Giulio Moini (University of Rome «Sapienza»)

Recent transformations in public policy seem to be showing the need for greater public participation in the process of decision making. Consequently many participative practices are being tested in different fields of public action. Usually the spread of such practices is explained using principally political arguments (crisis of representative democracy and party systems; increasing complexity of policy problems; affirmation of a differentiated polity; political downscaling; influence of trans-national cognitive and normative frameworks; need to increase the legitimacy of public decisions, etc. ). These are useful explanations, but cannot explain an interesting paradox: in the context of Western democracy, the increasing interest of policy makers in participative practices has met with a weak response in terms of their impact on the processes, outputs and outcomes of policy making. We can find the main reason for this widespread paradox in the relationship between participation and the hegemony of neoliberalism.

The shift from Keynesian Welfare National States to Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes has very high social and economics costs that imply potential processes that delegitimize policy makers who, in turn, have to find forms and means of redress. The inclusion of social actors in policy making could be considered one of these forms of redress. New forms of public participation are spreading in western democracies not for their "transformative potential" but for their "conservative potential" for the neoliberalist paradigm. Several empirical research projects, both in Europe and the USA, show that participative and/or deliberative practices are used to marginalize critical discourse and dissenting voices and to dis-empower political opposition. These studies highlight an instrumental use of participation through micro-analysis focused on the participative setting and on the social and organizational relationship between social actors, stakeholders and institutional actors. Theoretical approaches that start from a historical reconstruction of the spread of new forms of public participation and then try to focus on the relationship of such forms with the spread of neoliberalism seem less developed.

In the proposed paper, participation is considered as a référentiel that contributes to the legitimization of neoliberalist policy. The contemporary rhetoric of participation represents a new type of hegemonic "référentiel" and participation is seen as a means of stabilizing contemporary neoliberalism. In other words, "story lines" of participation appear as a central component of neoliberalisation and the technicalities of participation as a means of de-politicizing conflicts and policy issues, and of institutionalizing the normative and cognitive frameworks of neoliberalism, which are often assumed as taken for granted in participative practices.

The main results of recent empirical research into public participation will be analysed, with particular reference to experiences of urban revitalisation, community development and area-based initiatives. The paper will propose an "ideal-type" of the participation référentiel that will be tentatively tested using the empirical results from the analyzed research in order to verify if such a référentiel has produced - in the words of Mathur (2006) - "argumentative structures normalised within institutions and practices", that is to say, a discursive power.

Stéphane Boisseaux (University of Lausanne and Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration)

This contribution aims at showing that the "Référentiel Approach" (RA) is still likely to provide stimulating explanations of the way in which power is constructed in public policies, even in situations of governance. The demonstration is based on evidence coming from three case studies of public policy devices in the Swiss context.

RA and the Governance Approach (GA) present two different conceptions of the way in which power is constructed in public policies. RA, on the one hand, is based on a sectorial approach. Its main hypothesis lies in the fact that public policies can only work through the "cutting of a piece" of social reality. Building a public policy implies a collective agreement on that "piece," i.e. on the definition of a delimited social problem, the ways in which it has to be dealt with, and the actors in charge of it. This is an enactment of ideas, for actors' behaviors are anchored in ideas and also give a concrete expression of them. According to RA, power originates from the ability of some actors to make themselves legitimate for treating the problem inside the clear borders of the corresponding sector. It is mainly a "power over" (hegemony, leadership) implying secondarily a "power of" (action capacities).

GA, on the other hand, provides alternative insights on public policies. Although it is not a unified approach, it can be said that it focuses on "the process of defining collective goals, making political priorities, and bringing together resources from a large number of different actors necessary to attain those objectives". From that perspective, there is no prerequisite of borders building prior to or during policy-building. Consequently, it is necessary to fully take into account situations in which powers and resources are scattered among actors that have to congregate in a limited, pluralist way. Thus, power is mainly built through connections of actors across sectorial or territorial borders. It is "power of" rather than "power over."

At first glance, the articulation of GA and RA seems to be theoretically uncertain. Namely, the question of whether GA is a "case of art imitating life", i.e., revealing new trends in policy-building, or is just a new interpretation framework remains unclear. This is the reason that we intend to check empirically the relevance of the RA on policy devices that can be considered typical of governance. We assume that five dimensions are to be taken into account, corresponding to five of the main notions of RA: rapport global-sectoriel, sector, référentiel, médiateurs, and hegemony. Our empirical corpus comprises three case studies of emerging policy devices in Switzerland: the PDO-PGIs device, an ecologization device of the Swiss agricultural policy, and cross-border policy devices in the Swiss-French metropolitan area of Geneva. They can all be considered typical cases of governance.

Referring to our three case studies, we consider the RA to be a framework that provides stimulating insights over governance processes and situations. Its overall dynamics remain valid under the condition of being reasserted in more general terms. We discuss this whilst taking GA into account.

Julie Gobert (Institut d'Urbanisme de Paris)

Environmental justice is a masterframe in the United States. It's impossible to study a project (facility siting, urban renewal operation...) without taking into account the potential disproportionate and harmful impacts upon minority groups or poor households.

The agenda setting in the 90's into a Presidential Act and in the regulations of the federal agencies partly reduced acute criticism that the movement addressed to the urban system and the political underlying processes. Activists and researchers strive to find another way to promote their conceptions of social justice, which is not a procedural and distributional issue, but also a systemic challenge of urban citizenship. They try to propose "new" tools (local compensations...) different from those employed for the Environmental Policy Integration.

The "environmental justice" discourse has circulated through the Western world and has been differently used according to the countries. Nevertheless the term "environmental justice" was often considered as inappropriate due to its American historical origins.

