1

Spreading participatory governance in a controlling State:

“Councils for Development” in France and Aquitaine.

Authors: Hubert Hubrecht and David Capes, CERVL, CNRS Unit UMR 5116,
IEP de Bordeaux. University Montesquieu Bordeaux IV.

Abstract:

In France there is a traditional opposition to ways of democracy that are not under control of
representative and/or administrative government. This can be better understood through the history of
how the French Republic has fought against its enemies. But since about forty years, under the pressure
of nation-based groups and international organisations, France has developed a legal framework in order
to encourage new ways of citizen participation in public policies and public services. These regulations
are being both abundant and not compulsory. Few good uses are made of these new opportunities for
citizen participation, which are often considered as counterproductive. Nevertheless, since the end of the
1990s, numerous experiences of inter-city non-governmental organisations called “Councils for
Development” (“Conseils de développement”) have started to generate new opportunities for citizens to
take part in decision-making and implementing processes of local public policies, often multi-
institutionnal ones. This paper presents programmes that aim at activating citizen participation in the
Region of Aquitaine (region of Bordeaux). The programmes are inspired by social-pragmatist principles
and started with specific citizens: entrepreneurs members of Chambers of Commerce & Industry,
Chamber of Craft-Industry, and/or Chamber of Agriculture. They provided local participatory public
policies aiming at developing economic or social potentials. The article stress two types of results: first,
private-public partnerships aiming at improving local policies of employment and professional training;
second, the commitment and sometimes the leadership of firms in defining local environmental policies
(for example waste management) that help different levels of government to find local partners.

Introduction

From the end of the 1990s the principles of local participatory governance has become in France a
usual standard in the discourses of public officials. “Governance” means here : « shared power » between
the different stakeholders involved in a public project (Allamand, 2000). But most of the surveys or
critical analysis on this issue stress the gap between ideals of citizen participation and the concrete
practices. To better understand the French brakes on citizen participation, we need to take into account
the historical heritage of an old traditional centralised State (it is indicative that the word “Etat”/State is
always written with a capital letter in French) that swapped an absolute monarchist regime for an ultra-
representative and administrative centralised system government. The devolution reform in the years
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1982-1983 - combined with geographical decentralisation of state institutions that followed - have
established good conditions for developing new territorial public administration practices, but hardly
involved citizens in public decision-making processes. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the 21st century,
public participation is acknowledged to be the new step of renewal that French administration needs, and
the “Councils for Development” (“Conseils de développement”) are considered as a major tool aiming at
citizen involvement. These Councils for development are designed to work both in urban and rural areas.
Experimentally, we didn’t notice that this distinction plays a role.

Our programmes aim at developing new ways of participatory governance in France, applying a
“social-pragmatist” approach, that means:
- developing social skills of persons involved in participatory governance,
- using a pragmatist methodology that gives priority to actualisation of local public policies
potentials.

According to John Dewey, the core project of the democratic interpersonal inquiry “demands
liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are
common”(Dewey, 1927, p 147). This social-pragmatist empowerment starts with the analysis (and if
possible overtaking) of the historical heritage that is an obstacle to experimenting public participation
ways of governing. It continues with a cooperation between Researchers-Consultants and local citizens
and officials that produce a common practice of “project-oriented participatory governance”, that fosters
two kinds of skills, at the same time :
- for the citizens, taking part in policy-making,
- for the officials, sharing the power.

This social-pragmatist approach relies on a rediscovery of John Dewey’s (1927) propositions in the
changing USA of the 1900s/1920s, (interacting with Jane Addams’ (1930), G.H.Mead’s, Ch.H.Cooley’s
and W.Lippmann’s social theories and experiences). John Dewey, especially in The Public and its
Problems, (Dewey, 1927), relied on the analysis of W.Lippmann (1922, 1927) in order to show that
modern conditions of living impose new public administration practices that integrate citizens in public
inquiry and policy making processes that set and try to solve the problems that the local and larger
communities face. Recently, various scholars in Public Administration, have shown that pragmatist
approaches help to renew public policy management (Shields, 2003), and to conceptualise citizen
participation (Evans, 2000).

All starts with getting as free as possible from the historical determinations that could prevent the
private and public stakeholders to take part in a participatory governance process. So we need to make a
brief description of the brakes that history has set up on citizen participation in France.

