Les maires des petites municipalités québécoises font-ils des politiques publiques ?

Abstract

The reform of Quebec’s regional model in 2015 shook up municipalities, which until then had found significant resources for their development at regional level. In 2017, a new law recognized their status as local governments, giving them a degree of administrative and political recognition. But this renewed model does little to change the fate of small rural municipalities, with their limited political and administrative capacity. It does, however, offer an opportunity to observe in concrete terms how these actors with limited capabilities act. Using a methodology based on a press review and semi-structured interviews conducted in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, this article examines the nature of the public action produced by these “small” municipalities on the periphery of the province of Quebec: by examining three stages in the municipal decision-making process, it demonstrates that the mayor is the bearer of a fragile and restrictive municipal action, systematically subject to a game of double bind, legal and community. This pragmatic municipalism could be associated with a conservatism peculiar to rural communities; but it can also be thought of as a kind of micro-politics of community control of municipal institutions in rural areas.