Participation and representation in Chilean water governance: the legislative debate from an agricultural perspective.

Abstract

This study analyzes the participation and argumentative repertoires of actors from the Political Sphere and Civil Society in the parliamentary debate on amendments to Chile’s Water Code related to agriculture (1992–2018). A mixed-methods design is applied to 148 documents from the Legislative History of the National Congress, combining inductive coding of arguments with descriptive and bivariate statistical analysis. The results show a high concentration of participation within the Political Sphere, both in the number of actors and arguments. Civil Society displays lower and uneven participation, dominated by the business sector. The bivariate analysis finds no significant associations between political-institutional or territorial variables and argumentative repertoires, but it does identify an association between the type of Civil Society actor and the arguments used. Overall, the debate is structured mainly around sectoral and institutional positions.