Issues and approach

The past fifteen years have witnessed a boom in participatory democracy processes in France, Germany and throughout Europe: neighborhood advice centers, planning units and juries composed of citizens drawn by lots, participatory budgets involving taxpayers in discussions on public finances, consultative councils for young people or foreigners, Local Agenda 21 dealing with sustainable development, conferences that seek to build a consensus on technical democracy, etc. The semantic context and political implications of the term have altered radically over the past few years. Participatory democracy would appear to have become a permanent fixture in the institutional landscape and to have left behind its spontaneous, anti-establishment roots in social movements. It now features different forms of participation involving new actors, new legitimacy and new areas for involving people who are not elected decision-makers. Although this transformation has taken place in a radically altered context, the idea of participation itself goes back a long way. It has been a feature in modern democracies since the French and American revolutions, through the labor movements of the 19th century up to the great urban reformers of the early 20th century. The 1960s in particular witnessed a major renewal of the concept.

While participatory democracy is now very much in vogue politically and has aroused increasing interest in academia, the simultaneous development of procedurally similar mechanisms in such different forms and contexts raises a number of questions. Are we dealing with the same movement in numerous different forms or is this a heterogeneous process with only superficial unity? Are the administrative, social and political implications roughly the same under the various different experiences? Are we witnessing a potential renewal of the political process or does the call to participate actually stymie its effectiveness? Will this process topple certain types of political legitimacy and forms of public action or is it merely a fad? What are the reasons behind the proliferation of structures to facilitate participation? Does it indicate at least a partial convergence of political systems and cultures on a continental scale? How have the categories that make it possible to analyze this phenomenon been forged in the public space and in academia? What types of exchanges and transfers between different contexts take place between academia, social movements and the political sphere?

The purpose of the workshop-seminar and this call for papers is to carry out an in-depth analysis of the genealogy and historical dynamics of present-day participatory processes by tracing the recent origins of contemporary structures and also taking a longer-term historical perspective dating from modern experiments in democracy.

The workshop-seminar will develop a framework for delving into the diachronic dimension of participatory experiences. How can we account for this simultaneous proliferation of participatory processes in Europe and what is its historicity? There are two opposing schools of thought: the first stresses the macro-social, structural transformations at the root of the phenomenon while the second highlights transfer dynamics and explanations based on networks of actors. We will tackle both of these approaches simultaneously as part of a transversal history of European participatory democracy.

A series of structural convergences and divergences could account for similarities and differences between participatory dynamics. As such, we will focus on political-institutional developments (decentralization and organization of power at local level, the balance between the exercise of power and plebiscitary tendencies, European legislation and the process of modernizing public administration); socio-economic and socio-cultural changes (globalization, restructuring of the welfare state and the increasing impact of market-based approaches, new relationships between science and technology, the declared advent of a “knowledge-based society” and a “risk society”, and a TV culture that presents “ordinary” individuals in reality shows, etc.); and, of course, on political developments strictu sensu (decentration of the political system towards mechanisms that temper legislative power; the rapidly growing crisis of the legitimacy of representative systems even though such systems do not have any serious rivals, at least in Europe; the emergence of a “deliberative imperative” in public action; marked disillusionment of the working classes with political institutions; and development of ideological reference frameworks). The landscape depicted here is an extremely contrasting one: trends towards democratization of knowledge and individual e-activism as well as growing equality (in the statutory sense as suggested by Tocqueville) alongside opposite developments such as the increasing commodification of knowledge, the rise of a plebiscitary dynamic and rising socio-economic inequality. The whole issue of participatory democracy is marked by these major current and contradictory developments that account for the diversity in the processes initiated. Moreover, the convergence between European institutional and ideological contexts – albeit limited – will make it possible to account for at least some of the differences between local dynamics and ideal forms of participation.

However, the limits of the structural approach are obvious when it comes to accounting for certain factors. For example, why has the development of participatory budgets in Germany been totally separated from neighborhood management, contrary to developments in other European countries? Why is choosing people by drawing lots much more common in Germany, the UK and Spain, and belatedly in France, whereas it is only beginning to be used in Italy? By implication, it is the overall relevance of the structural approach that is challenged by researchers who stress the roles of actors and the history of transfers.

Our thesis is that it is necessary to combine a structural approach with considerations regarding the history of transfers to properly understand the emergence of participatory dynamics in Europe. Without an extremely favorable context, so many initiatives could never have taken off at the same time in such different situations; conversely, without concrete networks of actors, it would be impossible to assess the manner in which such and such a mechanism was set up in one place and not in another. On this basis, it should be possible to measure the extent to which the current penchant for participatory processes is actually new or whether it is part of a continuous historical trend. Similarly, the diachronic analysis will make it possible to conduct a more detailed analysis of the question of convergence in participatory practices and, more broadly, in the political cultures of European countries.

