Strife in the Construction of the Role of Citizens: The Case of Participatory Budgeting in Paris

Participatory Budgeting (PB) may be considered as a democratic innovation. Although this innovation has spread worldwide, the same term cover various field realities. PB in the case of the city of Paris is the result of a recent initiative. PB was launched in 2014 at the municipal level. It is organized in 21 territorial variations: one municipal and one by district. Every edition is yearly with three phases involving citizens: submission of proposals, workshops on specific projects in order to merge a proposal out of many, offline and on-line vote to determine the projects that are to be implemented by the city of Paris. Even if calendar and the coordination are handled from the municipal level, each district has certain autonomy in its organisation and its interpretation of the PB. We focus on the participants involved in PB in Paris. It will stress out the differences in the construction of the role of citizens in it. The city of Paris is promoting a specific role for citizens to involve in its PB during the submission phase that can be underline in two contradictory terms: competence and inclusion. People should submit projects, not ideas. Thus, the City of Paris implicitly urges people to possess various kinds of competences and knowledge: budgetary, deliberative and organisational skills, knowledge of municipal jurisdiction and so on. The official discourse underlines the “participation” opportunity for all Parisians, no matter their age, nationality or legal status and many institutional actors commonly express their wishes to include new publics. Though, each step of the process involves specific and sometime specialised skills that are not commonly shared. How come this contradictory role can be explained? How does it shape the possibilities for participation? Nevertheless, individuals react in diverse ways to these requirements. A statistical analysis will answer the following questions: which citizens submit proposals? What are their characteristics? Are “new citizens” involved in it? Empirical data are from first-hand observations of two kinds of workshops (some to build collective proposals during the submission phase and some to merge proposals afterward), in-depths interviews with participants involved in them and actors running them (CSOs or civil servants), and an ethnography inside the PB team (since January 2017). Moreover, we will do a statistical analysis (age, gender, location of residence) or the people having submitted a proposal. Data cover 3 editions of PB: 2016, 2017 and 2018.