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The majority of studies on local politics and politicisation have focused on the study of electoral participation, political parties or civil society. The qualitative dimension of politicisation within local institutions has thus been overlooked. This research addresses this dimension by comparing how citizens politically discuss the world in a representative and a participative institution (The borough council and the participatory budget respectively) of local democracy in one of the poorest areas of the city of Montreal in Canada. In order to grasp the politicisation within political institutions, we link the notion to a rise in generality echoing a conflictualisation of stakes or/and a reference to (in)justice. Our analysis reveals that both institutional designs examined acts in complementary ways. By giving utterance to conflict, the borough council permits the expression of all neighbourhood issues while the participatory budget allows for citizens to dream the future by bringing out the consensus of the moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines middle- and working-class citizens' opposition to green policies in two Montreal boroughs. Through observation of council meetings, it seeks to understand how citizens discuss green policies in local political institutions. In this study, citizens do not oppose environmental policies by principle nor deny the existence of environmental problems. Rather, they feel swept along by a 'green revolution' for which they will bear most of the costs without any short-term benefit. In order to voice this concern, they tend to use the notion of environmental justice in opposition to environmental policies. Their understanding of environmental justice merges a procedural critique of democracy regarding participation and transparency and a substantial critique of inequities in the distribution of the environmental burden. These citizens also manifest an attachment to their neighborhood that connects the environment to the concept of the common good and an exercise of democracy. In this regard, this study reveals how citizens who mobilized within institutions come to a political understanding of environmental issues through the notion of environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selon Fung et Wright, la mise en place d'une gouvernance participative impliquerait l'apparition de contre-pouvoirs specifiques, differents de ceux qui caracterisent les espaces politiques <> dans lesquels operent les mouvements sociaux. Nous discutons ces conclusions a partir d'une comparaison des roles joues par des comites de citoyens a Marseille et a Quebec dans l'emergence et l'activite d'instances participatives nouvelles. A l'inverse des deux auteurs, nous soulignons que, dans certains cas au moins, la mise en place d'une gouvernance plus participative ne saurait se passer de l'existence de mouvements sociaux, et que certaines des <> que Fung et Wright pretent aux contre-pouvoirs specifiques des nouvelles instances participatives peuvent favoriser, au contraire, des logiques de cooptation, nefastes aux pratiques de la democratie participative. Nous terminons cette discussion par une reflexion plus generale sur les facons de penser le conflit en science politique et sur leur pertinence epistemologique et heuristique. According to Fung and Wright, the establishment of participatory governance involves specific stakeholders, different from those characterizing the 'antagonistic' political spaces in which social movements operate. We discuss these conclusions via a comparison of roles played by citizens' committees in Marseille and Quebec City in the emergence of new participatory instances. Contrary to the two authors, we stress that, at least in certain cases, the establishment of more participatory governance could hOt occur without the existence of social movements. More precisely, some features that Fung and Wright attribute to participatory stakeholders could, on the contrary, favour co-optation, harmful to the practices of participatory democracy. We complete this discussion with a more general overview of ways of perceiving the conflict in political science and their epistemological and heuristic relevance.

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. Résumé Cette réflexion entend participer à l'agenda de recherche autour de la Empowered Participatory Governance lancé par Fung et Wright. Après avoir dressé un bilan d'analyses consacrées à différentes expériences participatives, afin de préciser les configurations institutionnelles et politiques favorables à une gouvernance plus participative, nous examinons ces résultats à l'aune du Budget Participatif du Plateau Mont-Royal à Montréal. Notre étude s'attarde plus particulièrement sur les liens entre décentralisation et démocratie participative, soulignant la nécessité d'une analyse qui prenne en compte les rapports de force entre les acteurs au sein des systèmes de gouvernance antérieurs à l'instauration des instances participatives. Si la présence de mouvements sociaux et de partis politiques, soutenant le projet participatif, s'avère incontournable, un mouvement uniquement bottom up risque également de cantonner la portée transformatrice de la démocratie participative à sa portion congrue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]