Food policies in France: innovation and reconfigurations of public action – POLAL

The project is built around three types of empirical surveys. The first concerns the strategies deployed by private actors (companies, professional associations) to intervene in food policies (production of standards, collective interests, mobilization of experts, CSR policies, institutional communication). The second concerns public regulation (control, law making, work in central administration, consultation, European regulation). Finally, the last one uses an entry through the industries (sugar, fruit and vegetables and pork).
The various surveys are based on monograph-type methodologies: interviews, observation of meetings (working groups, consultations), work situations (control activities), documentary analysis, archival analysis, review of professional journals.

to be announced

to be announced

Depecker T., Déplaude M-O., Larchet N. (2021), « Mobilizing against consumers’ associations: The making of a think tank of the food industry in 1970s France », on Aguiton S., Déplaude M.-O., Henry E., Jas N., Thomas V. (dir.), Pervasive Powers. The politics of corporate authority, New York, Routledge, à paraître.
Bergeron H, Castel P, Dubuisson-Quellier S, Nouguez E & Pilmis O (2020) “Governing by Labels? Not That Simple: The Cases of Environmental and Nutritional Policies in France”, in Laurent B & Mallard A (eds.) Labelling the Economy. Qualities and Values in Contemporary Markets. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.

The POLAL project, which associates CSO, IRISSO, CMH, CERPAS and IDEES, questions the evolutions of contemporary public policies from the perspective of food policies. Starting from the results established by the literature of a specialization and complexification of public policies and a growing porosity between public and private interventions, the project will explore two sets of questions. Firstly, we propose to understand how public action, while specialized and complex, manages to take on crosscutting issues, objectives that are sometimes difficult to reconcile, that are part of different administrative jurisdictions and require cross-sectoral interventions. Secondly, we propose to account for the diversity of interfaces between public and private spaces, the specificities of both public and private interventions, how borders are reaffirmed and finally, what does this porosity produce on public policy. To address these two main issues, food policies that will be at the heart of the project, are of particular interest, because they are both cross-sectoral and strongly depend on private actors. The project is based on three hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the public-private interfaces, such as national consultations, advisory councils or working groups within the public bureaucracies, but also exchanges during the control activities, contribute to the reconfiguration of the interests and challenges of public and private actors. We propose to invest these arenas as intermediate spaces of public action. Second, we make the hypothesis that the careful examination of the repertoires of action of the companies or their representatives gives access to the means by which the private actors seek to influence the public action, by trying to influence public interventions and by legitimizing their intervention on collective issues. Finally, we make the assumption that the organization, the construction and the structuring of a field of expertise around food behaviours constitute resources for both public and private actors. The project explores the role played by expertise in legitimizing forms of public or private intervention and prioritizing social issues associated with food (environment, public health, health security, social inequalities).
The project will be organized around 5 workpackages that explore the reconfigurations of contemporary public action. WP1 concerns the coordination of the action taken by the consortium, and is based on semi-annual meetings and the holding of an international final conference. WP2 will aim to capture the variety of the repertoire of private action, their specificities and their effects on public action, based on five surveys: on a controversy, on the action of employers, on insurance prevention actions and on expertise. WP3 questions, at the national and European level, the influence, orientation or constraint of public authorities on food supply actors, mainly producers and consumers. The investigations concern control, consultation and regulation. WP4 questions public action based on the specificities of the food chains: those of sugar and pork and that of fruits and vegetables. WP5 aims at capitalizing on the crosscutting scientific outputs of the project: on the role of professional organizations and that of expertise in public and private decisions.