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Participatory Skepticism: Ambivalence and Conflict in Popular Discourses of Participatory Democracy

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Abstract

In recent years researches have focused on the preferences of ordinary citizens towards democratic deepening, asking: Do people want more institutional participation? The present work analyzes how different classes of people envisage a participatory democracy and its problems. Supported by qualitative research based on 16 focus groups conducted in Spain between 2011 and 2013, it is shown that skepticism plays a central role in the views of participatory democracy. Doubts surrounding its viability, negative expectations on the responsiveness of governments and, overall, distrust of the capacities of ordinary citizens, contribute to skepticism. In some groups these beliefs lead to a rejection of participatory reforms. In other groups, participants harbor hopes and positive prospects. For them, the key point is faith in education as a shortcut to political equality.

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Notes

  1. The average of all respondents was 4.5 on a process scale from 1 to 10, 1 being participatory processes, 10 representative ones.

  2. Survey: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, study n. 2.860, January/February 2011. http://www.cis.es/cis/export/sites/default/Archivos/Marginales/2860_2879/2860/Es2860.pdf]

  3. According to the Cambridge Dictionary Online, a skeptic is “a person who doubts the truth or the value of an idea or belief.” http://dictionary.cambridge.org/es/diccionario/ingles-espanol/scepticism].

  4. This is a social movement that emerged between 2011 and 2012 in Spain. Participants were demonstrating and organizing against corruption, austerity measures, and impoverishment due to the economic crisis. Indignados clamored for democratic deepening under the slogan: “We are not puppets in the hands of politicians and bankers.”

  5. Moments of crisis are quite productive to study collective representations on political change since “people are more willing to talk, images and expressions are livelier… Individuals are motivated by their desire to understand an increasingly unfamiliar and perturbed world” (Moscovici 2000, 64).

  6. The manifesto can be read here: http://www.democraciarealya.es/documento-transversal/

  7. During the last years of the Francoist dictatorship (1939–1978) and onwards, there was a flourishing of neighborhood associations, trade unions, women’s organizations, environmentalist groups, and NGOs.

  8. The two 2013 groups complemented the fieldwork for operative reasons.

  9. In most cases, each pair of groups was internally comparable. Only one pair showed strong contrasts: middle-class professionals.

  10. For reasons of anonymity and confidentiality pseudonyms are used for all participants.

  11. Similarly, in another group of left-wing supporters, participants point to a vicious circle in which citizens would be apathetic, and politicians would perform poorly, increasing apathy.

  12. On the very few occasions in which it has taken place in Spain see Font Gómez and 2014.

  13. According to a participant, “It was too politicized.”

  14. According to other participants in the same piece of conversation: “Participatory budgets did not satisfy anyone…We fought even against the basis of the process because it was not participatory at all, I’ve been personally at the table where proposals were selected on technical grounds. That was a harsh competition among social groups.”

  15. For another participant, “Sometimes the machinery of participatory democracy atomizes…”

  16. A participant argues: “Most of the time they [politicians] do not implement what they have promised”

  17. At the beginning of the group, Miguel, another participant says that he is not even competent to answer our questions about politics.

  18. The frame of the group was workers without militancy or strong party-identification. However, Ginés, a man with sympathies towards the 15 M or Indignados movement, attended. The social movement reached extraordinary levels of sympathy in 2011–2012. It is not surprising that many citizens who had no previous political or partisan backgrounds, attended some events and were sympathetic (Sampedro and Lobera 2015).

  19. As Adrian, a student in a vocational training group (FG2) illustrates, “The already existing political system, the representative system does not represent us properly.”

  20. Debates in groups with similar profiles tend to be comparable. This is not magic. It is that groups were organized appealing to concrete social positions and participants build their discourses appealing to shared positions and common experiences. Regarding the middle-class groups, both groups (2011 and 2012) were contacted through a private tennis club. They were university professors, economists, architects, lawyers and businessmen.

  21. As two participants argue “Lourdes: public participation offices are everywhere, they are mandatory; something different is that they really pay attention to your demands... / Luis: they are worthless, at least in my own experience” (FG7).

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Acknowledgements

This research was financed by the National Research Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2012-38942). The authors would like to thank Joan Font for his lucid suggestions on the early versions of this work. We also would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their careful reading of the manuscript.

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  1. Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Plaza Campo Santo de los Mártires, 7, 14004, Córdoba, Spain

    Patricia García-Espín & Ernesto Ganuza

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  1. Patricia García-Espín
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  2. Ernesto Ganuza
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Correspondence to Patricia García-Espín.

Appendix: Basic script of focus groups

Appendix: Basic script of focus groups

1. Let’s now speak about the political system.

1.1 What do you like? What do you dislike?

2. How would your ideal political system be?

2.1 If we designed it from the scratch, how would it be?

2.2 Who would make relevant political decisions?

2.3 What influence would citizens have on political decision-making?

3. Let’s speak about different types of political processes.

3.1 Do you think that citizens should have more power in political decision-making?

3.2 Do you think that lay citizens are skillful enough?

3.3 Some people suggest that we should move towards a more participatory democracy, what do you think about that?

  1. Source: Own elaboration. Translated from the Spanish version

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García-Espín, P., Ganuza, E. Participatory Skepticism: Ambivalence and Conflict in Popular Discourses of Participatory Democracy. Qual Sociol 40, 425–446 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-017-9367-6

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