Understanding the Role of Culture(s) in Transfer of Participation

Abstract
This session focuses on the role of culture in the transfer of participatory policies and devices. There is a broad
consensus about the manners how administrative or political culture could impact policy transfer (Dolowitz 2012)
or policy failure (Stone 2017), making the study of the role of culture a pertinent approach to analyze transfers. To
this aim, the analysis of the travelling of participatory approaches provide very interesting case studies because
they articulate different dimensions of “tacit, culturally embedded beliefs” (Dolowitz 2017). They combine
potential cultural bias from diverse international organisations (Monsutty 2012), including translation by
“ambassadors of participation” (Porto de Oliveira 2017) or by embedded anthropologists (Mosse 2013).
Moreover, similarly to other best practices, participatory practices become global, travelling from Northern
countries to the global South, but also vice-versa from the latter to the former. Recent works have introduced the
idea of decontextualisation regarding participatory practices (Baiocchi and Ganuza 2017) and then adapted it
within a specific cultural framework (Röcke 2014; Legard 2018). This decontextualisation is essential in order to
ensure their transferability, transforming participatory practices into “one size fits all” models which aim at
becoming culturally neutral and at allowing the implementation as “fast policy” (Peck and Theodore 2015). Finally,
different countries with authoritarian political cultures are implementing participatory devices which transpose
participatory practices in adverse contexts (Neveu 2007; Petric 2012).

The reception context (e.g. creating new words or transforming and translating fuzzy concepts into categories
that function for the reception context) and the way participatory democracy travels as a way to compensate
deficient representative democracy drive new research perspectives, deepening our understanding of the impact
of informal institutions (Azari and Smith 2012), and more broadly of local cultures, on democratic practices.

Hence, participatory devices allow us to look at the way policies are being implemented by policymakers within a
cultural framing in order to target future participants that could belong to specific communities (ethnic
subcommunities, indigenous people,...). Whereas the aspect of political culture in the subfield of democratic
innovations arouse little interest by leading researchers, culture matters and the role of culture in institutional
transfer could be better understood. However, the consideration of the role of culture shall not become a means
to justify “essentialist” or “culturalist” approaches in searching for explanations to non-participatory or non-
cooperative behaviours. Cultures indeed could also become convenient justifications for policy failures and be
used by policymakers to refuse the introduction of participatory approaches under pretext of inappropriateness or
the fact that these participatory processes are programmed for failure. Thus, a consideration of culture in the
transfer of participatory approaches – and more broadly of policy transfers – shall be aware of the potential to fall
into “cultural temptations”.

This panel would invite papers exploring the role of culture as an important factor to understand policy transfers.
Papers shall interrogate how cultural worldviews, values towards democratic participation and equality are
translated into participatory projects, in both developed and developing countries. Expected papers would
welcome empirical works considering cultural framing in participatory practices such as:
• Culture matters. But what kind of democratic practices are strongly impacted by local or administrative
“culture”?
• What kind of explanation are labelled as “cultural factors” which should be examined with alternative analytic
tools?
• Are there any competing cultures in policy transfer processes?
• How material objects and words could translate specific cultural frameworks in participatory projects?

Azari JR and Smith JK (2012) Unwritten Rules: Informal Institutions in Established Democracies. Perspectives on
Politics 10, 37–55.
Bénit-Gbaffou C (ed.) (2015) Popular Politics in South African Cities: Unpacking Community Participation. Cape
Town, South Africa: HSRC Press.
Dolowitz DP (2012) Conclusion: What Have We Learned? Regional & Federal Studies 22, 341–351.
Dolowitz DP (2017) Transfer and Learning: One Coin Two Elements. Novos Estudos 35–56.
Legard S (2018) Translation and Institutional Change: What Happened When Participatory Budgeting Came to the
Nordic Countries? Democratic State and Democratic SocietyInstitutional Change in the Nordic Model. Berlin,
Boston: De Gruyter.
Monsutti A (2012) Fuzzy Sovereignty: Rural Reconstruction in Afghanistan, between Democracy Promotion and
Power Games. Comparative Studies in Society and History 54, 563–591.
Mosse D (2013) The Anthropology of International Development. Annual Review of Anthropology 42, 227–246.
Neveu C (ed.) (2007) Cultures et pratiques participatives: perspectives comparatives. Paris: LʼHarmattan.
Peck J and Theodore N (2015) Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Pétric B-M (2012) Democracy at Large: NGOs, Political Foundations, Think Tanks and International Organizations.
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Porto de Oliveira O (2017) International Policy Diffusion and Participatory Budgeting: Ambassadors of
Participation, International Institutions and Transnational Networks. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Röcke A (2014) Framing Citizen Participation: Participatory Budgeting in France, Germany and the United
Kingdom. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stone D (2017) The Transfer of Policy Failure: Bricolage, Experimentalism and Translation. Politics & Policy 45.
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