Does intersectionality matter to citizen participation? Limits and experiments in bureaucratic contexts

This article explores the adoption of intersectionality in participatory democracy policy. This objective is supported by the content analysis of multi-level legal instruments regulating 19 Women's Participation Boards in Spain, between 1996 and 2020. The article interprets the results by drawing on a Bourdieu-inspired feminist approach of “neoliberal bureaucratisation” (Hibou, 2012) and “intersectional disposition” (May, 2015). Firstly, the article identifies three tendencies of bureaucratic rationality in participatory democracy policies that pose a significant obstacle to adopt an intersectional approach: the ordered and utilitarian approach to participation, mimetic action and a tendency to channel women's diversity through representation quotas. Secondly, an intersectional approach to citizen participation should experiment with a counter-bureaucratic habitus, a form of institutional work that resists the habitus dominating the bureaucratic field. This article has applied value as it offers insights aimed at incorporating intersectionality within participatory democracy policies not only as a discourse, but also as a practice. The originality of the article resides in its adoption of intersectionality as a disposition – a particular orientation to institutional work, that goes beyond the common view of intersectionality as a complex form of inequality. This angle allows for thinking about how to put intersectionality into practice in reflexive and creative ways. Finally, the analysis lies in a social justice framework concerned with the neoliberal turn which also affects participatory democracy policies, undermining the principles of diversity and inclusion.