Contenu du sommaire : Participation et action publique

This article offers a critical review of the literature in political science, sociology and economics-management dealing with the effects of participatory devices on decision-making and public action. It emphasizes how the sequential perspective, prevailing in the analysis of the effects of participation so far, explains the hard time it has had to account for the influence of participation on public policies. Therefore, both a new perspective on public action and the systematic clarification of the type of analysis that is conducted (causal links that are tested, variables taken into account, specific contextual features), appear as the necessary conditions to rethink collectively the links between participation and public action.

This article proposes to go beyond the question of the effects of participatory democracy on public policies, to consider the way in which the uses of participatory settings are framed by the intern logics of the various public action subsystems. Based on the cases of four French regional councils, we firstly argue that the effects of participatory democracy cannot be understood without an analysis of power struggles and actors' strategies. We secondly highlight that the multiplication of the participatory settings stimulated the emergence of real public policies of participation, which aim to act on the “problem” of citizens' activity.

The participatory instrumentation of public policy: logics and effects. A comparative approach of the participatory devices implemented by the regional council of Poitou-Charentes. By comparing three participatory devices implemented in separate sectors of regional policy in Poitou-Charentes (High schools' participatory budget, water participative forum and citizens' jury assessing transport policy), this article offers some prospects to organize the dialogue between the studies on public participation and the public policy analysis. Rather than trying to demonstrate the democratization of public policy which is a usual angle of research, this article analyses the logics and the effects of participatory procedures implementation. By crossing approaches and empirical data, we could lessen the importance given to the official goals to bring the logics of “implementing participation” to light, identify the proper effects of the participatory device, and then question the wider effects, more diffuse and indirect, of public participation in public policy.

Participative democracy as an opportunity structure and a sectorial notability strengthening
Through the example of family farmers' participation in the Program of Territorial Sustainable Rural Development (PDSTR), this article defends a scientific posture: open up the analysis of the participatory arenas by reinserting them in the relationships of power of the policy making. This research crosses three political sociologies: the structures of political opportunity, the militant trajectories and the repertoires of collective action of the participants, and policy analysis. It analyzes the institutionalization of a “hard core” of participants, characterized by their “institutional militancy” and their “transactional leadership”, who format technically and financially the policy projects. It also shows the constitution of an “advocacy coalition” which, in the end, defines the policy making and the contents of the PDSTR.

From an ethnographic inquiry, this article questions the participatory set-ups organized by General Councils linked to the elaboration of the school map, without restricting the analysis to the debates themselves. The study of the political and bureaucratic conditions of the participation of the families, and of the dynamics of the debates, allows to explain the restricted power of the constituents in the production of the map and the paradoxical contribution of discussion to the individualization of family strategies. Therefore, the article offers a process analysis of the effects of participation which is attentive to temporalities and to relational structures of policy making.

Concertation and negotiation. A particular case study: the local regulation of Islam in Brussels
This paper examines the effects of participatory devices on public action through the particular case study of the local regulation of Islam in Brussels. Indeed, despite the current extensive academic literature on participation issues, when it comes to the link with ethnic and, notably, religious minorities, many questions remain unanswered. Consequently, in this paper, I try to conciliate these two dimensions by showing that the question of Islam in Europe can be apprehended by the study of Muslim leaders' investment in formal and informal participatory devices. More generally, the findings bring to light how political, institutional and demographic environments shape the political engagement and participation of a religious minority.

In 2006 the capital city of India went through a violent conflict over land use, in which neighborhood associations played a major role. The conflict showed how a participatory scheme had given associations (representing only a fraction of the population) the status of legitimate actors of urban governance. It thus revealed the problematic relationship between the representative and participatory dimensions of urban democracy. This article situates the concerned participatory scheme in the broader context of the development of participation in India since the 1990s, and goes on to offer three possible readings of the conflict, which highlight the social and political issues at stake.