The intent of this article is to reflect on the notion of empowered participatory governance in order to gain a better understanding of the institutional contexts and parameters that encourage a more participative democracy, and thereby bring to light the political mechanisms that contribute to broadening the decision-making process. The example we consider is the Montreal Participative Budget (PB). We focus on the impact of decentralization, more specifically on the form this took as the Montreal PB was being elaborated. We examine how much decentralization circumscribes the PB process. The Montreal Participative Budget provides an illustration of the emergence of a participative level in a political context that is, on the whole, hostile to participatory decision making. We suggest that the PB in this context benefits from a new window of opportunity. The chosen example has a dual significance: it underlines the role of temporal contingencies and scales of the process of decentralization in the participative structures at the local level, and it enables us to gain a better grasp of the problem of institutional architectures in implementing participatory democracy by emphasizing the political and social realities underlying new loci for decision making. Participatory democracy, decentralization and empowered participatory governanceCreating participatory democracy implies decentralization, which is both a particular feature of democracy and a process in its own right. Indeed, it appears difficult to activate citizen participation and expand citizens' decision-making capacity without devolving powers to the level at which citizens can effectively influence issues. Moreover, as a project and specific democratic arrangement, participatory democracy has a particular appeal within the contemporary context of increasing multilevel governance. 1 One of the consequences of this type of governance, which is marked by the proliferation andWe are grateful to the three IJURR reviewers for their insightful comments. 1 The term 'multilevel governance' is polysemic; its meaning depends on which field in the literature you are considering. We will be using it to underline both the proliferation and interlocking of levels of government at the local level (a result of, inter alia, processes of decentralization) and the integration of new actors into a system of decision making that henceforth will be less hierarchical and based more on cooperation (Hooghe and Marks, 2003).

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In this reflection, through observation of citizen participation in several local Montreal municipal councils, I examine whether and how people discuss environmental issues. More specifically, I seek to determine whether the politicization of environmental issues favours the expression of environmental justice. I use this term to refer to the social dimension of environmental questions, given that people of different social classes or identities are not affected by environmental issues in the same way. Does the politicization of environmental issues reproduce an unjust social order or does it encourage the struggle against inequalities? The answer reached here underlines the predominance of politicization through the challenging of democratic processes rather than a substantive politicization (where citizens debate the content of issues and discuss values or identities), which hinders the emergence of environmental justice. This study makes two contributions. First, it points out that, beyond conflict, addressing the avenues that conflict takes is vital. Second, while most analyses consider environmental justice within civil society organizations and on the “margins”, this reflection tackles environmental justice within institutions themselves, namely the favoured places of production of social norms. Apprehending the role of institutions in the politicization of environmental issues is, thus, crucial to highlighting some aspects of social framing and the place of environmental issues in society.