Since the early 1990s, three issues have progressively become sustained objects of debates within French policy analysis: the causal role of ideas within public action; the relationship between institutions and actors; and how studying public policies reveals both the state and politics. Indeed, this progression mirrors the way specialists based in France have engaged in international debates over the last three decades. If, in the 1990s, this field of study was essentially autonomous from extra-national developments, by contrast the following decade was marked by wholesale importation of approaches initiated elsewhere. Since the end of the 2000s, however, greater cross-fertilization between endogenous and exogenous perspectives has emerged, alongside a greater willingness to participate assertively and cumulatively in international scientific fora.
Collective concerns: from policy studies to public action
