This paper presents a pilot project to reinforce participatory practices in standardization. The INTERNORM
project creates an interactive knowledge center based on the sharing of academic skills and experiences
accumulated by the civil society, especially consumer associations, environmental associations
and trade unions to strengthen the participatory process of standardization. The first objective of the
project is action-oriented: INTERNORM provides a common knowledge pool supporting the participation
of civil society actors to international standard-setting activities by bringing them together with
academic experts in working groups and providing logistic and financial support to their participation
in meetings of national and international technical committees. The second objective is analytical: the
standardization action provides a research field for a better understanding of the participatory dynamics
underpinning international standardization. This paper presents three incentives that explain civil
society (non-)involvement in standardization that overcome conventional resource-based hypotheses:
an operational incentive related to the use of standards in the selective goods provided by associations
to their membership; a thematic incentive provided by the setting of priorities by strategic committees
created in some standardization organization; and a rhetorical incentive related to the discursive resource
that civil society concerns offers to the different stakeholders.