Underrepresented Groups and Constitution-Making: The Mexico City Case

Abstract

Citizen calls and opportunities for more inclusion in democratic processes are on the rise, triggering the creation of innovative mechanisms to include more demands and stakeholders in decision-making. This article shows how political determination opened up the 2016 Constitution-making of Mexico City and examines the extent to which technology helped add and manage citizen inputs to their constitution. Empirically, it shows the stages and stakeholder deliberations and how collaborative writing, online petitions, and extensive surveys facilitated the inclusion of otherwise underrepresented groups’ agendas in a constitutional text. In general, the central argument of this symposium paper is that the combination of actor decisions and use of technology contribute positively to crafting participative, inclusive and informed constitutions.