Laurence Bherer

SUCCESSFUL AND UNSUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATORY ARRANGEMENTS: WHY IS THERE A PARTICIPATORY MOVEMENT AT THE LOCAL LEVEL?

ABSTRACT: The objective of this article is to explore some of the reasons for the growing number of participatory arrangements at the local level. An approach in terms of governance allows us to examine the underlying patterns of logic that induce public authorities to develop new policy tools such as participatory arrangements. Our study focuses on a medium-sized French city, Bordeaux, where eight types of relatively weak participatory arrangements have been implemented since 1995. The article shows that the French government and European Union have fostered this type of arrangement through a complex series of public programs and policies with the aim of rebuilding their political legitimacy by encouraging participation at the municipal level. This approach is relevant to understanding the origin of the reforms affecting local governments over the past decade.

Participatory Democracy, Decentralization and Local Governance: the Montreal Participatory Budget in the light of ‘Empowered Participatory Governance’

The aim of this paper is to examine the links between certain processes and forms of decentralization and the emergence of participatory arrangements. More specifically, the paper will address the question: under what conditions are certain forms of decentralization conducive to a genuinely more participatory democracy? The argument rests on a study of the participatory budget in Montreal and leads to discount the model of the empowered participatory governance.

The promise for democratic deepening: the effects of participatory processes in the interaction between civil society and local governments

ABSTRACT Participatory processes (PPs) implemented around the world in the last 20 years have not led to critical social transformations, as was expected when participatory democracy was first projected. However, this kind of democratic innovation has continued to proliferate. In this context, the political effects of PPs must be examined more closely to understand their influence in deepening, or not, democracy. Based on six Spanish cases, the study focuses on four categories of change (towards inclusiveness, transparency, autonomy, and collaboration) in the relationship between civil society and local government authorities. The findings show a limited capacity of transformation because of the instrumentalization tendencies of political promoters, and the resistance of some social actors.

The participatory democracy turn: an introduction

Since the 1960s, participatory discourses and techniques have been at the core of decisionmaking processes in a variety of sectors of society and of policy domains around the world – a phenomenon often referred to as the participatory turn. Originally associated with this turn have been a strong critique of liberal and representative democracy, the corollary idea of a ‘real utopia,’ that is, the necessary radicalization of democratic practices (Barber, 1984; Mouffe, 1992), and a rethinking of the public sphere (Fraser, 1990; Habermas, 1962/1989). Participatory mechanisms were thus initially conceived and designed as a way for citizens’ views and input to have some influence on otherwise political and bureaucratic decisionmaking processes. It was also imagined that they would become tools for making elected leaders accountable for their decisions, and for citizens to become empowered through the participatory process (Fung & Wright, 2003). The idea of participation has also attracted considerable attention in the ‘good governance’ literature (Tendler, 1998), where it is rather understood as a way to make governments (especially local ones) more transparent, responsive, and in turn more efficient with regard to public spending, as well as to make public (and sometimes contested) decisions socially and politically acceptable. Over the years, the participatory turn has given birth to a large array of heterogeneous participatory practices developed by a wide variety of organizations and groups (Bherer & Breux, 2012), as well as by both leftand right-leaning governments around the world. Among the best-known practices of citizen participation, we find examples such as participatory budgeting (PB), citizen councils, public consultations, neighbourhood councils, participatory planning, etc. Participatory processes are thus often associated with the idea of a top-down mechanism implemented to include citizen input in the public sector. However, participatory practices have also grown in a variety of – sometimes unexpected – public and private spaces. Social movements have adopted participatory strategies in order to (re)mobilize their members and citizens (Occupy, Podemos, for example) (Della Porta, 2013; Nez, 2012; Polletta, 2015); bureaucratic organizations have adopted practical participatory reforms (Nabatchi, 2010); NGOs and community organizations have included participatory elements in their programmes and in the way their own organizations function (Eliasoph, 2011); unions have become more and more interested in a variety of participatory mechanisms in order to mobilize and get in touch with their members; and even private companies are using certain forms of participation as an internal management mechanism, or as a social acceptability tool for economic development projects (Lee, 2015). A whole industry of participatory consultants and experts has emerged, marketing participatory practices among organizations of all sorts and

« Faire la politique soi-même » : le cas des mobilisations contre le gaz de schiste au Québec

The literature on activism characterizes the recent transformations of activism as part of a process towards the “personalization of politics”. For structural or cultural reasons, committed citizens appear to be developing a new relationship to politics, seeking personal satisfaction in their engagement. We propose an alternative interpretation, and characterize this transformation as “do-it-yourself” (DIY) politics. Based on the protests against shale gas development in Quebec, we show that the DIY politics is the “logical” (in the sense of rational) result of citizens developing the means to compensate for the lack of institutional opportunities in the context of developments that potentially threaten their lives and livelihoods. Hence, rather than a quest for personal fulfillment, DIY politics must be understood as a more prosaic and contingent reaction to a specific situation, an individual and collective response to a situation experienced and perceived as problematic. In the conflict surrounding shale gas development in Quebec, which serves as our case study, we show that 1) the initial impulse to mobilize may be accurately interpreted as moving from the “territory of the self” (“ territoire du moi ”) to the “territory of the us” (“ territoire du nous ”), and that 2) it is the double failure of institutional representation that underpins civic engagement: the failure of institutional representation and the lack of representation by collective actors already in place.