Weaving democratic innovations: Systemic Collaboration for a Resilient Latin America
Sparking systemic shifts through regional collaboration and innovation
The following post is a cross-post from our original blog posted on May 14, 2025. This post is written in both English and Spanish.
El siguiente artículo es un cross-post de nuestro blog original publicado el 14 de mayo de 2025. Este post está escrito en inglés y español.
At the Centre for Public Impact (CPI), we’ve launched “CPI’s Collective: Innovation for Democracy in Latin America”, a new working group that brings together over 15 organisations from seven countries. Our goal is to connect democratic innovations and strengthen resilience across the region through systemic collaboration.
Democracy as a living, diverse, and complex system
Let’s imagine democracy as a neural network. When all the “neurons” – civil society, the public, private, and social sectors – are connected and active, the system thrives. But when connections are broken or entire groups are excluded, democratic synapses are weakened, and the whole governance system suffers.
Across the globe, we are witnessing the erosion of democracy through polarisation, disinformation, and declining participation and trust. Yet, we also see how the people and institutions in this system are protecting and diversifying it through effort, resistance, and creativity.
At CPI, we believe that building healthy and resilient democracies requires systemic collaboration: a holistic way to tackle the complex and interconnected challenges of our time by building collaboration pathways for diverse actors, territories, and forms of knowledge. This is how we reimagine government at CPI – as a system that embraces complexity, builds meaningful relationships, and continuously learns and adapts alongside communities.
Latin America: democratic creativity, scattered
Latin America is fertile ground for democratic innovation. Since democratisation processes swept the region over the past three decades, more than 3,700 democratic innovations have been documented under the LATINNO project, led by Dr. Thamy Pogrebinschi. These methods and mechanisms expand citizen participation beyond the ballot box, opening new ways for people to engage in the policymaking cycle and in strengthening our democracies.
What’s remarkable is that many of these innovations haven’t come from the state alone – they grew out of civil society, from communities that value democracy as a living practice. This creates an inspiring space to imagine new forms of participation in Latin America.
Yet these innovations remain fragmented, confined to local contexts and national borders. The lack of cross-border collaboration and mechanisms to share learning is a key factor that has hindered the region’s ability to build shared democratic resilience, despite its high levels of civic engagement. At the same time, challenges like polarisation, authoritarianism, the climate crisis, and corruption have further eroded trust in institutions and the strength of the democratic fabric.
But why do regional “democratic synapses” matter in the first place? No matter how brilliant an innovation is, it cannot amplify its impact if it remains isolated. Like a neural network, democracy depends on strong connections, like collective intelligence and collaborative action, to confront today’s challenges.
For example, Latin America’s democratic health has global implications. With 56% of the world’s remaining primary forests and 65% of global lithium reserves, the region plays a strategic role in the energy transition and addressing the climate crisis. By building more interconnected and representative democracies, we not only strengthen institutions and promote more active civic engagement in Latin America, we also generate new models that can inspire solutions to the global democratic crisis.
CPI’s Collective: Connecting Latin America’s democratic neurons
CPI’s Collective: “Innovation for Democracy in Latin America” is a year-long initiative designed to build and strengthen regional democratic synapses.
We are convening a community of organisations that are experimenting with and implementing democratic innovations. Together, we are creating a space to exchange ideas, explore new approaches, and take collective action in response to shared challenges. The goal: to weave a stronger and more resilient democratic fabric— locally grounded, regionally connected, and globally relevant.
Since November 2024, this working group has met every two weeks, building a shared vision grounded in three key shifts:
From isolated efforts to regional synapses: moving from stand-alone democratic innovations to collaborative networks that foster wellbeing across the region and persist beyond political cycles;
From fragmented participation to collective action: adapting and expanding successful local innovations across new contexts through a collective learning and experimentation programme; and
From local wins to a resilient regional system: building cross-border networks of leaders that support democratic processes from the local level towards the regional level.
Together, participating organisations are identifying key areas for strengthening democracy and will co-create a portfolio of solutions in areas such as citizen participation, representation, and institutional trust.
More than 15 organisations representing over seven countries from across the region are participating in CPI’s Collective, including:
Civil society organisations such as: Fundación Ciudadanía Inteligente, Democracia en Red, Instituto Update, Red de Innovación Local, CostaRica+, Extituto de Política Abierta, Politize!, Huella Local, Socialab Colombia
Public institutions, including Chile’s Government Lab and Paraguay’s National Innovation Strategy
Academic institutions such as Public Purpose Innovation Co-lab
Regional and global actors who are part of GovTech Latam, Apolitical Foundation, and VélezReyes+
We are also honoured to collaborate with academic Dr. Thamy Pogrebinschi, creator of the LATINNO project on democratic innovations in Latin America.
An invitation to collective synapses
Democracy is not a static system to defend – it’s a living organism that must be nurtured, connected, and continually reimagined, so it can respond with collective wisdom to the challenges of our time. Systemic collaboration is an urgent necessity. At a time when democracies face complex, cross-border challenges, we must strengthen our collective response capacities.
We invite you to follow the work of CPI’s Collective on our Substack and CPI channels, and join us in transforming isolated initiatives into a more resilient, representative, and connected system.
Just like in a neural network, the health of our democracy depends on the strength of our connections and the active participation of every part.