Comparing the Role of Autonomous Organisations Dedicated to Public Participation in the Diffusion of Participatory Process

The practice of public participation is becoming more and more complex. For example, Rowe and Frewer list nearly one hundred different terms for participation practices in the United States and elsewhere in the world (2005). Smith has identified 44 different participation mechanisms (2005). How can we explain this diversity? The objective of our paper is to know more about diffusion mechanisms within one single country. More specifically, we are interested in the role of public autonomous organizations dedicated to public participation (AOPP), an important, but understudied, type of organization in the public participation field. Their strong institutionalization leads AOPP (to a varying degrees according to AOPP) to be highly visible in the public space because they are highly involved in the organization of participatory processes, with extensive resources and a good degree of autonomy to do so. In sum, AOPP can be an important vector of diffusion in their respective political because they act as a ‘referential’, or a model in the design and practice of public participation, that other actors in this field can adapt to other participatory realities. On the basis of this empirical hypothesis, our paper proposes to first compare five specific cases of AOPP around the world to evaluate how their autonomy gives them an important role in their society. The five cases are: the Danish Board of Technology (Denmark), the National commission of public debate (France), the Office of environmental public hearings (Canada), the Office of public consultation of Montreal (Canada) and the Tuscany participatory authority (Italia). To our knowledge, a systematic comparison of these unique experiences of ‘autonomous participation’ has not to be made. In the second part, we will report our initial results on the role of AOPP in the diffusion of participatory process, on the basis of the Canadian experience.