, not only at the national level but in the various regions, as well as locally in a differentiated way, but under the same trend of formation of two opposing blocks.

In this context of reduction of possibilities, concentration of power, concurrence of electors agglutinated by the perspective of the narration of the already consolidated social reality, The question arises: How do political parties, as well as the majestic media of information through public opinion, contribute to deliberative democracy and the formation of consensus? As a conjecture, it is postulated that the ways of guiding public opinion affect the social polarization that induces the formation of reduced consensus, which generates greater tension between the State and society, in addition to polarizing social agents in two antagonistic proposals. Thus, the reduction of political parties is related to social polarization more than to the formation of consensus.

To corroborate the research assumption, a political perception survey was applied in the state of Morelos to 2400 people of legal age with voting credentials from the different micro-regions of the entity, being a representative sample for infinite populations. The results of the survey were juxtaposed with the results of the PREP at the state and national levels, finding that people who decide to exercise their vote do so deliberately, trying to build consensus around the main social demands and state policies of social intervention, therefore, government discourse is a piece of political communication that guides social actions.