While in Great Britain, after being objectivized by some academic and grass-root studies, environmental inequities have been introduced in main public policies, they are always a "subject of researchers" in France. They don't find an echo in the political world (or only in the margins).

Why so different interpretations of 'environmental justice'?

Could this variety be elucidated by the hazards of the transfer of a model which has been progressively deformed?

The contrasting perceptions of the Environmental justice paradigm may be explained by institutional reasons, as well as by the cognitive understanding of spatial and social inequalities. In fact the environmental justice concerns seem to tackle how the various forms of Welfare State can accommodate the environmental question, and more specially the increasing demand of environmental protection and rights.

Åsa Knaggård (Lund University)

The article uses the concept of framing in order to analyse in what way scientific uncertainty affects policy-making, and specifically the legitimation of policy alternatives. The roles played by policy-makers and scientists are in focus, as well as their framings of policy problems as more or less uncertain. Framing can be used by these actors as a tool to justify policies, but also as a means to lay the responsibility for a course of action on certain actors. In doing so, the boundary between politics and science is reconstructed and the traditional roles of scientists, as neutral truth-seekers, and politicians, as arbitrators of value conflicts, are reinforced. By placing focus on the roles that these actors play, it is possible also to analyse the transcendence of the boundary and what impact those actors have that chose to play multiple roles. That issues are framed as scientific or political and as certain or uncertain further have ramifications for where issues are discussed and for the possibility of citizens to be able to partake in the discussion about policy alternatives.

The article is based on empirical material from my dissertation on the case of Swedish climate change policy-making. The material shows that policy-makers are not as sensitive to scientific uncertainty as some believe. On the contrary, even when issues are framed as scientific and highly uncertain, policy-makers have managed to formulate policy proposals. In these cases, they have not used science as legitimation, but rather political assessments of the situation. When possible though, policy-makers have used scientific knowledge to justify their proposals. In some instances, they even have used scientific knowledge as justification, despite that scientists, in their framings of an issue, have not given any ground for such a legitimation. The scientists on their side can claim that an issue is one of value and thereby refer it to policy-makers or frame the issue as scientific and claim ownership over it. Depending on the boundary work done by both scientists and policy-makers some aspects of climate change are discussed as scientific issues, whereas others have come to be seen as political in nature. Whether scientific or political arguments are used to justify a course of action, is thus dependent on work from both sides of the boundary. The study shows that scientists that chose to work on both sides of that boundary have a considerable influence over policy formulation, as they can claim scientific as well as political legitimacy.

Emmanuelle Cheyns (UMR Moisa, CIRAD-ES)

Les standards volontaires durables dans les initiatives multi-stakeholders. Limites du paradigme d'inclusion dans la composition du commun à plusieurs

A la suite des dispositifs de certification forestières mis en place au début des années 1990, différentes initiatives d'élaboration de « standards volontaires durables » touchant les secteurs de commodités agricoles (café, cacao, palmier à huile, soja, biocarburants, canne à sucre, coton, etc.) se sont développées à travers un processus de « tables rondes ». Celles-ci visent à prendre en charge un bien environnemental et s'élaborent à travers des dispositifs « ouverts » de participation/négociation dits « multi-stakeholders » réunissant des opérateurs économiques des filières agroalimentaires concernées (producteurs, acheteurs, grossistes, distributeurs, nationaux et multinationaux) mais aussi des ONGs dites « sociales » et « environnementales », internationales et locales, à une échelle mondiale.

Présentées comme « privées » et volontaires, ces initiatives s'appuient sur un argumentaire autour de la « défaillance des Etats », notamment dans les pays du Sud, à prendre en charge les biens environnementaux. Elles construisent leur légitimité sur leur capacité à faire participer (et représenter) « toutes les catégories d'acteurs », de façon « équilibrée » au sein de processus « participatifs » et « inclusifs », par le « dialogue » et la recherche du « consensus » (défini par l'absence d'opposition soutenue).

Pourtant la participation de certains acteurs « locaux » telles que les communautés villageoises et les producteurs familiaux n'est pas évidente et pose des questions d'expression et de considération de leurs voix.

Notre contribution visera à caractériser le contexte dans lequel ces dispositifs émergent et l'équipement politique qu'ils proposent comme modalité de construction de l'accord. A partir du cas particulier de deux tables rondes (RSPO : Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil et RTRS : Roundtable on Responsable Soy), nous analyserons en particulier les effets de ces dispositifs sur les formes de construction du « bien commun » et les tensions relatives aux formes de participation. Nous nous appuierons sur des travaux en sociologie pragmatique, mobilisant les catégories des « régimes d'engagements » et « formats de participation » qui permettent de caractériser différentes constructions du « commun » à plusieurs. 

Nous montrerons que la menace d'éclatement et le stress autour de la gestion des différences sont écartés non seulement par des arbitrages politiques, mais aussi par la mise en œuvre d'une rationalité technique qui conduit à une dépolitisation de l'action. Le traitement du pluralisme des valeurs laisse place à des arbitrages autour d'un accord construit par la coalition « ONG internationales-Industrie » dont nous présentons les ressorts, et à une procéduralisation fondée sur l'action stratégique.

En conclusion, nous mettrons en discussion ce modèle « Mulsti-stakeholder », qui s'inscrit dans un modèle politique libéral plus large de la « coalition et de l'équilibre des groupes d'intérêts et de pouvoir » et qui s'est construit contre le risque exprimé d'une « tyrannie de la majorité ». Bien que parlant pour un nombre très large de voix et s'appuyant sur un principe d'inclusion, ces dispositifs peinent à reconnaître l'expression du pluralisme des principes de justice dans la définition du « bien commun ». Ils peinent aussi à prendre en compte les attachements personnels, permettant d'accueillir jusqu'aux personnes « affectées » dans leurs vies réelles.