| Eagora

Following the democratizing attempts after the alternation of the federal executive branch in 2000, two urbanized municipalities were selected for this research. Pachuca, capital of the State of Hidalgo, and Tizayuca, the only municipality of Hidalgo that is a member of the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico. Both municipalities show low social and economic lag rate, coupled with low electoral political participation. Also, in both are implemented the Citizen Councils of Municipal Collaboration (CCMC), mechanisms of institutionalized citizen participation, whose main objective is to influence the decision-making process of the res publica through collaboration between citizens and local authorities. The central question of this research is: how and why do delegates of these councils and ordinary citizens perceive the impact that the councils have on the decision-making processes of the res publica? This linked to the characteristics that are intended to be incorporated into liberal democratic regimes of a participatory democracy. Thus, the methodological pillar of this research is the qualitative approach. Taking as the case the Mexican state, with the sample of two n. Each n has been intentionally selected, since each of the n acquires a theoretical importance.The dimensions of the research are: 1) representative element (conception of the delegative element in a liberal democracy regarding to the decision-making process); 2) civic commitment of citizens (conception of citizens about their duties in public matters); 3) impact in the decision-making process (perception of the deliberative process that takes place within the CCMC). The research technique for this research is focus group, since this promotes dialogue among the participants to know what the participant thinks and feels and that aims to obtain information of a focused issue. Helping to understand perceptions of three groups, the CCMC delegates, citizens participating in CCMC and citizens not participating in CCMC