The article studies the careers of pro-participation elected officials in three French cities between 1990 and 2020. It shows how they perform a paradoxical leadership through their participatory claims. Their claim in favour of a dilution of decision-making power actually reinforces its personification. If participatory democracy is a resource, the conditions of its use as political capital are linked to their social trajectories, and such capital remains specific. Despite their pro-participation act, they must cope with the norms of political representation. Such observation is especially relevant given the delegative and majoritarian biases in the French local government system. All this further highlights the irreducibility between participatory and representative democracy.