Current headlines the world over report cases of divorce between the populations and their institutions which underscore with varying degrees of violence the crisis of Politics. Each of those situations hinges on democratic governance. What are the conditions or the modalities enabling the populations to express their consent to power?

Are the State and its institutions the sole incarnation of legitimate power? How are the multiple sources of legitimacy to co-exist in each country?

These questions where at the heart of a conference held in Lima, Peru. In the framework of an intercontinental approach associating South America, Africa and soon Europe, this convention has opened geo-cultural avenues for the “international cycle of debate and proposals on governance” co-ordinated by the IRG. Initiated in Africa in 2007, this cycle brings together, at the heart of multi-actor forums, the representatives of local, national and international institutions, politicians, academics, traditional and religious authorities as well as actors from the private or the voluntary sectors.

The analyses developed in Lima have shown that in multi-ethnic and pluri-cultural states like Bolivia, Colombia, Equator and Peru, challenges bearing on the legitimacy of power are at the core of ongoing political and social tensions and mutations. The foundation of the so-called “modern” state are called into question by a democratic governance that proves able to take into account in their diversity the sources of legitimacy actually at work in Ando-Amazonian societies: beliefs, constitutions, customs, elections, public services, native people’s movements – in some cases specific forms of organised violence, come together to evolve new models of togetherness.