French Public Policy Research Articles

Gender, SSE and French public policies for ageing at home

Gender, SSE and French public policies for ageing at home

Impact of Public Policy and COVID-19 Pandemic on Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in France, 2014–2021

Given the World Health Organization’s target to eliminate the hepatitis C virus (HCV) by 2030, we assessed the impact of French public policies and the COVID-19 pandemic on HCV testing and initiation of direct-antiviral agents (DAAs). Using the French National Health Data System, we identified individuals living in metropolitan France with at least one reimbursement for an anti-HCV test and those with a first delivery of DAAs between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2021. During this period, the annual number of people tested increased each year between 3.3 (in 2015) and 9.3% (in 2021), except in 2020, with a drop of 8.3%, particularly marked in April (−55.0% compared to February 2020). A return to pre-pandemic testing levels was observed in 2021. The quarterly number of patients initiating DAAs presented an upward trend from Q1-2014 until mid-2017, with greater increases in Q1-2015, and Q1- and Q2-2017, concomitant with DAA access policies and availability of new therapies. Then, quarterly numbers decreased. A 65.5% drop occurred in April compared to February 2020. The declining DAA initiations since mid-2017, despite new measures improving access and screening efforts, could be due to the shrinking pool of patients requiring treatment and a need to increase awareness among undiagnosed infected people. Further action is needed to eliminate HCV in France.

From Streets to Policies: The Impact of Yellow Vests Movement on French Public Policy

From Streets to Policies: The Impact of Yellow Vests Movement on French Public Policy

S10-5 Legislations and regulations of French public policies promoting health-enhancing physical activity at the local level: do governments adopt a whole system approach?

Abstract Purpose Physical inactivity are complex problems to address. System thinking approach (STA) can be a solution to take into account the diversity of upstream factors by identifying leverage points and potential co-benefits of public policies. STA has not been explored at the local level in France. Based on existing local legislations and regulations, this study aims at providing a system approach to health-enhancing physical activity (HEPA) for policymakers. Methods This study was conducted in five stages by the research team: (1) a systematic search of document has been used to identify French public policies’ legislations and regulations promoting HEPA at local level ; (2) main characteristics for each legislation or regulation were reviewed and extracted to a data extraction form: administration holder, sector holder, political purpose, political commitment, policy timeframe and potential policy partners ; (3) a whole system map of legislations and regulations options to promote HEPA at local level was developed using STA ; (4) the HEPA policies of 10 French mid-size municipalities were collected using a local policy audit tool (i.e. CAPLA-Santé) ; (5) the system map developed was compared with the policy audit. Results A total of 26 legislations and regulations options to promote HEPA at local level were identified from sport, education, transport, urban-planning, sustainable development, housing, social and health sectors. The comparison of the whole system map with the policy audit of mid-size municipalities showed that local governments used few legislations and regulations options among their possibilities to promote HEPA (i.e. range of 0-4). Conclusions HEPA promotion could be integrated in many public policies at local level. However, local governments included in our study did not adopt a whole system approach to promote HEPA, rather a silo sectorial approach. The use of STA may help policymakers to highlight and develop their legislations and regulations options to promote HEPA and maximize co-benefits.

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa by Brian Valente-Quinn

Children's wellbeing remains a blind-spot in public policies in France

The Lancet Campaign on Child and Adolescent Health, with the purpose to put children at the heart of the vision for a sustainable humanity, offers an opportunity to reflect on child health in France. Unfortunately, children's health and wellbeing is still being neglected in French public policies. Behind the intentions, the problem seems to be a focus on the wrong factors that affect children's wellbeing.

What good is a supercentral language?

The article focuses on shifts in justificatory repertoires within France for the promotion of the French language beyond the regions of the world where it is securely the core language. It is based on a corpus of twenty French public policy reports on external language and cultural policies published between 1998 and 2018. The corpus is characterised by a thick referential interplay, and its authors work within a loose and evolving advocacy coalition. The reports suggest that France’s position as a “supercentral” world language is characterised by significant fragility, and that its defenders must break with former representations of French as a prestigious language of culture and diplomacy. They argue that it must “equip” itself as a manifestly useful, broadly attractive and polycentric language in a new geolinguistic space. At an initial level, they attempt to justify its external projection by framing French with its specific attributes and reach as a sui generis global public good. They supplement this stock of justifications by invoking a privileged role for French in the defence of the second-order global public good of linguistic diversity as such. These discursive moves produce both ruptures and continuities in relation to the French cultural and language policy traditions of rayonnement and universalism.