Overtaking the French tradition of strong representational democracy

The French Republic has been established on the ideal foundations of citizens considered as: under the
control of representative government, and unqualified for expressing the general interest of the nation.
The French politician Sieyès who helped to establish the first National Assembly in 1789 has deeply
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influenced the conception of a Republic relying on a representative government keeping the citizens
under control and depriving them of the legitimate power of expressing “General Interest” (“l’intérêt
général”). Various historical experiences have shown that the call for citizen expression can lead to the
end of a republican regime in France. The Bonaparte’s plebiscites (especially the one of 1802) and the
populist campaign of Napoleon’s nephew for the first President election at the universal suffrage (in
1848), first affected the First and Second French Republics and finally led to their abolishment to the
benefit of dictatorial regimes.

At the local level, during the Third Republic, in the continuation of the General Boulanger’s
movement that fought against the parliamentary regime (1886-1889), local referendums have been used
in order to destabilize the Republic. The French Conseil d’Etat in its judgements of Commune d’Aigre
1905, and Commune de Brugnens 1909 stated explicitly that the citizens cannot be considered qualified to
express the ‘General Will’. If a local elected institution organise a referendum about a question out of its
own responsibilities or with the idea to consider its result as a decision, this lead to a disqualification of
the local authority.

The French elite traditionally considers citizens as vulnerable to populist manipulation and distrust
direct democracy because it can be a mean to question the legitimacy of the elected officials. For different
reasons, the main French political parties did not militate in favour of direct citizen participation in the
public affairs as a democratic principle valuable in itself before the end of the 20th century. However
there is also an ideological tradition in France of citizen self-management that has been represented by
local activist movements. Can be noticed the experience of the Groups of Municipal Action (GAM,
“groupes d’action municipale”). In the 60’s, these groups have been involved in building local policies
especially in the fields of neighbourhood and environment in the city of Grenoble. Their leader: Mr
Dubedout became Mayor of the city in 1965, and a nation-wide movement of GAM spread in French
suburbs (240 groups between 1965 and 1973). This experience is central because it has shown that citizen
participation can produce efficient local public policies, but it has been limited to neighbourhood, quality
of life, urban ecology policies. In the beginning of the 80s the Socialist and later the Green parties did
proclaim defending participatory ideas without necessarily accepting to promote them in their policies.
The French right parties fought against the devolution policies in the 80’s and later became defenders of
devolution processes, essentially for State modernisation and public money saving goals.

The socialist party in the beginning of the 1980’s have established the ‘proximity to the citizen’ as a
core principle of the devolution framework laws in 1982 and 1983. Despite the law related to the rights
and liberties of local authorities saying that in the future new laws will help to define ways to develop
citizen participation, the idea is that it is sufficient to make the decision-making processes closer to the
local levels in order to improve the democracy. Therefore, new powers have been delegated to local
authorities (devolution) and at the same time, state agencies were set up at local levels (state
decentralisation), in order to fit with local responsibilities organisation.

Rather than internal factors, it can be said that the raising of international standards for new
governance is the most important influence which has led French administrative and political leaders to
acknowledge the legitimacy of making efforts to improve public participation in policy-making processes
(the standards are those promoted by OECD, which reports are frequently quoted by mass media, or even
the World Bank, since experiences of participatory public management in developing countries is getting
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considered as interesting for all). In rural areas, without media coverage, the practice of Local Agenda 21
plans could have been another opportunity for citizen participatory, but because it was a policy promoting
by the French environment protection Department, it has often been considered as a restrictive approach
imposed by the State under influence of Green parties and activits.

The Legalistic Approach towards Citizen Participation in the late 1990s

Despite a flood of regulations supposed to promote citizen participation, the results are rather meagre,
except in some cases where participatory projects have been carried out successfully. A City Lawyer:
Morgane Letanoux (Letanoux, 2003) shows that in France the abundant regulations organising citizen
participation is not really used and is essentially considered as counterproductive. For example, in spite of
a law that oblige French cities that have more than 3,500 inhabitants, to implement Advisory Committees
of citizen-clients of public services, only about 100 of the 2.670 concerned cities applied the law. A
framework law of participatory democracy has been adopted the 27th of February 2002 in order to
promote new participatory processes and to strengthen existing practices. But the core principles that
make this regulation not compulsory are still inspiring the laws:
- the citizen participation must be considered as advisory,
- the elected officials are often free to decide the ways they organise who is taking part in the
advisory board and how the consultation is organised.
Thus the initiative of the citizen participation process belongs to the elected officials that are
considered as the only holders of a legitimate expression of “the general interest”. The reason why
regulations concerning citizen participation do not get implemented would need a deeper inquiry that the
studies existing. As far as what we experiment, we can say that the elected and administrative officials
that could apply the regulations: 1. fear to develop political opponents through these socio-political
dynamics, and don’t now how to manage these new ways of governing.

