The concept of youth constructed by a state is fundamental in defining the approach of its policies. This approach can take one of two forms. It can be transitional, focused on helping young people enter adulthood through employment and education.[iii]<\/sup><\/a> Or it can be affirmative, based on an understanding of youth as a social condition and aimed at promoting identity building and participation.[iv]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the tension between these two approaches, and in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, this study seeks to answer the following question: How did the municipal governments of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Asunci\u00f3n (Paraguay) \u2013 with their structural differences but common challenges \u2013 develop youth policies and promote youth participation in the period surrounding the pandemic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Olga Paredes Br\u00edtez<\/strong> is a Paraguayan lawyer, social worker, and PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, specialising in public policy, youth policies, and higher education, and serving as a director and lecturer at the National University of Asunci\u00f3n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This chapter analyses how the municipal governments of Buenos Aires and Asunci\u00f3n addressed youth policies and participation between 2016 and 2024. The study examines regulatory frameworks, prevailing policy approaches, forms of youth participation \u2013 both institutionalised and non-institutionalised \u2013 and youth involvement across different stages of the policy cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buenos Aires and Asunci\u00f3n were chosen as case studies because of their status as national capitals and their political and institutional relevance. This allowed for the identification of shared challenges in the development of municipal youth policies across different national contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The research adopted a qualitative approach based on semistructured interviews with key interlocutors, including current and former municipal youth directors and academic experts in youth studies in both cities. Participants were selected based on their institutional roles and academic experience in the field. Interviews were structured around the main research categories \u2013 youth policies and youth participation \u2013 and were transcribed and analysed thematically to identify patterns, similarities, and differences relevant to the study\u2019s objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The study period includes the Covid-19 pandemic, which is a contextual factor that helps explain changes in youth policies and participation mechanisms, particularly in relation to education, employment, and mental health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Municipal youth policies, because of their territorial proximity and institutional location, tend to offer greater opportunities for youth participation than national policies. However, these opportunities are neither automatic nor homogeneous. They are shaped by the extent of legal frameworks, the prevailing policy approaches, and the ways in which youth participation is promoted across different stages of the policy cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the municipal level, the strength of legal frameworks is central in determining whether proximity translates into effective youth participation. Legal frameworks not only define institutional responsibilities and policy continuity but also affect the extent to which youth participation can become a stable component of public action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In both Argentina and Paraguay, the absence of such frameworks is evident. Despite the existence of youth departments or programmes, neither country has enacted a comprehensive youth law that structures responsibilities or guarantees institutional continuity. Both countries display regulatory gaps across three normative levels: constitutional, functional, and administrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Argentina lacks an explicit constitutional recognition of young people as subjects of rights, while Paraguay mentions the promotion of youth participation only in one article of its constitution. At the national level, both countries have partial sectoral laws \u2013 on education, health, and employment \u2013 that address young people tangentially and often contradict one another. In Buenos Aires, there is a law mandating a youth survey, whereas in Asunci\u00f3n, no relevant municipal regulation on young people exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This absence of comprehensive frameworks reflects weak institutionalisation. This perception was shared by both former municipal youth directors and academic experts interviewed, who emphasised that youth policies depend largely on political contingencies and institutional voluntarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interviews with former municipal youth directors revealed that youth policies in both Buenos Aires and Asunci\u00f3n have been structured around a limited set of priorities. Employability and scholarships emerged as the most consolidated lines of action, alongside fragmented recreational initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on interviewee testimonies, it is clear that a transitional approach to youth policies predominates in both cities. This approach places the responsibility for young people\u2019s transition into adulthood primarily on the youth themselves, while underestimating structural constraints, such as poverty, territorial inequality, and digital exclusion.