The institutionalisation of resistance: Québec’s policy for the recognition and support of community action
This article analyses the development, adoption and implementation of Québec’s policy for the recognition and support of community action (2001). At a time when New Public Management was on the rise, this policy institutionalized a set of arrangements resistant to the dominant model of governance of relations between states and civil society organizations at the time. Rather than establishing a competitive contract culture, couched in a discourse of common values and objectives, it stabilized relations of autonomy and critical distance between community organizations and the government, along with relatively secure funding of organizations’ self-defined missions. We analyse the development and implementation processes of this policy using an approach inspired by Actor-network theory, and interpret the results in terms of certain paradoxical aspects of network governance.