There are two kinds of tools for citizen participation: standing advisory institutions and temporary
consultative proceedings.
The standing advisory institutions are:
- the Regional Social and Economic Councils (“Conseil économiques et social regional”) which exist
since 1972 but became important with the new regional powers that provided to Regional Council the
1982-83 Decentralisation Outline-Laws, at the nation level exists a Social and Economic Council that is
sometimes an important advisory institution,
- the Neighbourhood Councils (“Conseil de quartier”) that have been renewed by the Participatory
Democracy 2002 Law and are obligatory for cities with more than 80.000 inhabitants,
- the Information and Supervision Local Committees (“Comité local d’information et de suivi”) that
concern environment and waste management issues,
- the Council for Development (“Conseils de développement”) in rural areas (“Pays”) or urban inter-
cities areas (“agglomérations”), that must be consulted at various phases of the drafting, the
implementation and the evaluation of strategic territorial development programmes which have the
objective to coordinate projects concerning inter-city areas, existing since the 1999 Sustainable Territorial
Development framework law, (“Loi d’orientation pour l’aménagement et le développement durable du
territoire”)
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- the Local Public Services Committees (Comité local de service public) that existed before the
Participatory Democracy 2002 Law, but became more compulsory, some of their administrative decisions
being now liable to annulment if the advisory committee did not express its opinion about them.
- the “Public Debate National Committee” (Comité national de débat public) that exists since 1995 but
gained a clarified status and saw the establishment of more opportunities to refer maters of public debate
to this committee. It decides the organisation of public debate when public projects raise issues require a
national (at least inter-regional) public discussion and decision-making process.

The temporary consultative proceedings are more various, numerous and usually related to projects.
Two main procedures can be mentioned:
- the “public inquiries” (enquêtes publiques) that give to concerned citizens the opportunity to express
opinion and possibly expectations with regard to local development or planning projects,
- local referenda that is the issue of a very important and revealing subject to debate at the National
Assembly and Senate at present (spring-summer 2003).

Most of these procedures are considered as a necessary evil that represent a risk for public
management efficiency and a threat for the legitimacy of elected local officials who could be less
powerful in their role to impose the public good against the private interests. The report of the Laws
Committee of the French Senate, that has presented the senator Daniel Hoeffel, at the session of the 27th
of May 2003 is very clear on that point: “the legitimate improvement of ways of direct democracy must
not lead to a weakening of the authority of local elected officials and to a locking of decisions-making”,
and it follows: “They (elected officials) need encouragement and not a brake on the action which they
take for the general interest”.

A critical analysis of the abundant regulation helps to explain the gap between well-intentioned speech
and concrete practices. The Neighbouring Democracy Law of the 27th of February 2002 (“loi relative à la
démocratie de proximité”) was initially aiming at implementing in the French local administrative system
new ways for citizen participation, especially for urban areas, and important public works and projects.
But, through the action of various Parliament Committees, it became a law that established
neighbourhood committees only for cities with more than 80.000 inhabitants (the first threshold discussed
was 20.000), and did not actually improve citizen participation. Even if some citizen participation ways
are obligatory the majority of the city council decides who will participate and in which way the
participation will take part in the decision-making processes. This law that was discussed in order to
promote “démocratie de proximité” became a reaffirmation of the absolute primacy of representative
democracy.

