The speeches of disenchantment and re-enchantment on local democracy : for what politics ?

Panel Chairs:

Alain Faure, Science Po Grenoble,

Guillaume Gourgues, Science Po grenoble

Abstract:

Some places echo immediately virtuous or disillusioned democratic stream - Porto Alegre and participation, San Francisco and social movements, Berlin and avant-garde, Naples or Moscow and corruption, Montreal and multiculturalism, Mexico and violence, the canton of Geneva and referendums. In the same time, we could observe much diversified ways of describing the democratic vitality of a city or a region, as soon as we use a micro focus analysis, and we listen attentively to the speeches which are produced there. Each time, this diversity is correlated to a specific cultural and institutional and linguistic history which could be perceived by the people of a specific territory. In France for instance, the local representatives and civil servants explicitly evoke in their speeches a democratic and territorialised "style" (consensus, conflict, balance, partnership, negotiation, deliberation...).

In this IPA panel, we want to open a collective discussion about the function and the impact of these localised and stereotyped speeches in the context of the concrete process of local governance, - in other words the constraints and opportunities - that these democratic beliefs give to the local political elites who want to involve in politics or to implement public policies. Our aim is notably to analysed the discursive mechanisms which define the democratic principles of the production of common good (and not the common good itself), in order to test the hypothesis that the democratic ideal is adapted and defined depending on the local political configuration (decision makers, voters, lobbies), without referring to a universal norm which could be described.

To know if the "enunciation" of politics is differently structured in each territorial configuration, the analyst must keep away from binary interpretations about domination (people/elite, State/society) and use a more historicised and anthropologic analysis of the local discursive productions. In order to understand if the local rhetorical speeches of disenchantment and re-enchantment take part in the agenda-setting (or politicization of problems), it is necessary to gather comparative empirical studies and to accept to open a theoretical arguing about the renewal of democratic beliefs (partly compared to the model of national representative governments). The panel will be specifically interested in the papers which study the way that the speeches spread the "savage" foundations of democracy (as the philosopher Claude Lefort would say), changing democracy into an experience which institutionalise the "social", all the while confronting to the State. In other words, an experience which settles a peculiar management of the political field and its relationship with the civil society.

1 - Town-and-Gown Politics Revisited: Political Regeneration in a Swedish University City
Rolf Hugoson, Umea university (Sweden)

Rolf Hugoson, Umea university (Sweden)

2 - Participatory devices as ambiguous political arenas. A critical discourse analysis of who is called to participate and what for?
Pierre Lefébure, Université de Bordeaux

Pierre Lefébure, Université de Bordeaux

3 - “Narrating the territory” in order to “being as one with the territory”? A debate about a false self-evident truth
Caroline Maury, Ludovic Méasson, AgroParisTech Clermont-Ferrand (France)

Caroline Maury, Ludovic Méasson, AgroParisTech Clermont-Ferrand (France)

4 - Towards Welfare Cities? Speeches about Commun Good in French urban intercommunalities
Hélène Reigner, INRETS, Sébastien Segas, Université de Rennes 2 (France)

Hélène Reigner, INRETS, Sébastien Segas, Université de Rennes 2 (France)

5 - Reinventing localism – Political space of Walloon town
Damien Vanneste, Catholic University of Mons (Belgium)

Damien Vanneste, Catholic University of Mons (Belgium)

6 - Governing the city with(out) the citizens
Taoufik Ben Mabrouk PACTE (Grenoble, France)

Taoufik Ben Mabrouk PACTE (Grenoble, France)

Governing the city with(out) the citizens : the Janus face of the democracy-based discourses about the city

Local government tends to become a more inclusive process with an increasing emphasis on participation and consultation through negotiated urban projects or urban planning which aims to define the development options of a city through permanent debate (Blanc & Beaumont, 2005; Blondiaux, 2001; Irvin & Stansbury, 2004; Lowndes et al., 2001; Salet et al., 2003). This participative turn not only changed the content and the shape of urban projects and plans but also, and more importantly, the political process of local government with new speeches and self-legitimization techniques of local politicians in charge of urban management, highlighting the political uses of participation and consultation. In that perspective, the recent production of strategic plans and the development of consultation devices of urban management as well require a more critical examination to assess their possible use for the purpose of political regulation. A clear illustration of this major trend is the use of the notion of "collaborative planning" by politicians as a rhetorical element to boast the planning processes though its author, Patsy Healey, coined it at the first stance to examine critically the dynamics and practices of planning (Healey, 2003). But more importantly, such political uses praising the merits of a collective definition of the futures of a city are all the more frequent that contemporary urban planning increasingly relies on a systematic mobilization of democracy-based ideals of participation and consultation. In these conditions, urban planning actually favours a framing of consensual images of the city which change the conditions and the dynamics of the political regulation of the city by politicians and bureaucrats. In this process of framing, citizens are simultaneously present through the abstract image of people for whom proposals are made and absent as participation and consultation involve primarily representatives. Built upon a critical examination of the strategic plans in Europe, this paper will focus on the new patterns of planning documents and their effects on the political regulation of cities in a context of widespread participation.