21

Despite a recent interest in participatory democracy, social sciences have remained relatively silent on actors’ motives of participation and on their reasons for engaging their time and energy in these new types of public arenas, as if the interest and commitment of the public were given. It is well known that the public of participatory institutions is not the one dreamed of by political theorists: it is neither representative and egalitarian, nor purely profane and disinterested. But little research has been carried out to understand –in a comprehensive manner– why ordinary citizens participate in these institutions, and why a vast majority of the population does not participate at all. A sociology of the actors of participatory institutions is thus missing and we propose to lay some grounds for it. The comparison between two ethnographic studies on participatory budgeting institutions in Europe, shows that despite different contexts of interaction, actors mobilize very similar motives of engagement. We thus show that the diversity of actors’ responses (participation, irregular participation and non-participation) to an increased offer of participation can be understood following four modes of justification: civic duty; personal interest; social inclusion; cognitive development. Coming from public grammars, these modes of justification of engagement or non-engagement are grasped differently by actors, depending on their own resources and certain situational constraints. We finally call for a greater dialogue between sociology of activism and that of participatory engagement, each one being able to enlighten the other.