Call for proposals : Science avec et pour la société : Co-construire les politiques publiques par l’expertise scientifique (SAPS - CPPE 2026)

They differ from the reports of bodies such as the Haut Conseil pour le Climat (HCC), whose role is not to produce scientific diagnoses but to evaluate public climate action and its alignment with France’s European and international commitments.

However, the notion of science as external to public action has been challenged by political science and science and technology studies, which highlight the complex and diverse nature of the interactions between science and policymaking.

Without questioning the need for scientific independence, this call aims to:

• foster new forms of cooperation between research teams and administrations through co-construction and co-production;
• move beyond the traditional ex-post evaluation of policies to involve researchers in the design phase;
• strengthen the structuring role of research in understanding and addressing major social challenges;
• promote the engagement of scientists in public action and train a new generation of researchers as active agents of public transformation.

This call is open to all scientific disciplines and to all public policies related to major transitions, at every territorial scale.

It targets situations where public actors seek to:

• better understand and raise awareness of a societal issue (one that is poorly defined, emerging, overlooked, or outside the Administration’s usual scope of interest);
• renew public policy responses (when ex-post evaluations show that existing instruments or mechanisms have proven insufficiently effective);
• acquire new data or better exploit existing but underused data, to improve knowledge in a specific policy area where the administration lacks internal resources to conduct surveys or analytical work.

This typology is indicative and not restrictive.

Proposals are expected to be collaborative research projects formed by:

• one or more laboratories belonging to a French research institution within the ANR’s financial regulation framework, 
   
  and
   
• one or more administrations. Each administration participates solely within its field of competence.

The consortium may also include civil society organizations.

Under this specific call, funding request must range between €100,000 and €300,000 (including institutional overheads and laboratory management costs).