New participatory institutions and against powers: Fung and Wright "revisites" experiences from Marseille and Quebec City

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 not 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. Adapted from the source document.