Economics and policy analysis: ‘from state to market’?

This chapter describes and analyses the progressive spread of economic "expertise" in the sphere of public policy. It sketches the historical process of the expansion of economic expertise in France, and discusses the way it involves a reshaping of the relations between the State, markets, universities, and other relevant institutional entities (e.g., political parties, unions, etc.), as well as society in general. Considered from this socio-historical viewpoint, economic expertise seems to have contributed to the opening of State-centered regulation to more pluralistic and market-driven public policies in a number of sectors. The analysis draws more specifically on the case of health care, which has been engaged in a clear transformation from a traditional (welfare) State-centered regulation to more open and economically-driven policy. Various components of economic expertise and its concrete uses are under scrutiny, such as classic macroeconomic/econometric forecasting and conjunctural analysis; sectorial expertise; think tanks and organization-related expertise or counter-expertise; academic knowledge in the sphere of policy advice and decision-making; and the production and diffusion of economic discourse through newspapers, magazines, books, etc.

Political parties and think tanks: policy analysis oriented toward office-seeking

This chapter examines the role played by political parties and think tanks in the development of policy analysis in France. It shows how party-based policy analysis is interwoven with inter and intra-party competition related to the objective of seeking office. Indeed, even though policy seeking activities do not look central in the functioning of French political parties, developments in party rationales, like those in the profile of governing parties’ elites, are favourable to intensifying interest in policy issues. Political parties’ professionalization nonetheless appears to have a marked effect on their internal production of public policy expertise: party membership is marginalised while the electoral issues and internal competition have a structuring impact. Lastly, analysis of public policy expertise production shows that it is mainly done in the vicinity of party organisations, due to the significant recourse to experts outside of parties and the role of think tanks.

Civil servants and policy analysis in central government

This chapter discusses the persistent monopoly of the grands corps in the production and mobilisation of policy analysis in the French context. Top officials have historically built their legitimacy on detention of ‘generalist’ policy knowledge, transmitted within administrative grandes écoles, and mobilised at the central level. However, the diversification of policy experts within French administration and the rise of alternative legitimate knowledge has questioned this ‘generalist model’. Two significant evolutions are the increasing influence of ‘numbers’ compared to more traditional literary or legal skills and the shift of policy expertise downstream the policy process, as top civil servants’ work has been increasingly oriented toward policy evaluation and performance measure. Their ability to master these new types of policy knowledge certainly conditions the persistence of their power over rival actors both inside and outside government, to address the growing policy expertise of consultants, private-sector experts and members of interest groups.

Methods of French policy studies

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.

Policy analysis in France: introduction

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.

Public policy analysis in France: from public action to political power

Policy analysis leads to a strictly empirical conception of political power which conclusively associates the reality of power with the knowledge of that reality. Thereby, the meaning of the analysis of public policy and the relevance of the concepts it has developed for the knowledge of political reality are the essential questions that must be asked in France as elsewhere. This chapter aims to better understand the process of appropriation that has contributed to the full development of public policy analysis on the French academic scene, particularly from the perspective of the sociology of public action that quickly established itself as a dominant analytical approach, and to consider the social utility of policy analysis at a time when questions about how modern societies are managed have become increasingly common.

Trade union expertise in public policy

French unions do not constitute places of a high expertise in public policies today despite the fact that they are members of a number of joint or tripartite institutions (such as economic, social and environmental national Council) responsible for producing diagnostics and recommendations in the social field. If, in the decades 1970-1980, proposals and diagnostics carried especially by the CFDT have influenced the definition of specific policies in the world of work (for example the Auroux laws, but also the Roudy law about wage equality) or social policies, the trade union’s ability to act like a critical actor appears now much reduced. The chapter first seeks to explain this relative weakness, in relationship with several factors (links with universities, research organizations, etc.). Second, it examines those specific areas in which trade union’s expertise exists and has some influence in the definition of public action (educational and industrial policies,). Drawing from an original dataset, this chapter reflects on the forms taken by the unions’ public policy expertise and the influence it can exert.

Recent developments within French policy studies

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.

Policy analysis in French local government

This chapter attempts to ‘deconstruct’ the French territorial question and demonstrate that territorial policy analysis can break free from the limitations imposed by this primarily ‘statist’ conceptual framework. The first part introduces the scale and nature of current political and administrative territorial structures, and discusses the paucity of academic research work on this subject. The second part analyses changes in the territorial framework of policy building, through an evolution from vertical to horizontal dialectic of powers and capacities. The third part focuses on territorialisation as the result of a double process: the evolving role of ideas in territorial policy building and dynamics of differentiation. In the conclusion, it argues that the joint influence of professionalization, pluralisation and differentiation prefigures an original political/policy model of democracy between institutionalisms and culturalisms.

The academic world of French policy studies: training, teaching and researching

This chapter provides an analysis of the different contributions of French Universities (and other academic institutions, especially the “Instituts d’Études Politiques”) to the teaching of policy analysis, to the training of policy analysis specialists, to research in policy analysis, and to policy advice. It focuses on two closely related academic disciplines in France: political science and sociology. The chapter starts by questioning the extent to which and in which ways policy analysis as a sub-discipline is integrated into the teaching of political science and sociology. The focus then turns to the development of a specialized policy analysis master in political science and sociology, which can be related to broader evolutions, including transformations in the access to top administrative positions, the development of local public policies in France, and the professionalization of French Universities. The aim here is to shed light on the kind of knowledge and skills taught and on the positions students find after leaving universities and Sciences Po. By studying the involvement of political scientists and sociologists in public commissions and specific policy expertise structures outside the academic world, it also explores the relationships between policy research and policy advice.