A major city but a weak state, Delhi has been a laboratory of participatory democracy since 2000, especially since the emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP, Party of the Common Man) in 2013, a party that puts participation at the core of its political project. This paper analyses what makes both the novelty and weakness of participatory governance proposed by the AAP since its broad electoral victory of 2015, by situating this governance in relation to past practices. By comparing the destiny of three participatory mechanisms successively implemented over the past two decades in the Indian capital - the Bhagidari programme, the mohalla sabhas (neighbourhood assemblies) and the SMC mahasabhas (school assemblies), the paper proposes a "contextualized analysis of participation" (Mazeaud, Boas, and Berthomé, 2012) and thus contributes to the necessary dialogue between participatory instruments studies and governance studies (Melo and Baiocchi, 2006). More precisely, by questioning both the meaning and the reception of these principles of public action grouped under the umbrella of “participatory governance”, the article highlights the role of two actors of urban governance – bureaucrats and organised civil society – in the contrasted evolutions of the Bhagidari initiative and mohalla sabhas.