Over the last 30 years, the proliferation of public participation mechanisms in decision-making has led to the emergence of extremely varied participation forms: public inquiries, users’ committees, public hearings, consensus conferences, participatory budgeting for example. Few studies, however, have questioned what, if anything, these mechanisms have changed in the existing dynamics of knowledge production about and for public policy. Naturally, studies on public participation have revolved around the capacity of mechanisms to influence the decision-making process. Indeed, while it is far more significant to focus on how public participation mechanisms influence the production of knowledge and its mobilisation for public policy, this issue remains difficult to grasp. Analysing the extent to which the knowledge produced in these mechanisms sustains the decision-making process remains a minor concern. Put differently, the manner in which this knowledge is taken into account in policy-making has attracted little interest. On the contrary, attention has focused on what the existence and development of these mechanisms change in terms of mobilising knowledge on policy. Moreover, there has been considerable interest in the extent to which these mechanisms are perceived as new resources or new constraints, and for whom, even while the boundary between these two types of analyses may not always be obvious.

Over the years, academic literature has explored this approach to public policy (Fischer, 2000; Hisschemoller et al, 2001). Drawing on existent literature, this chapter will focus on public inquiries and committees. We must first, however, clarify what we refer to as ‘public inquiries’ and ‘committees’. In the French context these two terms have specific meanings and are associated with two distinct public participation mechanisms: while the former are geared to the general public and mainly involve environment-related projects, the latter are geared to those who affect or may be affected by the policies, and may be organised across sectors and at different levels; they are commonly referred to as ‘consultative government’ or ‘democracy in public administration’ (Weber, 1968; Le Clainche, 2011). Indeed, while the rhetoric around these mechanisms suggests that they seek to involve ‘citizens’, ‘beneficiaries’ or the ‘target population’ in policy-making, public inquiries and committees actually bring together different actors whose roles have been analysed in this book: interest groups, NGOs and, more sporadically, ‘unorganised’ publics.