Renewal of Public Policy via Instrumental Innovation: Implementing Automated Speed Enforcement in France

Abstract

This article examines the renewal of public policy via instrumental innovation since the adoption in France of an automated sequence of detection and sanctioning of speed limit violations. Involved here is an instrument of public policy that points up the changes that have taken place in recent years in respect of road safety policy and provides a clearer view of some aspects of ongoing state reorganization. The change in public policy permitted by this instrumentation results from an increasingly close focus on the road hazard issue, which has allowed specialists from different epistemic fields to advocate a system used in other countries for over a decade now. However, this success with policymakers is also explained by the fact that the new system involves the return of the state as the core shaper of this public policy, after 20 years of emphasis on local and partnership‐based policies.