Internationalized environmental policies as a way to moralize behavior: Three examples of participatory initiatives in Ecuador

This article describes the implementation of three types of participatory and/or deliberative initiatives in the context of environmental public action in Ecuador: the training workshop, the dialogue table, and the participatory workshop. By observing the agents who implement environmental policies on a day-to-day basis, we highlight that all three instruments share the common feature of euphemizing relations of power and domination, while making both users and environmental professionals individually responsible for their actions. Consequently, the participatory mechanisms of environmental public action reinforce a dominant framing of the environmental issue that emphasizes the technical and moral dimensions of public action. The limits to the implementation of these measures reveal the resistance to this framing, as much as they attest to its materiality.