By Maria Batch, Argentina

Downlaod full notebook in Spanish below. 

The Popular Initiative is considered in the Argentine Constitution in Article 39 from the 1994 reform. Due to the difficulties that people had in attaining the signatures of 1.5% of voters in at least 6 districts before 2002, a project was presented to Congress, making use of this constitutional instrument.

During the year 2002, Citizen Power brought into law two Popular Initiatives: Derogation of the Retirements of Privilege and "The More Urgent Hunger”.

This success was due to the alliance with Citizen Power through the mass media for the first and with the second initiative joined several CSOs, print media, radio, and television.

The key features which were taken into account from Citizen Power to be adopted for reaching the above-mentioned achievements are:

• Mainstreaming: to articulate actions through distinct programs. This can be geographic, thematic, organizational, focused on certain actions or temporary (occasional, gradual, and long term).
• Large Scale Approach: this allows for the installation of the theme and to develop the strategy, involving a number of citizens which legitimize the actions.
• Social Anchoring: the condition that occurs when citizens locate an appropriate topic and then convert it into specific action.
• Critical Mass: is essential to bring about tools of participation or develop actions of incidence and to form the adequate working group to take the appropriate strategy forward.
• Diffuse Power:  serves to force the political will necessary to influence public policies. Allows the tangible power of civil society to be expanded through partnerships with other sectors to generate power that cannot be easily measured and is neutralized easily by political power.

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