Democratic action as an inquiry process. Pragmatist analysis of democratic construction in a nascent co-op firm[L’action démocratique comme enquête. Analyse pragmatiste de la construction démocratique dans une SCIC émergente]

Building a democratic life from the start is a way for coop firms to guard against the double risk of degeneration (oligarchy, decoupling values / principles). After the creation of the framework of action, how to "give life", "incarnate" the democratic in the practices to perpetuate an active democratic functioning? To investigate the democratic construction and observe it, we propose a pragmatist framework of democratic collective action from the works of J. Dewey and M. Follett. We propose to grasp the question of democracy in an organization, through the capacity of an organization to support democratic inquiry processes. It is then necessary to identify situations and to characterize the process by which actors take charge of the situation and treat it. Thus, we develop this framework in the case of a coop firm (SCIC) that we consider particularly in its phase of emergence. We describe two inquiry processes to develop capacities for an active participation and to take care of the vices provoked by the democratic life. This case study sets the stage for a pragmatic characterization of democratic enterprises.