Update Institute

Our origin

The Update Institute was born from the hypothesis that there is a political innovation ecosystem in Latin America that can bring democracy up-to-date on the challenges of the 21st century.

To support this hypothesis, we conducted our first survey, the Political Emergence — Trends. With 700 mapped-out initiatives, it is the largest and most extensive survey ever conducted on emerging innovative political practices in Latin America and has given rise to the Political Emergence research series.

From this research, and finding that there were no organizations dedicated to fostering political innovation in the region, we formalized ourselves as an organization.

In Latin America, we see still young, fragile, outdated, and unequal democracies because of their historical backgrounds and heritage. Thus, the crises of institutionalization, representativeness, and references that are seen worldwide are particular to the region. When compared against this background, we observe the development of an ecosystem of new actors and emerging political practices. While institutional politics seem to back down from various crises, we see a series of innovations flourishing at the edges of a society that seeks to bring citizens closer to public power, design new institutions, and connect people and transformative actions.