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- Author or Editor: Philippe Zittoun x
The chapter discusses the various analytical methods used in French policy studies. It begins by mapping out the range of methods used in French academic policy studies. Such work mainly deals with policy-making process and their analysis, with an emphasis on the role of elite, expert, and institutional constraints. Issues and concepts from (political) sociology mainly frame these works. Policy analysis borrowed its methods from (political) sociology rather than developed a specific set of methodological approaches. Drawing on sociological approaches, policy analysis in France features a preference for qualitative over quantitative methods. Also, empirical studies prevail, and over time, small-n comparative research frameworks were introduced on a more systematic basis. The chapter also develops an analysis of the most popular methods used in the past years among practitionners, such as socio-economic appraisal in transport or housing sectors, indicators in environmental and economic sectors, and argumentative methods in public institutional debates.
This chapter provides a general overview of the study and practice of policy analysis in France. Drawing on the book’s content, it explains why and how the fundamental distinction between knowledge for and of policy process still holds in the French context, even though it was regularly challenged by successive generations of scholars and practitioners. The chapter begins with a brief overview of what policy studies means and how it is studied in the French context. Then the bulk of the introduction highlights and provides some explanation for the enduring gap between academic knowledge and policy practices, which characterizes policy analysis in the French context. Last but not least, it discusses the added value of policy studies for understanding State restructuring and policy developments in France. In the remaining and fourth section, it introduces the book outline into more details.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
In the 1960s and 1970s, controversies related to the policy process began to emerge, in particular as they pertained to the policy decision-making process. Criticizing both pluralist theory and behaviouralist approaches, Schattschneider (1960), later followed by Cobb and Elder (1971, p 896) and Bachrach and Baratz (1970, p 44), suggested that the pre-decision process is a ‘highly restricted’ arena of conflicts in which some demands can be ‘suffocated’ or reinterpreted through the ‘manipulation of bias’ to prevent their emergence in decision arenas. This strategy was used to reduce the capacity of particular demands to attract the attention of decision makers and others, including the media and the general public. The authors insisted on recognizing the importance of the unequal political configurations of actors in the arena. Building on this perspective, Rochefort and Cobb (1994) published The Politics of Problem Definition, which helped to establish a link between definitional activities focused on problems and their asymmetric positions in relation to political power.
While this political perspective on the struggles surrounding problem definitions has been largely shared in policy studies by most authors and integrated into textbooks and handbooks about the policy process since the 1970s,1 the question of ‘policy formulation’ – referring to the specification of alternatives – has been studied using different approaches, including competing methodological perspectives, with no general consensus emerging. In so far as problem definition occurs within arenas of visible conflict in which dominant actors try to suppress opposing views, the formulation of solutions takes place in relatively hidden spaces where groups of dominant actors seek to contribute to the stability (or change) of the policy-making process by choosing and imposing their preferred solutions (Heclo and Wildavsky 1974; Richardson and Jordan 1979).
In this book, an international group of public policy scholars revisit the stage of formulating policy solutions by investigating the basic political dimensions inherent to this critical phase of the policy process.
The book focuses attention on how policy makers craft their policy proposals, match them with public problems, debate their feasibility to build coalitions and dispute their acceptability as serious contenders for government consideration. Based on international case studies, this book is an invitation to examine the uncertain and often indeterminate aspects of policy-making using qualitative analysis embedded in a political perspective.
Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.
