Métropoles (Jul 2010)
Démocratie participative et démocratie différentielle
Abstract
Participation is becoming (again) an important topic in the field of urban studies, leading to controversies about the democratization « promises » of local political life. Bernard Jouve studied this issue in several works by first investigating urban governance and then questioning the metropolitan democracy. His critical analysis perspective was built upon an outstanding articulation between in depth empirical investigations and the mobilization of both meso and macro analytical frameworks. Using to different set of cases (development councils in France and e-participation) this article intends to underline the value, in particular heuristic, of theses analytical frameworks and return to the exploratory hypothesis of differential democracy formation in Western democracies. This entry point enables us to initiate a discussion on both his lucid and pessimistic conclusions about participative processes instrumentalization by urban power dominant actors.
