The “Pragmatist Turn” in Theory of Governance

The Paradox Of The Participative Democracy Revival

In the last few years, some reform practices that have taken place within our States, have revived the ideal of participation: recurring theme of participative democracy, deliberative practices, implication of the users in the evaluation of public services, etc. Some authors, like Blondiaux and Sintomer (2002), refer to the emergence of a “deliberative imperative.” The European policy context is also strongly influenced by the theme of participative democracy. This is for instance illustrated with the White Paper on European Governance (European Commission, 2001) which highlights participation as one of the principles for a good governance. Other authors, like Pierre Rosanvallon (2008), show how much democratic legitimacy implies the necessity and prescription of proximity and reflexivity. Our societies have thus entered the era of “reflexive modernization” (Beck, 1986; Beck et al., 1994) which brings into question the strict divisions of the task of our representative societies and our societies founded on the power of experts (Callon et al., 2001). For us, although they constitute a new mode of participation, the paradox of these new practices initiated by politics is that they do not seem to induce a real growth of power of citizens in collective decisions. They do not seem, using an expression of Marcel Gauchet, to render power appropriable by the members of the political community (2002). These offers of participation touch only a small part of the population, when they are not “colonized” – using an expression from Habermas – by the lobbies or by administration discredited which seek to acquire some form of legitimacy¹. The multiplication of deliberative spaces has instead had the effect of making possible new forms of opportunism and strengthening the domination of majority interest.