The intent of this article is to reflect on the notion of empowered participatory governance in order to gain a better understanding of the institutional contexts and parameters that encourage a more participative democracy, and thereby bring to light the political mechanisms that contribute to broadening the decision-making process. The example we consider is the Montreal Participative Budget (PB). We focus on the impact of decentralization, more specifically on the form this took as the Montreal PB was being elaborated. We examine how much decentralization circumscribes the PB process. The Montreal Participative Budget provides an illustration of the emergence of a participative level in a political context that is, on the whole, hostile to participatory decision making. We suggest that the PB in this context benefits from a new window of opportunity. The chosen example has a dual significance: it underlines the role of temporal contingencies and scales of the process of decentralization in the participative structures at the local level, and it enables us to gain a better grasp of the problem of institutional architectures in implementing participatory democracy by emphasizing the political and social realities underlying new loci for decision making.
Participatory democracy, decentralization and empowered participatory governanceCreating participatory democracy implies decentralization, which is both a particular feature of democracy and a process in its own right. Indeed, it appears difficult to activate citizen participation and expand citizens' decision-making capacity without devolving powers to the level at which citizens can effectively influence issues. Moreover, as a project and specific democratic arrangement, participatory democracy has a particular appeal within the contemporary context of increasing multilevel governance. 1 One of the consequences of this type of governance, which is marked by the proliferation andWe are grateful to the three IJURR reviewers for their insightful comments. 1 The term 'multilevel governance' is polysemic; its meaning depends on which field in the literature you are considering. We will be using it to underline both the proliferation and interlocking of levels of government at the local level (a result of, inter alia, processes of decentralization) and the integration of new actors into a system of decision making that henceforth will be less hierarchical and based more on cooperation (Hooghe and Marks, 2003).
RésuméAu Canada, la participation électorale à l’échelle municipale est plus faible qu'aux autres échelles de gouvernement et les raisons susceptibles d'expliquer ce moindre engagement sont encore mal connues. À partir des taux de participation à la mairie aux élections de 2005 et de 2009 dans l'ensemble des municipalités du Québec (n = 949), la recherche teste 15 hypothèses explicatives de la participation électorale municipale. Les résultats montrent que quatre facteurs expliquent en grande partie la participation électorale municipale et ses variations. Il s'agit de la taille de l’électorat, de la présence d'un électorat âgé, de la marge victorieuse et du nombre de candidats en lice. Ces résultats permettent de mieux cerner le coût du vote à l’échelle municipale, tout en soulignant la nécessité de réaliser davantage d'enquêtes monographiques sur cet objet au Canada, notamment dans les plus grandes municipalités où la participation électorale y est plus faible.
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.
Abstract. The objective of this article is to understand the relations of complementarity and competition between participation mechanisms, a topic that has as yet attracted little empirical investigation, although there is discussion on this issue in the public participation literature. We study the cases of Montreal and Quebec City, where, since the amalgamations in 2002, a public assembly/referendum process has been added to the participation tools already in place in the two cities (public hearings and neighbourhood councils). What can we learn from these two cases about the impact on public participation of the diversification of tools? To explore this subject, we have chosen to use a policy instrument framework to analyze three factors that affect the interactions between policy instruments: the design of the participation tools, the meaning that the actors give to these instruments, and the institutional context in which they are implemented.Résumé. L'objectif de cet article est de comprendre les relations de complémentarité et de compétition entre les dispositifs de participation publique, un thème peu traité empiriquement, même s'il y a des discussions sur cet enjeu dans la documentation sur la participation publique. Notre enquête porte sur le cas de Montréal et de Québec où, depuis les fusions municipales de 2002, un processus d'assemblée publique/référendum a été ajouté aux outils de participation déjà en place (audiences publiques et conseils de quartier). Qu'est-ce que ces deux cas peuvent nous apprendre sur les effets de la multiplication des dispositifs participatifs sur la pratique de la participation publique? Pour explorer ce sujet, nous analysons 3 facteurs qui influencent les interactions entre les instruments de politiques publiques : le design des dispositifs participatifs, la compréhension que les acteurs ont de ces instruments et le contexte institutionnel dans lequel ils sont mis en œuvre.
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