Who Has the Legitimacy to Represent People’s Interests? Urban Conflicts and Participatory Institutions in France and in Spain

In France as in Spain, urban social movements emerged in the sixties and the seventies to claim better living conditions and the right to participate in the elaboration of public policies. In a new context, marked by a crisis of political representation, the neighborhood’s associations which came from these anti-authority movements had become, since the nineties, partners of public authorities. From a research led during three years to Paris and Córdoba, this article questions the conception of general interest and representativeness to which refer these associations, which had moved from the contesting to the negotiation while continuing to protest outside the public actions. We show how these associations justify their claiming to speak in the name of people, by developing a capacity of expertise on the town planning, and defend their role of official representatives of people’s interests in front of the emergence of new public within participatory processes intended for the “ordinary” citizens. The analysis of the tensions between organized and not organized citizens within these devices focuses on the questioning, in the name of “the general interest”, of the quality and of the pluralism of the associations’representation.