L'institutionnalisation de la prospective dans l'action publique : analyse comparée des systèmes politico-administratifs britannique, néerlandais et wallon
(2016)
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- In many European countries, the study of the long-term future has often been a concern for public authorities. Several tools allow to explore the future(s) and this PhD thesis focuses on one of them: foresight. It is understood as a long-term systemic and interdisciplinary policy-making tool aiming at identifying possible long-term futures and including trends disruptions and surprises. This PhD dissertation addresses the institutionalization of foresight activities within public policy. Analyzing institutionalization as an ongoing process, it compares such processes in two policy sectors (health policy and energy policy) within three politico-administrative systems (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the Walloon Region). It aims at identifying factors of institutionalization of such practices within public policy. In this respect, the two first chapters define the key concepts of the research, i.e. foresight, institutionalization of foresight and politico-administrative systems, while the third one presents the epistemological and methodological aspects of the dissertation. In that regard, the PhD is based on two broad literature reviews respectively considering foresight and futures studies in the one hand and institutional theory on the other hand. In addition, it is based on a large set of collected data, including more than 1200 public documents, 84 semi-structured interviews and hours of participant observation in a Walloon public agency notably in charge of foresight. These data are stored, analyzed and retrieved thanks to a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (NVivo). The chapters 4, 5 and 6 respectively cover processes of institutionalization of foresight in the United Kingdom, in the Netherlands and in the Walloon Region, starting from the 1970s up to 2010 (for the two former ones) and up to 2015 (for the latter). Each of them highlight several approaches to foresight within a single politico-administrative system as well as a variety of processes of institutionalization. In that respect, 7 approaches are identified, i.e. two in the United Kingdom, three in the Netherlands and two in the Walloon Region. The last three chapters set out the comparative dimension of the thesis. The 7th chapter therefore compares approaches and processes of foresight, while the 8th one provides the reader with measurements of the degree of institutionalization of each approach. It notably shows that the British and Dutch approaches have been much more institutionalized than the Walloon ones. Finally, the 9th chapter, based on the previous findings, identifies 6 factors of institutionalization. Two are related to the politico-administrative system, two to the very nature of foresight approaches and two to the role of politico-administrative actors. The main findings of the PhD therefore are : - A new framework to study the institutionalization of foresight; - The identification of several foresight approaches linked to their own politico-administrative systems; - The emphasis of six factors of institutionalization; - And a better understanding of the low degree of institutionalization of foresight in Wallonia.
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Petit Jean, M. (2016). L’institutionnalisation de la prospective dans l’action publique : analyse comparée des systèmes politico-administratifs britannique, néerlandais et wallon. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/70341