Dictionaries Faced With a Nomination Conflict. An Analysis of the Semantic Modelling of the integration, insertion, assimilation, inclusion, acculturation, incorporation Paradigm in Two Universal French Language Dictionaries

This article aims to conduct a metalexicographical micro-analysis of a paradigm of French lexemes whose uses have raised socio-political issues for several decades: integration, insertion, assimilation, inclusion, even acculturation and incorporation. While many recent publications bring these terms into play as sociological concepts, or study their uses in political discourse, work on the semantic functioning and uses of these lexemes in other discourses is rarer. However, the recurrent nomination conflict that runs through French public policies on immigration shows that the stakes of these usages remain salient. Do French dictionaries make it possible to grasp the ideological issues raised by the competing uses of lexemes? How do they treat and model the abundance of uses of these lexemes? How are paradigmatic competitors related: opposition, contrast, synonymy, hyperonymy, co-hyponymy? What are the salient semantic features retained in the given definitions?The corpus selected for this study is composed of extracts from two generalist French-language dictionaries, the Petit Robert de la langue française and the Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé. I analyse the production of meaning at work by using a grid with four entries. First, I model and analyze the semantic relations established between the terms of the paradigm, relations which structure the paradigm. I then try to identify the semantic features which are similar or different between the lexemes, thus revealing another type of structure in the micro-system. Last, I work on the collocations and the agentive configurations implemented in the definitions and examples composing each article.All these analyses highlight a defining circularity that hinders a contrastive grasp of the lexemes, in a context where important social and political issues are at stake.

Floods in Provence-Alpes-C\xf4te d'Azur and lessons for French flood risk governance

France experiences catastrophic floods on a yearly basis, with significant societal impacts. In this study, we use multiple sources (insurance datasets, scientific articles, satellite data, and grey literature) to (1) analyze modern flood disasters in the PACA Region; (2) discuss the efficiency of French public policy instruments; (3) perform a SWOT analysis of French flood risk governance (FRG); and (4) suggest improvements to the FRG framework. Despite persistent government efforts, the impacts of flood events in the region have not lessened over time. Identical losses in the same locations are observed after repeated catastrophic events. Relative exposure to flooding has increased in France, apparently due to intense urbanization of flood-prone land. We suggest that the French FRG could benefit from the following improvements: (1) regular updates of risk prevention plans and tools; (2) the adoption of a build back better logic; (3) taking undeclared damages into account in flood risk models; (4) better communication between the actors at the different steps of each cycle (preparation, control, organization, etc.); (5) better communication between those responsible for risk prevention, emergency management, and disaster recovery; (6) an approach that extends the risk analysis outside the borders of the drainage basin; and (7) increased participation in FRG from local populations.

UN and EU Sanctions Versus US Sanctions: Two Different Yardsticks Commentary on the Decision of the Paris Court of Appeal (International Commercial Chamber) (5th Pole, Chamber 16) of 3 June 2020, No. 21/2020

The Paris Court of Appeal rejected a challenge to an ICC award rendered in favour of an Iranian government-owned company. That challenge was based on allegations of breaches by the tribunal of due process, of the arbitrators’ mandate, and of public policy. Of note, the public policy challenge was based on the tribunal’s alleged failure to take into consideration UN, EU and US sanctions against Iran. This decision of the Paris Court of Appeal is in line with the established French case law regarding its answer to the above mentioned three grounds of challenge, but it drew a peculiar conclusion that US sanctions, contrary to UN and EU sanctions, are not part of French international public policy, even though having the same object. Challenge of the award, French case law, breach of due process-waiver of the right to object, breach of the arbitrators’ mandate and the duty to reason the award-breach of public policy, UN, EU and US sanctions against Iran-international consensus

Accessing sport through education. Policy frameworks for girls’ practice of sport in France from 1945 to today

ABSTRACT Our research analyzes French public policies concerning girls’ access to sport through educational measures. It is based on the study of official texts and institutional reports published since 1945. They are seen as being indicators of the policy frameworks defined by the French State and guiding educators’ action. Insofar as school has a socialisation role and contributes to the construction of stereotypes from a very young age, it appears essential to understand the practice possibilities offered there. It is thus a question of identifying the possibilities offered to girls and the representations associated with them, as well as the political, ideological and social foundations determining the directions taken. The historical approach was chosen to apprehend the processes that structured policy action and identify the changes over the long term. Justifying a policy of segregation, the naturalisation of the physical and moral qualities attributed to girls was followed by a universalist perspective adopted, from the 1980s onwards, as the condition for democratised access to the practice of sport. Failure to consider the social gender-related division of sports practices, constituting an obstacle to the construction of equality, gave way to reflection on the diffusion of stereotypes. This reflection achieved consensus in relation to policy ambitions at the beginning of the 2000s without, however, managing to detach itself from a naturalisation of the tastes and aptitudes of each sex.

