From the participatory turn of administrations to the bureaucratisation of participatory democracy: study based on the French case
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211003122 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
From the participatory
turn of administrations
to the bureaucratisation
of participatory
democracy: study based
on the French case
Guillaume Gourgues
Lumi
ere University Lyon 2, France
Alice Mazeaud
La Rochelle University, France
Magali Nonjon
Sciences Po Aix, France
Abstract
This article sets out to contribute to the debate on the participatory turn of public
action and the administration by studying the profile and work of civil servants dedi-
cated to citizen participation within French local administrations. Counter to the rhe-
toric advocating the participatory modernisation of the administration, an analysis of
the day-to-day work of civil servants in charge of participation makes it possible to
grasp the dynamics behind the bureaucratisation of citizen participation. Without actu-
ally shaking up administrative routines, the specialist civil servants invent new routines
essentially intended to maintain the arrangements set up, even when these have little or
no effect on the conduct of public action.
Corresponding author:
Alice Mazeaud, LIttoral ENvironnement et Soci
et
es (LIENSs), Ba
ˆtiment ILE, 2 rue Olympe de Gouges, 17000
La Rochelle, France.
Email: alice.mazeaud01@univ-lr.fr
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00208523211003122
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2022, Vol. 88(4) 1141–1158
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Points for practitioners
This article provides an insight into the processes of administering citizen participation
in France according to a double logic of specialisation and dissemination, and analyses
the practical aspects of participatory work within the administrations.
Keywords
administration and democracy, citizen participation, local government, professions
Introduction
Today, the participatory turn of public action, especially local action, is well
recognised and documented. In recent decades, a proliferation of participatory
arrangements has been observed around the world (Font et al., 2014; Ganuza
and Baiocchi, 2016; Kathi and Cooper, 2005; Mazeaud et al., 2016), making ‘cit-
izen participation a normal practice of local democracy’ (Michels and de Graaf,
2017: 876). Most of the studies focus on analysing the concrete conditions for
implementing participatory arrangements and evaluating their effects on the qual-
ity of democracy. They come to the same conclusions on the limited nature of their
effects on public action (for a summary, see Mazeaud et al., 2012), which vary
greatly depending on the context (Bherer et al., 2016; Michels, 2012; Michels and
De Graaf, 2017).
One question that deserves particular attention among the abundance of liter-
ature is the relationship between administration and citizen participation. On the
one hand, some studies point out that the effects of participatory arrangements are
largely due to the attitude of the administration: ‘Without real changes in how
bureaucracies function, there will be little movement toward authentic participa-
tion and greater cynicism on the part of administrators and citizens’ (King et al.,
1998: 9). However, asking the administration to open up to its citizens is quite a
tall order: ‘In the field of public administration and policy, public action is tradi-
tionally perceived as the product of a political-administrative elite with
the ordinary citizen having only a marginal role to play’ (Bherer, 2011: 105).
The participatory turn is therefore a huge challenge for the administration
(Moynihan, 2003; Nabatchi, 2010): the citizen is no longer seen as a constituent
or a beneficiary, but as a ‘partner’ (Kathi and Cooper, 2005). This heralds a change
in the work of administrations (Borzeix et al., 2015), not only in terms of actual
practices, but also in terms of professional identities (Nalbandian, 1999; Yang and
Callahan, 2007), prompting not only identity crises, but also learning processes.
On the other hand, citizen participation can be explicitly considered as a policy
of ‘participatory modernisation’ (Herzberg, 2013). From this perspective, openness
with regard to citizens, defined as a democratisation of the administration (Brugu
e
and Gallego, 2003), is a response to long-standing criticisms of bureaucratic
1142 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(4)
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