Usages of an E-participation Platform by French Legislators: The Resilience of Representative Democracy?
(2021) 26th World Congress of Political Science - IPSA — Location: NOVA University of Lisbon (virtual event) (10.July.2021)
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- A key issue of scholarly debates on democratic innovations is why elected politicians engage in innovative decision making, in particular in the form of participatory democracy. Scholars have highlighted different usages of participatory tools by political representatives, but further investigation is needed to account for the political conditions under which politicians resort to participatory instruments. This article confronts the case of French legislators to the literature on the uses of participatory tools by elected representatives. The research question structuring the paper is the following: why do some legislators – key actors of representative democracy – use an online e-participation platform? The French case is an extreme case of citizens’ mistrust towards the (political) elites as evidenced by the Yellow Vests. In this respect, the French case magnifies the issues of elected politicians’ usages of participatory tools. To answer the research question, we selected the case of a French e-participation platform: Parlement & Citoyens (Parliament & Citizens, P&C). P&C is an online platform “enabling citizens and legislators to work together to find solutions to [France's] problems”. P&C is a private initiative established as a non-profit organization. It has been running since 2013, and thus far 17 Senators and MPs have conducted 24 consultations. Legislators are invited to upload (ideas about, or elements of) draft laws on the platform that are open to comments, arguments and votes of citizens and organizations. Data collection consisted of six interviews with MPs or Senators who used P&C. The interview sample also includes citizens who participated in consultations, and with the founder and president of P&C. Among six types of legislators' usages of the platform identified through a thematic analysis of interviews, two types tend to respond to a participatory logic, while four of them tend towards a logic of representation. The platform is thus more used as an adjuvant to the existing representative logic, taking place in the Parliament, than as a participatory alternative to the traditional legislative processes. Additionally, this study of a participative initiative reveals that the usages of P&C equally concern legislators' vote seeking logic and policy oriented logic.
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Defacqz, S., & Dupuy, C. (2021). Usages of an E-participation Platform by French Legislators: The Resilience of Representative Democracy? 26th World Congress of Political Science - IPSA, NOVA University of Lisbon (virtual event). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/244992