*4.2. Sub-Question (2): What Do Such Initiatives Perceive as Their Objectives, Barriers, and Achievements?*

According to the charter of the *Latin American Network for Fair, Democratic and Sustainable Cities* (agreed upon in 2011), member initiatives have five common objectives: (i) to monitor a city's situation in terms of quality-of-life, social justice, democracy, and sustainability; (ii) to promote civic participation; (iii) to monitor and influence public policies; (iv) to promote space for dialogue between civil society, the private sector, and the state; (v) to disseminate information and knowledge for informed civic participation and decision-making processes. In terms of target groups and strategies, the sampled initiatives developed a range of priorities. Whereas virtually all (95% of survey respondents) considered elected officials a main target group, about 60% also targeted researchers and staff in public institutions. As a Peruvian respondent (PE#03) explained, "The work

is in stages. We are giving priority to young people through actions and training. The media is getting information and workshops, just as the technical personnel of the institutions, the latter primarily on indicator issues. Social leaders are convened; we sign institutional agreements".

Since (indicator) data represent the lifeblood of initiatives, their availability and reliability are a main concern in some countries. In Bolivia, a respondent (BO#1) explained that "there's very little access to information. Normally we gather it from sources such as interviews and focal groups". In neighbouring Chile, "the official statistics generally have high fidelity" (CH#2). At an aggregate level, 7% of survey respondents in 2014 considered data obtained from national sources as having no or little reliability, and even 28% thought so of data from local sources. The former, however, are often not usable at the local level; as an Argentine respondent (AR#5) explained, "we were unable to access disaggregated data in our locality".

To explore barriers and bottlenecks, the survey contained questions about the prevalence of difficulties in several areas—out of these, finding suitable staff and media attention was not considered problematic by most respondents. Over 50% of them, however, reported significant difficulties in accessing indicator data and finding funding (for running costs and specific projects). Further, on a survey question about political pressure or interference (in relation to areas of work, research, positive and negative news, and involved personnel), 38% of initiatives indicated suffering from them "frequently" or "very frequently"; only a third did not experience pressures. Sometimes this was experienced as a matter of evolving trust—in the words of one Peruvian informant (PE#3), "At the beginning of our activities, there was mistrust of our institution and it was accused of having a political overtone this on the part of the municipal authorities and also in some cases of civil society". In other instances, however, maturing initiatives felt increasing heat. A Brazilian informant (BR#5) stated, "We are going through a period of great political pressure from the current municipal public administration".

Achievements are largely intangible and hard to measure. To quantitatively assess to what extent initiatives were effective in achieving name recognition, the 2014 survey asked respondents to estimate which percentages of three target groups knew the initiative's work; the reported averages were 26% for the city's general population, 49% for relevant technical staff of public institutions, and 72% for decision-makers such as the mayor and councillors. Regarding the latter, individual responses ranged from 1% to 100% between fledging and mature organizations. It is worth mentioning that some indicator initiatives assess their name recognition via surveys, and also have reliable ways to monitor their interaction with office-bearers if they are invited to present quality-of-life survey results in, say, a municipal council meeting. As a Colombian informant (CO#3) explained, "The percentage of the population was measured in our citizen perception survey [...]. Among decision-makers, everyone knows us because we constantly interact with them, either requesting information or at different round tables".

Regarding other outcomes, key informants reported evidence of effects (in some cases backed up by detailed explanations in annual reports) in various dimensions. In terms of conceptual use and influence, 77% of survey respondents indicated having contributed to the development of capacities among public institutions. As a Peruvian respondent (PE#03) stated, "We have achieved that information-generating institutions, as well as public institutions, disseminate their information and try to update it [as] municipal public servants are finally understanding the importance of data". Regarding instrumental use and influence, 72% of initiatives (according to the survey) reported having had some—and 30%, even "very large"—achievements in influencing the design of public policies. According to a Colombian respondent (CO#8), "We made recommendations on the elaboration of the municipal development plans [and] 20% of our recommendations were accepted". A major achievement for many initiatives—especially in Brazil and Argentina—was also the successful lobby for new bylaws introducing a legal obligation for mayoral candidates to create action plans with targets for various sustainability indicators, about which the

elected mayor then has to report back in public accountability meetings; such bylaws are known as "plan(o) de metas" in Spanish and Portuguese [35]. By nature, the cluster of political–symbolic uses and influences is the most intangible; one economic way to assess them is through subjective perceptions of key informants and proxy indicators such as media coverage. Over 90% of survey respondents reported that their initiative had contributed to the city's agenda, public discourse, and knowledge. As an Argentine informant (AR#3) observed, "if by impact we understand that the issues are debated or published, we have had important achievements since in general, the information that we produce is published by the main media outlets".
