9th Congress of the French Political Science Association
Toulouse, 5-7 September 2007
Call for papers
Linking public policy analysis with social movement theory: the logic
of contentious policies.
Proposal submission deadline: February 16, 2007
Workshop convenors:
DUPUY Claire, Cevipof / Sciences Po Paris – University of Milan
Bicocca, claire.dupuy@???
HALPERN Charlotte, Maison française d’Oxford,
charlotte.halpern@???
The purpose of this workshop is to explore the links between public
policy analysis and social movement theory. Recent publications in
both disciplines have shown a growing interest for one another and
provided some suggestions in order to bypass their respective limits.
In fact, the increasing role of private actors in public decision-
making processes, the growing number of local public actors and
diverging regulation mechanisms across sectors have urged for a
thorough examination of evolving relations between state-actors and
social groups during policy-making processes. In her work on anti-
pollution strategies in France and Greece, Chloé Vlassopoulou
suggests to focus on the upstream of the public decision-making
process, ie. problem-framing (2000). Charlotte Halpern has focused on
the concept of public decision in order to develop a better
understanding of the relationship between mobilisations against
airport planning and changes in air transport policy in France and
Germany (2006). Social movements theorists have made similar
attempts: Graeme Hayes chooses to focus on actors, by introducing a
distinction between policy insiders and policy outsiders, in order to
brake the deadlock of political opportunity structures (2001; see
also Fillieule, 2003). The concept of contentious politics follows
the same track as well, by refusing to define beforehand public
actors as the target of social claims (Tarrow, Tilly, 2007).
However, most of this literature concerns
mobilisations against project infrastructures, thus leading to a
first question: would these tools be relevant in order to analyse
evolving relations between public actors and social groups in other
sectors such as housing, welfare or education? A second question
concerns the time-scale needed in order to analyse this evolution and
the mechanisms through which a policy outsider becomes an insider.
While concentrating their analyses on conflicts and outputs, social
movement theorists have limited themselves to consider the success or
the failure of social mobilisations (Giugni, 1999). On the other
hand, by focussing on outcomes, public policy analysts mainly focused
on the relations between public actors and institutionalised interest
groups, while under-estimating the impact of social mobilisations on
policy changes. Accordingly, we welcome papers addressing more
specifically both sets of questions in a comparative or single-case
study perspective. All papers will be discussed by Yannick Barthe,
Research Fellow at the CNRS – Centre for Sociology of Innovation /
Ecole des Mines de Paris.
A short abstract (5000 signs) should be sent before February 16th,
2007 to the workshop convenors. This abstractIt should briefly
present the content of the paper and should also include the name of
the Author(s), their institution and E-mail address. Proposals
linking the analysis of a specific case study with theoretical and /
or methodological thoughts are encouraged. Papers and presentations
in English are welcome.
For more information on the 9th Congress of the French Political
Science Association, see:
http://www.afsp.msh-paris.fr/congres/congresafsp.html