Even when the two Chambers of the French Parliament convened in Versailles for a Congress on 17th
of March 2003 that our constitution will include devolution principles in its administrative system, they
were eager to ensure that these principles are not compulsory for local councils. At present, there is a
discussion on the law that defines the concrete way to organise the referendum. It can be predicted that
when it will be adopted (in September 2003) ensuring that the decision-making process will be
exclusively under control of the elected officials. Here is the key-principle: if a participatory democracy
process is set up it must continue the power of the representative elected officials (see the remark by
D.Hoeffel above).
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Councils for Development (CfD) as a major opportunity to promote

Participatory Governance in France

In spite of this context, since the 60’s, some elected and public officials decided on their own to
experiment participatory approaches that prepared setting place of Councils for Development (CfD).
Pierre Coulmin (1986) shows that the environment protection policies and institutions such as the
foundation of National Parks in 1960 and Nature Regional Parks in 1967 involved some elected officials
and citizens in multi-partner approaches that prepared the devolution/decentralisation context that will
emerge 15 years later. Some national administrative officials from the Agriculture Department have also
implemented participatory rural planning development programmes in the 1960’s. The “Plans
d’Aménagement Rural” experiences (Plans for Rural Development) have played an empowerment role,
allowing local politicians and citizens to take part in planning processes that were leading to contracts
using state grants for a number of years (citizens and politicians were often - and some times still are –
sharing at the beginning of these participatory experiences the same faltering attitudes, so that they
learned together through this empowerment process). In 1984, a quarter of the French territory was
covered by these development plans that could deal with employment policies, cultural, social and
welfare facilities, environment and quality of life measures, support for business creation or growth.
Since the beginning of the application of the Devolution Laws, most of the 22 French Regional Councils
have continued this movement by promoting development contract-building processes with inter-cities
rural organisations that sometimes invited local elected officials to involve citizens in the planning
process.

In urban areas, since the movement of the GAM (Groups for Municipal Action) in the 1960’s and also
as a result of the resoluteness of administrative officials who believe in the value of citizen participation,
a public administration movement that became usually called “City Policy” (“Politique de la Ville”) has
been another good framework for learning participatory public management practices. These practices
have been used to develop multi-partners projects often financed by European Union, joining non-profit
organisations and public institutions of various levels of government.

The CfD institutionalisation is the result of an integrative process that is explicit in the specific field of
environmental and sustainable development policies. After signing the International Rio Conference in
1992, France had proposed to inter-cities rural or urban areas to contract for regional, national and
European funding helping to finance environmental projects in the 21 Agenda Local Projects. With the
ratification of the International Convention of Aarhus in 1998, France went further in the principle to
associate citizen to environment and sustainable development planning. But again since the 1999
Sustainable Development Law, these 21 Agenda Local Projects must be developed within the common
framework of the contact-building processes of “Contrats de Pays” or “Contrats d’Agglomérations”, so,
CfD became the major institutional tools for organising Public Participation. This organisation is also
adapted to the fact that, especially in rural areas, citizens prefer to be involved in a general-interest
participatory council instead of an environment-oriented policy committee.

These examples of the historical heritage of participatory public planning and multi-partners
management experiences help to understand why the proposition to experiment a new policy of territorial
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development contract-building has known a great success since its launching phase. In 1995, only 42
“Pays” were supposed to be experimented. Two years later, more than 200 were born (Le Monde Dossiers
et Documents, 2003). These successful experiences at city or inter-cities levels - in both rural and urban
areas - have inspired the nation-wide institutionalisation of CfD in 1999.

It is fair to say that after three years of experience from 1999 to 2002 the CfD are now deeply rooted in
the French public domain because they promoted working groups, which can draft plans in specific areas
development. But according to a survey undertaken in 2002, the majority of the CfD in France are
associations, which still essentially depend on the inter-cities politicians, and public officials close control
(Lettre d’ETD: Entreprises, Territoires et Développement, September-October 2002). Regardless of these
institutional gaps, if they are managed in a way that joint: fostering of participatory governance skills and
project-oriented participation, they allow the promotion and diffusion of new ways of local governance.

The 1999 Law and following orders that have established the CfD did not precisely define their ways
to work adjacently to local authorities, and let local politicians to decide how they would organise their
work with them and give them more or less freedom and means to function. The ETD survey reports that
on 71 CfD that answered their questionnaire (on a total of 175 yet administratively recognised “Pays” in
2001, for 241 in 2002):
* 55% of the CfD do not have autonomy in their means and play no more than an advisory
occasional role of expertise depending on the will of the administrative and elected officials agenda,
** 29 % of them are more representative and democratic in their composition but still depending on
the politico-administrative decision-making system, although having the possibility to improve their
autonomy,
*** 16% of the CfD, because of clear agreement between elected officials and CfD members have
their means and ways to function, are real local authorities partners, and take part in the all process of
local public policy: problematic situation analysis, public interest goals defining, project planning, multi-
institutional funding negotiation, evaluation procedure (very rarely applied).

