The datafying civil society Fostering citizen's agency beyond open government

This thesis explores what it means to act politically in a context where data has become a precondition for participation. It asks how civil society actors, especially those historically excluded from decision-making processes, navigate a world in which being heard and acknowledged increasingly depends on one’s capacity to act through data. The empirical focus is Mexico, where progressive legal frameworks around transparency and citizen engagement coexist with deep-rooted institutional resistance. While Open Government mechanisms have created formal spaces for civic engagement, the rules of access often require technical expertise, fluency in the state’s own logics, and plain endurance. In this context, acting politically is as much about overcoming exclusion as it is about decoding the state’s institutional and informational structures.