This paper deals with the preclusion of local leaders of Duque de Caxias’s (DdC) deprived neighborhoods (a 900.000 inhabitants city), in the state of Rio de Janeiro, in the Baxaida Fluminense desavantage area. Water sector is not abandoned by DdC’s local leaders which activism is ancient and structured. However, they have no access to decision-making spaces and their presence in participatory arenas is weak or unsustainable. DdC leaders are prevented from doing so, if not invisible. The hypothesis defended here to understand this situation is that analysis must reshape the links between participation types and power dynamics in the policy process. Participative practices would then depend from three explanatory variables: policy coalitions and their advocacy, multi-level governance and, political capacity of protagonists. The first part of the article presents the heuristic interest of the model that articulates these three approaches. The second part presents the characteristics of water management in DdC: dependence on "water production" (Guandu hydroelectric system), but at the same time infrastructure failure, as well as fragmented and uncoordinated multi-level governance that excludes local leaders from decision-making spaces. The third and fourth parts analyse the cleavage between two coalitions. The technical-political coalition (CTP) combines political capacities (access to decision-making spaces, technicalities, operationalities) and monopolizes access state resources. Conversely, the activist-hygienist-environmentalist coalition (CMHE) and its local leaders have political capacities for social representation and mobilization but lack the capacity to access decision-making spaces. Finally, a fifth part describes the invisibility of local leaders in participatory arenas.