Intimate partner violence during the confinement period of the COVID-19 pandemic: exploring the French and Cameroonian public health policies

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an unprecedented pandemic. COVID-19 is a highly contagious and potentially fatal respiratory infection which has spread within three months of its outbreak to more than 173 countries, causing 3.7 million infections and 256,551 deaths at this writing. Unfortunately, no treatment or vaccine currently exists for COVID-19, although several clinical trials are on-going to find a definite solution to this pandemic. Prevention through public health measures remain the best strategy recommended till date. This prevention involves physical distancing and compulsory confinement at home in several European countries, in the UK and USA. Unfortunately, home confinement decreed in most high-income countries like France has been dangerous for women, victims of psychological, physical and sexual violence from their intimate partner. Violence between intimate partners has become an unintended consequence of the stay-at-home policy against COVID-19. Since the promulgation of a home confinement decreed in many high resource settings (USA, UK, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc), the rate of violence between intimate partners has increased tremendously resulting to the worst scenario, women’s death in some of these countries. The stay-at-home law is not yet a national decree in several low resource settings like Africa, where COVID-19 has not been declared an epidemic in several countries. However, intimate partner violence has been reportedly described as a real violation of women’s right before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in the African continent. This commentary highlights the effects of intimate partner violence due to COVID-19 confinement in France and extrapolates what may be the effect of an implementation of a COVID-19 confinement law in Cameroon. Also, the authors suggest recommendations to lessen the burden of intimate partner violence in countries with a stay-at-home policy.

Statistical modelling of pipe inventory at national level to improve French public policies for sustainable drinking water asset management

À la demande du ministère français de la Transition écologique et solidaire (MTES) et de l’Agence française pour la biodiversité (AFB) pour contribuer à la conduite des politiques publiques de l’eau, l’Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement (Inrae) a mené une étude pour mettre en place un dispositif national de connaissance du patrimoine des réseaux d’eau potable à l’échelle des agences de l’eau. La méthode mise en oeuvre repose sur la construction de modèles statistiques qui relient les caractéristiques des réseaux, collectées pour un échantillon de services, à des données géographiques et démographiques disponibles à l’échelle communale de façon exhaustive sur le territoire français. La base de données Sispea (Système d’information des services publics d’eau et d’assainissement) et les données SIG (système d’information géographique) recueillies auprès d’un échantillon de services qui représentent environ la moitié du réseau français, ont été utilisées pour caler des modèles multilinéaires des longueurs de canalisation par diamètre, période de pose et matériau. Ils permettent d’estimer la longueur des canalisations d’eau potable de la France métropolitaine à 875000 km, dont moins de 40% ont été posées avant 1970. 70% des conduites sont d’un diamètre au plus égal à 100 mm et les canalisations en PVC sont très majoritaires dans les bassins Loire-Bretagne et Adour-Garonne tandis que celles en fonte dominent dans les autres bassins.

공공주택 공급 활성화를 위한 프랑스 사회주택의 민간참여 특성 : Entreprise Sociale pour l'Habitat(사회적 주택 기업)을 중심으로

Purpose: This study aims to apprehend the role and importance of private sector in the French public housing policies by focusing on ESH, which supplies and manages about half of French public housing. The participation of private sectors presents increasing importance as a way to stabilize housing market and enhance the sustainability of society. Recently in Korea, since 2015, private sector has started to participate in public housing projects. Therefore it is necessary to observe and analyze the role, importance, the characteristics and institutional and financial system of French private sectors in order to draw implications to Korean public housing policies. Method: The main methods of the study is literature surveys on governmental and institutional reports and analysis of demographic and statistical data such as directory on social rental housing stock. A comparative analysis of public housing projects in Korea and France was also conducted. Result: Korean private sectors needs to enhance public character in term of housing rental price, period and broaden the scope of inhabitants. It is necessary to expand financial support systems such as France’s PEEC. It is also necessary to increase the participation of non-profit private sector through strengthening social economic capabilities.

Quels enjeux pour l’inclusion des étudiants à besoins éducatifs particuliers dans l’enseignement supérieur français ?

In spite of the French public policies implemented to meet the needs of students with disability and the promulgation of laws promoting inclusion in higher education, many barriers leading to social exclusion remain. The present paper analyzes the impact of health issues on young people educational path using com semi-structured interviews with high school and university students affected by serious and chronic diseases (n=19) from a sociological survey. The objective was to identify the needs and aspirations of these young people with disability to propose a suitable response to those needs, while also taking into account existing resources using a co-constructive approach. The analysis highlights the disconnect between the different domains of social interaction in which disabled students are included. Parental support and the transition between upper secondary and higher education are hindered by a lack of institutional cohesion. We investigate how stakeholders in the three institutional domains concerned with the disabled students (educational, medical and family) interact with each other using a systemic and polycentric approach. Our study shows that that a mediator is required to help solve the problems encountered by students with serious and chronic diseases as one possible approach to address their needs.

