Within the framework of the State Reform operated in recent decades, the evolution of the Public Administration, the modernization and democratization programs include among its basic principles the reform of the administration through greater citizen participation in the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies. These principles are given along with a transformation process of the governance model. With this premise, and from the application of three techniques: document analysis, ethnography and in-depth interviews, in this article we evaluate the components that support citizen participation mechanisms based on the study of the Citizen Observatories of the State of New León (Mexico). Among the main results is the lack of plurality of gender among the participants, the age exclusion by the community, as well as other problems related to the selection and integration of the participants of these important organizations. These results lead, in conclusion, to underline that many of the proposals of the New Public Management come from generalizations that have no practical application in certain societies, such as the Mexican one.