The elected officials can freely decide who is member of a Council for Development, and how the
Council is more or less associated to decision-making. But because a Council for Development deals with
defining, implementing and sometimes evaluating, local policies at inter-cities level with supra-local
government institutions; it offers important opportunities to improve citizen participation. Contrary to the
referenda or municipal citizen projects that can raise up conflict of power issues, the CfD institutions can
promote supra-municipal participatory governance ways as we experimented some in Aquitaine.

New participatory governance experiences in France and the Region of

Aquitaine because of Councils for Development (CfD)

Considering this general analysis and relying on about 10 years of experience; as Researcher taking
part trough Public Law and Public Administration practices analysis and encouraging elected officials to
improve citizen participation (Hubert Hubrecht); or as Consultant facilitating Public Participation
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Processes: in the 90’s in Committees which were similar to Council for Developments (CfD), and
recently in official CfD (David Capes); the authors consider that the present best way to improve Public
Participation in France is the diffusion of project-oriented participatory governance that the CfD practices
started to implement.

As Consultant in the CREDER company (www.creder.com), D.Capes have run action-training of citizens
as members of Chambers of entrepreneurs (Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Craft-Industry and
Services, or Agriculture) preparing them to take part in CfD. At the same time, we helped Chambers of
entrepreneurs to improve their capacity to co-operate with local authorities. In France, three kinds of
Chambers of entrepreneurs exist: Chamber of Craft Industry and Services, “Chambre de Métiers”,
Chamber of Farming, “Chambre d’agriculture”, Chamber of Commerce and Industry, “Chambre de
Commerce et d’industrie”. Any entrepreneur in France is obliged to be a member of one of these
Chamber (or is member of the Union of Professionnal Persons), and must finance a part of its budget.

These Chambers are not simply non-government organisations but have a special status of public
establishment, “établissement public” that make them in a way a representative administration with
certain obligations toward the State. We worked with different Chambers in Aquitaine, but the Chambers
of Craft Industry have been leaders in the process to invent new ways to co-operate with elected officials
responsible for building territorial development contract at the inter-cities organisation level called
“Pays”. This leadership is easy to understand if we consider that most of the areas that are concerned by
the “Pays” policy are rural areas where Craft Industry faces important that need to be treated at the local
level as for example: difficulties of employees recruitment or new environment expensive standards
pressure. But the Chambers for Commerce and Industry took actively part in the projects especially when
shopping areas where involved in possible renewal projects. Chambers of Agriculture in some occasion
participated, but generally they consider as a matter of priority their institutional co-operations with
supra-local levels of administrative or political authorities than the local ones : the French big county
level (“Département”), the regional level, and the national decentralised administrations (especially in
“Départments”) State level with which they build projects using EU public funds.

Despite these institutional differences, the citizens-entrepreneurs, as singular persons, took part in a
very similar way in the processes of the action-training programmes. We talk about “citizens-
entrepreneurs” because themselves, at a very wide majority, did not want to be first considered as
entrepreneurs but as citizens involved in businesses that participate in the local development affairs.
Actually, the ideas and projects, which the participatory process produced, were more about general local
development issues than business matters. The citizens-entrepreneurs have wanted to focus on what lacks
or must be modified in order to improve the “attractivity” of the territory for inhabitants or consumers, as
well as for business people.

The citizen participation programmes have resulted of a co-operation between administrative and
professional elected officials of the Chambers and the administrative and political elected officials of the
Local Authorities. The are financed through the training funds of the Chambers, and/or the funds for
territorial development at the “Département” or Aquitaine Region levels. Here are principles of the
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training programme: during six evening meetings (laced with convivial meals) the citizens-entrepreneurs
progressively build a common vision for the future of the territories:
1. clearly identifying their concerns (often related to dissatisfaction and criticism at the beginning),
2. forming into a hierarchy their priorities, arbitrating conflict of projects and values,
3. changing their dissatisfaction into ideas and if possible projects of action,
4. forming project groups and invite to the meeting for common reflection political or administrative
officials, or experts, public or private managers, other stakeholders in order to build projects plan,
5. building a strategy to integrate the results of their work into the political-administrative local inter-
cities planning agenda, most of the time in the form of multi-partners projects
6. learning to publicly present these propositions in the presence of the local media, various local and
supra-local officials (inter-cities, Département, Regional levels), and their fellow local entrepreneurs.

