Citizen participation and policy regimes: new deal or business as usual?
This paper analyses the impact of the emergence of cooperative renewable energy projects upon national policy regimes in two countries were energy policy models are usually considered highly divergent: France and Danemark. France belongs to the state-oriented ideal type while Denmark is often associated with the cooperative ideal type. Mobilizing semi-structured interviews and extensive content analysis of policy documents, this paper shows that the power-challenging perspectives brought about by these cooperatives projects are neutralised in the two cases. In Denmark, integration of the cooperative model into the energy market was an early political decision, dating back to the early 1980s. But the cooperative movement later get marginalized following the end of the “green majority” in parliament that used to support their development through favourable regulations. In France, the deep centralization of energy production (highly dependent on nuclear power) and the low influence of the green party have prevented the development of cooperative projects since the beginning. They remain today at the margins of the energy sector.