Développement durable et participation : la démocratie introuvable

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand the link between sustainable development and participative democracy, from a critical point of view. After having shown that sustainable development has to be understood in opposition to political ecology, it questions its conception of democracy. Following a formal reasoning, it concludes that participative democracy, as understood by sustainable development, does not provide a democratization. This situation has to be understood as a result of the ideology of sustainable development: a non-dialectical attempt to reconcile contraries.

Keywords

• sustainable development
• participative democracy
• political ecology
• political theory
• urban democracy