Urban Logistics in the light of sustainable development: still a long way to go

This paper provides an overview of urban planning, practices and research in urban logistics and the delay compared to the mobility of people. The first part describes the timeline of the inclusion of the mobility of people and goods in French public policies. It presents the gap between passenger and goods mobility relating to the growth of skills and knowledge on the topic, the rise of investigation and simulation methodologies, and the development of new organisations and management tools. In the second part, this comparison serves as a guide to measure the progress needed to help cities in terms of public policy. The third part proposes an approach of the recommendations and lines of research aimed at a hierarchy of current local policies relating to the mobility of goods.

Local governance in the centralized French system of policing: From co-production to conflict of legitimacy

This article deals with the complex aspect of French public safety policies and offers a big-picture view of the factors that impact both their design and their implementation processes. Indeed, many players are involved in their development: city mayors and local police forces when they exist, but also local agents of the national police forces who have the main responsibilities in this field, and the Public Prosecutor. Whereas cooperation between national police forces and local authorities is statutory and needed in order to address safety issues, conflicts and tensions are not rare. Each stakeholder pursues their own objectives: mayors are seeking public support and try to meet local expectations, while national police chiefs favour priorities set by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Far from following only a rational choice process, the implementation of local safety policy results from power relationships and the position of each player in the game. To gain the upper hand over a partner, a stakeholder can rely on material resources but also on the control of information about security issues, knowledge and expertise in this field, and its legitimacy among the public. In the French case, two forms of legitimacy are in conflict as far as security policy is concerned. If mayors base their arguments on their status conferred by a democratic election, the police chiefs use the fact that they belong to a national service based on a principle of equality – even if it is not applied: every citizen has the same rights and duties, and is subjected to national policies. Because the French Republic does not recognize communities and local peculiarities, institutions tend to favour their own positions rather than dealing concretely with the safety issues.

When social protection and emancipation go hand in hand: Towards a collective form of care

In the second half of the 20th century, all welfare states introduced social policies to help disabled persons. Yet since the 1970's, social protection devices have been the object of two criticisms. Disabled persons movements and the disability studies denounce both the underlying domination and paternalism and the forms of segregation that fuel the dependency and passivity of the beneficiaries of such devices. More recently, neoliberal activation policies have been trying to restrict access to these devices, believing that because they encourage people to take advantage of national solidarity, they constitute an obstacle to self-determination. These two lines of criticism converge to consider forms of protection as forms of alienation; they associate emancipation with the exercise of autonomy and the defence of human rights on the one hand, and with individual accountability on the other. By revisiting certain forms of protection related to French public policies – such as the introduction of social minima – and to civil society (associative work in particular), and by referring to different empirical studies, I will attempt to shed light on the conditions for forms of social protection that are sources of emancipation. I will show that they take place in arrangements that combine local care between peers with financial support from public policies. In this way I hope to make a modest contribution to Nancy Fraser's project to forge “a new alliance between social protection and emancipation”.

Peut-on réhabiliter le concept d’institution en psychiatrie ?

Introduction“Deinstitutionalization” has penetrated French public policies in the field of mental health. Studying the polysemy of the term institution is thus once again necessary so that French psychiatry does not lose the sight of its history and can continue to innovate in the organisation of mental healthcare. MethodAs part of our doctoral research, we conducted a literature review of articles from several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, as well as books and articles from the corpus of institutional psychotherapy (1952 to the late 1990s). ResultWhile sociology and institutionalist economics consider the institution primarily in its static sense, assimilating it to a set of rules governing behaviours, some philosophers and clinical psychologists, on the contrary, tend to rather consider the institution as a living ecosystem. DiscussionThe particular meaning of the term institution in French psychiatry, taken above all as a process and not as its result, has been challenged with the import of the meaning of the term in English, where it is more focused on the material edifice and, in psychiatry, confused with the psychiatric hospital itself. ConclusionIn the setting of a massive development of networks and partnerships between healthcare, medico-social and common law structures, we plead for a rehabilitation of the term institution, in order to theorize a “trans-institutional” psychotherapy connected to the principles and history of the sector system.

The legitimacy principle within French risk public policy: A reflective contribution to policy analytics

When dealing with public policy in the field of safety, security, and environmental health, legitimacy or illegitimacy is often evoked as a challenge that determines whether a policy will be embraced over time. Scholarly literature points to key variables of public support as well as the use of subject matter experts to build legitimacy in the policy process, yet few articles unpack the meaning and application of legitimacy in a manner that accounts for unique political, institutional, and cultural considerations. This article offers a holistic understanding of the various drivers and challenges behind the legitimacy principle. Specifically, this article reviews how policy successes and failures in France were driven at least in part by a perception of policy legitimacy by policymakers, stakeholders, and the general public.