Resumo

AVILA, Tatiana del Pilar. The quality of public spaces for public debate: candidates to the governorship of Nuevo León, Mexico, 2015. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2017, n.14, pp.207-242. ISSN 2007-4964.

Public space is understood as a scenario for the display of citizenship and a forum for presenting, expressing, socializing and discussing issues of public interest. The quality of this space depends on how the public sphere is constructed and on efforts to control the trend towards its privatization or capture by private interests that promote its use for mobilizations that promote private causes. In this context, the article seeks to broaden neo-republican reflections on the role of the state in fostering and ensuring the quality of deliberative public spaces. Also, it attempts to define quality criteria and apply them to the candidates who garnered the most votes for the governorship of the state of Nuevo León in 2015 through indirect measurement, given that candidates there displayed a heightened promotion of citizen participation in public spaces that set them apart from the classic view of political campaigns. Here, the quality of the public spaces they promoted is discussed from the neo-republican perspective.

Palavras-chave : public space; deliberation; quality; Nuevo Leon.