[v]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Buenos Aires, this logic is particularly evident. Employability is the basis for training programmes, first-job initiatives, and links with productive sectors, reinforcing young people\u2019s functional role in the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Asunci\u00f3n, in contrast, the most consolidated youth policy is the provision of university scholarships, which reflects a selective and individualist response to youth inequality. Beyond this central policy, youth action largely emphasises leisure and recreational initiatives \u2013 particularly sports and entertainment activities \u2013 without being embedded in a broader transitional or rights-based framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach may operate as a form of symbolic containment rather than structural intervention, diverting attention from deeper social inequalities and potentially aggravating young people\u2019s vulnerabilities.[vi]<\/sup><\/a> As a result, a third paradigm emerges \u2013 one that neither systematically supports young people\u2019s transition to adulthood nor affirms their autonomy. Instead, this third way seeks to manage youth presence through fragmented and depoliticised interventions, mainly recreational programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interviews with former youth directors in both cities revealed a shared willingness to advance towards affirmative, rights-based policies \u2013 such as youth participatory budgets or civic programmes \u2013 that conceive of young people not merely as students or future workers but as full citizens. These efforts, however, are consistently constrained by institutional fragilities, budgetary restrictions, and the absence of a strategic vision that can consolidate young people as transformative political actors within municipal governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Historical and political trajectories play a central role in shaping approaches to youth policy. During the democratic transitions that followed the two countries\u2019 military dictatorships (Argentina in 1983, Paraguay in 1989), youth participation was strongly promoted through affirmative policies that emphasised political engagement.[vii]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n However, this approach shifted in the 1990s with the advance of neoliberal reforms, particularly in Argentina, where so-called excluded youth were increasingly framed as policy targets through employability and vocational training initiatives.[viii]<\/sup><\/a> In Buenos Aires, successive municipal administrations consolidated this employability-centred axis within youth policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, in Asunci\u00f3n, youth policies were progressively hollowed out. Participatory spaces were weakened and municipal action was redirected towards sports and recreational programmes, often focused on children and early adolescents, rather than young people as political subjects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic acted as a stress test for already fragile institutional frameworks: it weakened policy capacities, displaced young people from the social policy agenda, and reinforced control-oriented narratives. In this context, youth issues were not only pushed to the margins of public policy, but young people also came to be framed as expendable in public-health terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, pandemic-related lockdowns exposed long-neglected problems \u2013 particularly young people\u2019s mental health and suicide \u2013 revealing structural vulnerabilities that predated the pandemic. However, these warning signs were not followed by robust youth mental health policies, underscoring a persistent disconnect between recognising the problems and delivering effective policy action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on the collected testimonies, it can be concluded that Buenos Aires exemplifies a transitional, employability-centred approach, while Asunci\u00f3n illustrates symbolic containment within a weaker institutional environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth participation at the municipal level has taken place through a combination of weakly institutionalised mechanisms, such as ad hoc councils or consultations, and a wide range of non-institutionalised practices, including protests, cultural activism, and digital mobilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth policies are not solely a product of state design; they are also the result of social struggles and the participation of collective actors.[ix]<\/sup><\/a> In Argentina, the state recognised pre-existing youth movements, illustrating how youth participation can precede and shape public policy.[x]<\/sup><\/a> In Paraguay, participation has shown peaks of visibility, yet repression and criminalisation continue to inhibit its institutional consolidation.[xi]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The field of youth participation is marked by a tension between a restrictive understanding of the term, which equates it with partisan or union activism, and a broader conception that acknowledges the political nature of unconventional practices, such as cultural activism, street art, social networks, or protests.[xii]<\/sup><\/a> Today, non-institutionalised participation is highly significant yet rarely recognised by public policy.[xiii]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Empirical evidence reveals a paradox of low effective youth participation in decision-making alongside a high desire to participate.