Consensus Building and its Incidence on Policy: The “National Agreement” in Peru

This article aims to present the composition and characteristics of the operation and show evidence of the impact of consensually agreed “State Policies” by the National Agreement Forum on government policy in Peru over the past decade. After opening questions about the effectiveness of democratic institutions to change society, we present in the second section the composition and characteristics of the Forum of the National Agreement in Peru and the type of agreements reached. In the third section we pick theoretical elements of Sen´s connection between values and political activity in support of the potential impact on State Policies that the National Agreement (NA) approved by consensus could have. In the fourth section we present the results of a “survey” to very high rulers of the last governments and other officials and professionals who respond to a question about the incidence of NA in their decisions. Thus, the type of incidence of consensually approved policy orientations is established and also a first look at its scope.

Keywords

Consensus, public deliberation, public policies, National Agreement Forum, Peru

JEL Classification

H11