New Institutionalism and French Public Policy Analysis: Maintaining the Exception Culturelle?

J.-B. Harguindéguy:

The concept of new institutionalism has been very fashionable since the mid-1980s. This has been true in continental Europe as elsewhere. However, some authors criticise this trend arguing that many of the results of new institutionalist studies merely re-discover political aspects already revealed by continental European political scientists. By focusing on the case of contemporary French analysis of public policies I suggest that this division is unclear. I assume that, to a large extent, these theories confront the same theoretical challenges independently of their national context and that they tend to deal with them in a comparable way. In so doing, I advocate the introduction of new institutionalist works as a means to establish a consistent transatlantic theoretical framework and re-connect the policy science à la française to the international mainstream. [halshs-00124535]

The paper provides an interesting overview of the research made in some important French political science centres, such as the GAPP (now the ISP) or the CERAT (now part of the PACTE research unit).

See also this paper.

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