This experience has been carried out in more than 10 different inter-cities territories (in a Region that
will count about 40 participatory development planning territories, half of them being in progress). We
adapted our intervention on each territory taking into account: 1. the levels of will and commitment of
citizens in the process of public decision-making, and: 2. the ambition of the political-administrative local
system to implement participatory governance, especially when expertise is required the projects to build.

The reading of classical texts can help to theorize methods to balance between a proactive involvement
in favour of participation and an efficiency-based managerial approach. The Dewey/Lippmann
controversy texts are ones of these. Walter Lippmann’s books, The Public Opinion, and The Phantom
Public, (Lippmann, 1922, 1927), presented core ideas: with the urbanisation and modernisation of the
ways of living the “omniscient and publicly involved citizen” has become a fiction; the best way to build
public policies is to let the administrative and elected officials work with experts in order to decide for the
people and – in some occasions – through appeal via the media to public opinion in order to make some
simple choices. Relying on Lippmann’s analysis, Dewey has written The Public and its Problems in order
to acknowledge some of his diagnostic but above all to fight against the withdrawal from the democratic
participation project and to promote the original endeavours of democratisation of the American society.
He redefines its design as the releasing of human potentialities to take part in public policies that can
improve the common social, cultural, environmental, political and economic life. Thus, the techno-
administrative Lippmann’s management must be replaced by a continuous pragmatist participatory public
inquiry, although taking into account the scientific and expertise works.

Dewey gives priority to a methodological optimism: as long as we did not experience the
unwillingness or apathy of a citizen we have to consider him/her as an active and relevant participating
singular person in the formation of public opinion. In these 1920’s years, Dewey expressed that in the
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new complex industrialised societies modified by transport and communication means, diffusion of
individualistic values, new ways of building Local Communities able to plan actions to improve their
lives must be helped through methods of “effective and organized inquiries” (Dewey, 1927, p177).
Patricia Shields (2003) shows that the basic pragmatist concept of “community of inquiry” can be a
conceptual as well as operational guideline for officials responsible for public participation activation
programmes. A main issue that we must face during the management of a this kind of public participation
activation programme is the long-lasting upholding of personal and group involvement in the
participatory process.

Once again, we can say that using the adjective “social-pragmatist” allows to express the double aspect
of the factors that must be activate to maintain this involvement:
- the group members, as singular persons, must experience a social dynamics in the process of
participatory planning (the convivial meals are very important and cannot be considered as an
anecdote),
- - the practical values and possible realistic consequences of their work must be ensured by the
application of a pragmatist method, progressively but explicitly explained, as the members of the
group go along the planning process.

Moreover, using the contradictory dynamics approach of Stéphane Lupasco (1986), the conceptual
framework that organises the principles of activation of citizen participation break down into two parallel
lines of intervention:
- helping to acknowledge and identify the potential actions that might improve the common problematic
or dissatisfying situations that the citizens experience, (potentialisation of situations),
- transforming these acknowledgements into projects of concrete actions that will actualise territorial
potentialities through projects of improvement or development (actualisation of potentialities).

Each speech or word that express any citizen, especially when they share opinions in groups must be
used at the same time: as a material for conceptualise the problematic situations that the territory faces,
and as the first step for an operational project aiming at changing the situation. A core competency of the
researcher/consultant relies in this ability, especially when we report with commentaries the words that
have been exchanged during the previous session. In order to ensure the pragmatist values of this
participatory planning activities, we need to pre-define as soon as possible the operational ways to build
public projects that could change the problematic situation identified. The main problematic situations
obliged to build multi-partners projects in order to consistently act upon its different aspects.

We will illustrate the principle through two examples because they are the most representative: the
education-training-employment problems as experienced by the entrepreneurs, and the way
environmental protection constraint can be faced in order to make it an opportunity of business
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development. Participants have considered these two lines of public action with highest priority in most
of the programmes that we ran. Moreover, in the history of public participation in France, participatory
policies were pre-existing in these fields and most of the CfD base their action in continuation of them.

In the field of environment policies, we have explained that the CfD are the results of various
participatory policies, so we can understand that Environment Protection institutions can try to take
advantage of the CfD to find local partners. But the experience shows that the citizens themselves are at
the beginning of the partnership, that we help to build. In the employment and professional training
domain, since 1981, about 100 of voluntary associations called “Employment Basin Committees”
“Comités de Bassins d’Emploi” had been established in various regions of France in order to bring
together the key stakeholders responsible issues related to education, training and employment. Because
these institutions encountered difficulties to confront with traditional administrations, because they did
not have election legitimacy, they decided to take advantage of the emergence of CfD in order to build
new partnerships with local elected and administrative officials.

