This paper is based on empirical study of the french region Poitou-Charentes, led by the former socialist candidate at the presidential election, Ségolène Royal, which displayed “participatory democracy” as a discriminating choice of public action methods. The democratic innovations are always presented as a political response to a citizens’ demand for participation, but they must first be analysed as political offer to maintain the legitimacy of the local authorities. The high schools’ participatory budget is especially highlighted : on one hand it’s considered, by the specialists, as one of the most important democratic innovation in France (about 16000 participants/year, 10M€) and on the other hand his role on the invention of a new regional educative policy is pointed out by the local authorities. First, the PB can be analysed in relation to the political competition : its outputs must legitimize the participatory offer. Nevertheless, by crossing an ethnographic study and a long term analysis of the regional policy, I argue that the implementation of this democratic tool introduces representatives of groups and interests which were unheard in the policy making, and publicises new social needs. Finally, it’s quite useless to try to distinguish what is legitimized by the PB from what is issued from the PB. It comes to analysing the political work of the civil servants who politicize and operationalize the social needs publicized during the participatory process.
