Policy transfer ou innovation ?

Abstract

In French law, foreign examples and the mechanisms of policy transfer have played a significant role in the genesis and development of the use of videoconferencing to remotely carry out judicial activities such as judging, pleading and sentencing. In the case studied here, references to the international dimension are more than a simple source of borrowing; they constitute strategically mobilized resources. These are part of a more global process of innovation deployed by promoters of videoconferencing according to a particular and incremental logic. The approach developed to grasp the multiple dynamics at work as well as the consistently singular character of this process of innovation is inspired by the sociology of science and techniques. In a more general way, this borrowing demonstrates that the notion of policy transfer is not always the most heuristic for describing and understanding changes in public action and that the sociology of innovation can, in certain conditions, be particularly useful.