The paper discusses the opportunities available to strengthen citizenship in Chile, within a context marked by the limited spaces for social participation defined by the institutional arrangements prevailing in the country. The paper first goes on to describing the main agendas of social participation included within the social policies that have been implemented during the process of transition to democracy. Then we examine the public policy networks that have reached incidence at the local and national level. It is argued that despite the fact that these networks have not produced a new political actor, they show novel forms of local political action. How- ever, these networks are still limited in their impacts, which can be explained due to three main issues: endogenous factors, the fact that they are relatively disconnected from the current political practices and the failures of the institutional design of the agendas for social participation that have prevailed in the country.