We activate citizen participation using the principles that we presented, so that the various stakeholders
concerned about employment or environmental issues are proposed to be involved in the participatory
process, but with a flexibility in the type of leadership that organise the partnerships in the public project
that arises. The fist step is to build a common acknowledgement of the problematic situation even if this
implies expression conflicts of values. For example, especially craft industry managers complain about
the lack of consideration in the traditional schools for manual work, so that the professional local school
have difficulties to recruit young people. In the field of adult training, the enterprises could find adults
interested in retraining programmes, but they are integrated in social-based programme in non-profit
organisations that receive public funds for public works contracts that they realise with less social costs
that traditional companies. In the public circles, the professors claims that their lack professional partners,
and the social-workers would like to collaborate with employers because their work is evaluated
according to the number of retrained adult people regraded and hired in private companies, so they would
accept to co-organise realisation of contracts with private partners in order to prepare their workers to a
normal activity.

The working groups first acknowledge the contradictory viewpoints before changing them into
common projects. They are setting at the end of a process of maturation of the project within the citizens-
group, so that we can be sure that the initial group of citizens and the professional stakeholders will be
durably involved in the public programme. They start in parallel with a legitimatisation of the projects
through the public agenda that the elected officials discuss. Sometimes, a project with a local political
support and/or supra-local administrative backing can start although the local development planning
agenda is not yet finalized. Most of the time we propose the citizens-entrepreneurs to cooperate with non-
profit organisations which are used to manage multi-partners projects in order to avoid conflicts between
employers, professors and social workers that would make collapse the project. In the situations we
described it can be: a programme of promoting manual careers in cooperation with teaching institutions,
and a programme of personalized accompaniments from job in social-work organisation to job in a craft
company. The public/private partnerships that produce our activation programmes are rooted into a
cooperation process between economic and public services circles that preceded their conception.
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Another example is the way that we can frequently build programmes of actions for protecting the
environment and at the same time promoting through labelling the companies that make efforts in these
policies. Nation-wide public institutions become partners of these projects. Most of the time the
procedure and administrative tools still exist to implement the projects. Especially in the field of waste
management, relying on Entrepreneurs will and sometimes reconnecting it with already existing
initiatives the citizen participation programme helped to establish good conditions for ensuring
involvement of companies in a waste management facilities project. These two examples show that the
citizen participation activation process must be as soon as possible co-ordinate with the actual or possible
public management projects. That is why we proposed this idea that the CfD are major tools for diffusing
in the French public administration circles: project-oriented participatory governance practices.

Conclusions

One of the main advantages resulting of the project-oriented participatory governance approach is that
public officials who usually would fight against public participation because of actual or potential
conflicts of legitimacy conflict can accept to put aside their opinion because of the project. We manage
the citizen participation programme always keeping offside of the propositions and projects building
questions as: “who is legitimate to conceive or run this public project? ” , “who has been the first to
propose this idea ? ”, “who will appear as responsible for the project when it will succeed or fail ? ”, etc.

We show that the main common interest relies in experiencing a different way to manage multi-
partners projects, starting with citizen propositions (or simply their viewpoints). This does not mean that
the competition for appearing as the institution or the person that leads the project has disappeared. But
during the conception and validation phases, a methodology has been shared that focus the stakeholders
on the operational conditions of a project. We also try with the citizens to make crucial these operational
and pragmatic criteria when choosing partners and leaders for the projects. We have noticed that supra-
local official partners (decentralised state Agencies or Departments officials, French inter-Departments
representatives of the state: “Préfets” and “Sous-Préfets”) are strong supports for this approach.

Although all the groups of citizens start with denouncing unsatisfactory local government practices,
usually 80% of them continue to take part in our programmes, being interested in inventing creative
solutions to their local dissatisfactions. There is another result of our programmes: many citizens, who
were often the most complaining about the politicians and bureaucrats at the beginning, then become new
local public leaders. May be some of them will become integrated to political teams (it did not occur yet).
Then we will see if they decide to enlarge and improve, or may be to quit and avoid, the practice of a
project-oriented participatory governance.
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