Publish at May 07 2025 Updated May 07 2025
"Fashion is the most irresistible and effective method of manipulating large human communities."
By Konrad Lorenz
Convention citoyenne, grand débat, cahiers de doléances, référendum... are we consulting everyone in order to introduce a dose of horizontality into a world perceived as too hierarchical? In the contemporary rhetoric of participative governance, facilitation appears to be an art of getting people to talk, a lever for generating collective intelligence, a guarantee of cooperation within groups.
But as soon as this practice becomes systematized and institutionalized, it creates grey areas. It's in this interstice that the notion of "facipulation" emerges, coined in the 2010s by critical practitioners of participatory approaches, notably within popular education movements, citizen collectives and consultants engaged in democratic transition processes.
This neologism - a contraction of "facilitation" and "manipulation" - emerged as a denunciation of the excesses observed in spaces where individuals are invited to cooperate while blocking the conditions for expressing disagreement and denying the generative potential of conflict. Facipulation thus refers to the use of facilitation methods for non-explicit purposes: channeling energies, guiding decisions, legitimizing already-decided directions or disqualifying any dissenting thought, while preserving the image of free dialogue.
An emblematic case of facipulation was observed within the framework of the "Citizens' Climate Convention" (France, 2019-2020). While the experience was hailed for its ability to bring out strong proposals, several researchers pointed to the initial framing imposed by the executive, the item-based prioritization methods and the technocratic framing of certain debates, which restricted the transformative scope of the process (Blondiaux, 2021). In this case, facilitation was not manipulative in itself, but its insertion into an asymmetrical political system reduced its real democratic power.
Another example comes from the corporate world: in certain agile transformation or change management approaches, collaborative workshops (such as design thinking or open forum) are orchestrated to make employees believe that they are co-constructing solutions, whereas the strategic decisions have already been taken upstream. Here, facilitation becomes a tool for managerial pacification, a way of generating support through the feeling of having been heard, without any real transformative power (Linhart, 2021).
These situations are not isolated abuses, but symptoms of a constitutive tension: any practice aimed at structuring collective discourse produces the effects of power. Michel Foucault reminds us that power is not simply exercised from the top down, but circulates through arrangements, procedures and micro-details. Setting the turn to speak, orienting temporality, reframing an emotion or reformulating a raw word are acts which, though seemingly trivial, determine the nature of the dialogue and forms of legitimacy.
Facipulation is therefore not an anecdotal deviation from facilitation, but a possibility inherent in any practice that claims to "make a collective talk". It constitutes a structural risk whenever the facilitator fails to make explicit his or her framework of intervention, his or her aims, or the interests that run through the process. Belief in methodological neutrality creates a critical blind spot, which the most strategic players can exploit.
To counter this tendency, several safeguards are needed. The first is to make the facilitation framework visible:
Secondly, it is essential to introduce self-criticism mechanisms into the process, such as meta-discussion forums, third-party observers and cross-regulation between participants. Finally, facilitator training should incorporate a political approach to their posture, articulating methods, ethics and awareness of power relationships.
Facilitation can be an art of emancipation or an elegant mask of power. The future of this practice depends on the ethical and political vigilance of its practitioners, and on the ability of collectives to question the mechanisms that govern them.
Illustration: Joseph Mucira - Pixabay
Sources
Blondiaux, L. (2021). Le nouvel esprit de la démocratie: actualité de la démocratie participative. Paris: Seuil.
https://journals.openedition.org/lectures/609
Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, È. (1999). Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard.
https://shs.cairn.info/revue-l-annee-sociologique-2001-1-page-257?lang=fr
Foucault, M. (1980). Pouvoirs et stratégies. In Dits et écrits, Tome II. Paris: Gallimard.
https://shs.cairn.info/revue-actuel-marx-2004-2-page-89?lang=fr
Linhart, D. (2021). L'insoutenable subordination des salariés. Paris: Érès.
https://www.editions-eres.com/ouvrage/4680/linsoutenable-subordination-des-salaries
Mouffe, C. (2000). The democratic paradox. London: Verso.
https://monoskop.org/images/4/41/Mouffe_Chantal_The_Democratic_Paradox_2000.pdf
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