Métropoles (Oct 2018)
Gouvernance urbaine et critique dans les métropoles européennes : une posture méthodologique pour étudier les effets des mouvements sociaux sur les politiques publiques
Abstract
The urban governance approach has often been denounced as playing the game of neoliberalism through the neutralization of power relations, hierarchies and the detrimental effects of the intervention of private actors in the design of public policies. Contrary to these criticisms, in this article we defend the idea that approaches in terms of governance, on the contrary, are particularly conducive to research on criticism and urban protests. We defend the governance approach as a methodological posture and not as a result: this approach makes it possible to empirically explore the complexity of the relationships between actors carrying diverging interests at multiple scales, in polycentric spaces, without presupposing hierarchies a priori between actors and potential domination situations, but without de-politicizing their relations. This approach is particularly fruitful for thinking about the effects of protests on public policies. We present the modalities of its operationalization with a multi-situated and comparative ethnography of squatter movements in Paris and Madrid. Finally, the article makes two arguments. On the one hand, it shows that criticism and approach by urban governance are not incompatible, but allow the complexity of relations between protesters and decision-makers to be accounted for. On the other hand, it shows the contribution of this approach to the analysis of social movements, especially to think about their effects on public policies.