[xiv]<\/sup><\/a> A central explanation for this paradox lies in the tension between recognition and autonomy: youth collectives seek the state\u2019s validation to influence policies while preserving their independence from official frameworks. In practice, the two forms of participation are interdependent: the institutionalised form opens stable channels, while the non-institutionalised form innovates, monitors, and exerts pressure, sustaining a dynamic ecosystem of civic engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to institutionalised participation, voting is the most widespread \u2013 and, in many cases, the only \u2013 guaranteed mechanism. Beyond suffrage, there is a striking lack of structured spaces, such as local youth councils, whose existence is almost entirely at the discretion of the municipal administration. This reveals a pattern of institutional fragility: in the absence of binding legal frameworks, participatory bodies are exposed to shifts in administrations\u2019 priorities, as evidenced by the dissolution of youth councils in Asunci\u00f3n and similar experiences in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Covid-19 pandemic deepened this split, weakening formal participation while accelerating online engagement. A strong form of solidarity-based youth participation emerged, expressed through networks of mutual aid and community organisation in response to urgent social needs.[xv]<\/sup><\/a> Young women, despite facing care burdens and precarious conditions, led numerous collective actions. This dynamic reflects a form of resilient youth participation, in which political engagement persists despite structural constraints. These experiences strengthened organisational capacity, social bonds, and political commitment within initiatives marked by strong local youth involvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to one interviewee, Buenos Aires presented a more consolidated tradition of non-institutionalised participation, such as anti-neoliberal resistance, student movements, feminist mobilisations, and rights-based agendas.[xvi]<\/sup><\/a> In contrast, another informant said that in Paraguay, civic participation had been structurally weakened across social sectors, also affecting youth participation, which tended to emerge only episodically and under adverse conditions.[xvii]<\/sup><\/a> This context of weakened institutional support and higher risks of repression helps explain the intermittent visibility of youth mobilisation in Asunci\u00f3n.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In both cases, overcoming the paradox of low participation despite a high desire for it requires broadening the frameworks of recognition for institutionalised participation while acknowledging non-institutional forms of engagement. It is essential to ensure fair access to participation \u2013 in terms of time, resources, and connectivity \u2013 and link territorial and solidarity-based practices with decision-making mechanisms that give young people real influence in the public sphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Covid-19 pandemic did not result in the creation of new or sustained municipal mechanisms for youth participation in either city. Instead, it tended to weaken already fragile institutional spaces while shifting youth involvement towards informal, solidarity-based, and digital practices. Although local governments temporarily increased contact with young people through emergency responses, these interactions did not translate into more binding or permanent participatory arrangements. In this sense, the pandemic acted less as a catalyst for institutional innovation than as a stress test that exposed the limited depth of participatory governance at the municipal level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to former youth directors interviewed, youth participation across the policy cycle in Buenos Aires and Asunci\u00f3n is uneven. Young people have minimal influence on the formulation and implementation of youth policies and virtually no involvement in their evaluation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The diagnostic phase of policymaking shows some noteworthy elements, such as surveys that seek to identify young people\u2019s priorities and demands. These instruments provide valuable inputs into decision-making and help strengthen the legitimacy of public policies. However, youth participation in decision-making is still a main challenge facing local youth policies in Latin America.[xviii]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some exceptions, such as the participation of young civil servants in governmental spaces, for example through youth cabinets, which introduce a generational perspective to public administrations. Yet this form of participation has clear limitations: it is largely restricted to young people with political and institutional capital, and their influence depends on hierarchical structures that do not always value or incorporate their contributions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the implementation phase, participation becomes even more diluted, with limited articulation between design and execution. Although the youth presence may be more visible at this stage, it is often reduced to moments of public exposure or interaction, rather than meaningful involvement in policy design or decision-making. Young people are sometimes invited to receive benefits, such as scholarships or material resources, but are rarely involved in the processes through which these policies are formulated. Participatory processes tend to generate less political visibility and impact than symbolic acts such as public events or photographs, contributing to the absence of sustained spaces for participation.[xix]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/youthdemocracycohort.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Olga-Paredes-Britez.png\")
<\/figure>Methodology<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Youth policies in Buenos Aires and Asunci\u00f3n<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Legal frameworks<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Approaches to youth policies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Historical and social context<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Youth participation: institutionalised and non-institutionalised<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Participation across the policy cycle<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/youthdemocracycohort.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Are-Young-People-Driving-Democratic-Renewal-read-full-deep-dive-1.png\")
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