GRA S SROOTS IN QUEBEC: HOW NEW PUBL IC MANAGEMENT AND CORPORATE CULTURE ARE

The high point of Quebec’s trade-union, feminist, community, and nation-alist movements occurred in the wake of the American civil rights movement, of decolonization, and of global student movements in the 1960s. The latter spawned practices of direct democracy, self-management, and popular educa-tion based on a perspective of social justice and social change. The first groups emerging from these movements, alternately referred to as “citizens’ committees, ” “grassroots organizations, ” and “community organizations,” embodied the ideal of participatory democracy and the ethical ideal of social responsibility. While these organizations were constituted autonomously, their political struggle over the years brought them incomplete, but relatively regular, public funding. With the emergence of neoliberalism, as well as targeted funding and government priorities based on more “productive” and quantifiable outputs, their social change perspective has been eroded and these community groups are losing their initial autonomy. As such, many community organizations are gradually incorporating managerial practices from the realm of private corporations. In an effort to shed light on this erosion of social change practices within Quebec community organizations, it is necessary to analyze how several of these community groups have, to various degrees, adopted some of the management techniques, practices, and culture of corporations through the implementation of New Public Management methods by government. We will also illustrate the challenges that this situation entails for local grassroots democracy. This article focuses on the Quebec experience while being aware