The workshop-seminar will be structured around three themes.

1. The first will trace the history of transfers that have facilitated the remarkable proliferation of participatory processes over the past fifteen years. Special attention will be paid to three overlapping factors: (1) normative frameworks (the ideas of participatory democracy or modernization of public administration, the deliberative imperative, etc.); (2) the technical tools for participation (labeled procedures such as citizens’ juries or Agenda 21, and less formalized ones including participatory budgets in the methodology imported from Porto Alegre); (3) the actors involved in disseminating, adapting and legitimizing these processes, the construction of their know-how, the basis on which exchanges take place in professional, associative and political networks and their trajectories. Great stress will be placed on the circulation of knowledge between the political, administrative, associative, professional, academic and commercial spheres, as well as on cross-border exchanges (between countries, political tendencies and between institutions). The channels that facilitate these exchanges based around transnational bodies (Council of Europe or the European Commission) or horizontal exchanges (networks of social movements), will also held up to scrutiny. Part of this analysis will focus on the contradictory influences affecting participatory democracy. Demands for greater participation were voiced by social movements, especially urban ones. They are also one of the key factors in the modernization of institutions, particularly based around the theories of good governance and New Public Management. Finally, it has emerged as a counterweight to stem the disillusionment with politics and is presented as a means of bringing citizens and their elected representatives back together. These three factors vary in importance depending on national and local contexts and we need to measure the relationship between them.

2. The second theme will seek to develop a conceptual history of the concepts and words most commonly used in the sphere of participation. The methodological categories used by researchers are themselves connotated and are a reflection of specific viewpoints that are then transmitted by language. For example, the fact that contemporary French clearly distinguishes between users (usagers) and customers (clients), whereas in German the two are subsumed into the term Kunden has important implications for reviewing the relationship between modernizing the public service and participation. Similarly, the Latin languages and English use the term representation in a polyvocal manner, while in German, theatre or literary “representation” has no semantic link to political “representation”. This has a bearing on how representative democracy is conceived. The unequal dissemination of terms such as self-management, participatory democracy or deliberative democracy also influence how the research object is constructed. It would be worthwhile conducting plurinational research into how national viewpoints concerning participation compare and develop a partial conclusion – without forgetting that research can never entirely shake off its local anchorage, if only in terms of its writing style or because different national publics receive a given topic differently.

3. The third theme will cover a longer historical period and seek to gain a better understanding of the specific features of contemporary experience and their similarities with past movements. The following three topics may be explored, however they are by no means exhaustive. (1) The ideal of participation burst onto the scene in the 1960s and 70s giving rise to notions (such as “participatory democracy”) that are still in use today, and to approaches that were subsequently partially incorporated into the modus operandi of institutions. To what extent are these movements at the root of contemporary approaches? (2) The ideal of democracy based on broad participation has been advocated by diverse ideological camps, ranging from socialists or libertarians to left-wing liberals via minority tendencies within republicanism. To what extent do today’s ideas have a direct link with these past ideological “frameworks”? (3) The urban sphere is particularly fertile ground for comparing these various genealogical components. What breaks and continuity can be identified between the Fourierist utopia at the end of the 19th century, through nascent town planning and urban reform at the beginning of the 20th century and urban protest and the related experiments of the 1970s, down to the strong participatory component in sustainable development? Did the pioneering participatory experiments bequeath knowledge capital and a collective memory that was subsequently used by later generations.

Practicalities

The workshop-seminars will take place in French and English (no interpretation/translation has been provided for). They will involve both researchers invited to guide discussions and researchers selected on the basis of this call for contributions.

Deadline for proposals (one or two page summary plus brief biosketch of the author): October 30, 2007.
Submission of papers chosen: January 7, 2008.

Organized by LOUEST and CSU
With the participation of ADELS and the Centre Marc Bloch
Within the scope of the PICRI/Ile de France program “Local participatory processes in the Ile-de-France (Greater Paris Region) and throughout Europe: towards a technical democracy?” and the ACI Internationale program “Participatory democracy, deliberation and social movements”

Scientific coordinators: Marie-Hélène Bacqué (UMR LOUEST, Université d’Evry),
Yves Sintomer (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, CSU/Université de Paris 8)

Scientific secretariat: Amélie Flamand (Amelie.Flamand@paris-valdeseine.archi.fr)
Héloïse Nez (picri@adels.org)