Governing the associative space through participatory instrumentation: civil society, participation and citizenship in Haiti

Abstract

Having (re)become, since the establishment of the Third huntingtonian wave of democratization, a melting pot of experimentation, even the space par excellence for the political and institutional consolidation of democracy, civil society is part of an enchanting repertoire of positive and optimists. From this hastily formulated hypothesis of the democratic potential of civil society stems in fact a triple functionality of counter-power, democratic legitimization and strengthening of social ties. To what extent do the methods of choosing representatives of civil society contribute to a holistic vision of “silence” of the dynamics of participation, the logic of social relations and the heterogeneity of organized structures? Assuming that the practices of participatory instrumentation in the Haitian associative space lead, under the control of a citizen elite, to mechanisms of exclusion that are detrimental to the construction of real public spaces in the perspective of an emancipatory sociopolitical citizenship, the objective of this article consists first of all, by mobilizing some works in sociology, philosophy and political theory, to present a critical retrospective of the normative referents at the base of the inseparable link between civil society, participation and citizenship, and bearer of democratic virtues in Western modernity. Based on an analysis of the participatory dynamics and logics of access to citizenship, we will bring to light the contribution of certain social practices and strategies to the hegemonic position of civil society organizations in their relationship of domination or cooptation towards other organized structures and actors of the haitian associative space