Between Defining and Disseminating Policy Solutions The Influence of Discourse in Action on Public...

BETWEEN DEFINING AND DISSEMINATING POLICY SOLUTIONSThe Influence of Discourse in Action on Public Policy ChangePhilippe ZittounTranslated from French by Jasper Cooper

Presses de Sciences Po | Revue française de science politique 2013/3 - Vol. 63pages 133-155

This document is a translation of:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Philippe Zittoun, Translated from French by Jasper Cooper « Entre définition et propagation des énoncés de solution »,

Revue française de science politique, 2013/3 Vol. 63, p. 133-155.

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How to cite this article:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Philippe Zittoun "Entre définition et propagation des énoncés de solution",

Revue française de science politique, 2013/3 Vol. 63, p. 133-155.

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BETWEEN DEFINING

AND DISSEMINATING

POLICY SOLUTIONSTHE INFLUENCE OF DISCOURSE IN ACTION

ON PUBLIC POLICY CHANGE

Philippe ZittounTranslated from French by Jasper Cooper

On 16 December 2006, the mayor of Paris inaugurated the capital city’s first tram,the T3, which runs along the southern section of the boulevards Maréchaux. In themany speeches that he gave in connection with this event, Mayor Bertrand Delanoë

tirelessly repeated that the tram constituted a “modern” solution that would solve Parisians’transit problems. The tram was an “urban” solution which allowed for the renewal of“neglected” urban areas,1 and thereby contributed to a major “ecological” shift in transpor-tation policy, which was better suited to tackle the problem of pollution.2 In other words,the mayor of Paris articulated a policy statement that linked an instrument – the tram –with two problems that it was supposed to solve, and with a broader public policy that itwas attempting to reform. Inseparable from its enunciator and from the conditions of itsenunciation, this policy statement also helped to transform the decision to build the traminto a visible sign of the mayor’s political willingness to appear as “modern” and as “eco-logical” as his tram project: attentive to the expectations of his fellow citizens, concerned forthe future of humanity, and capable of responding to crucial problems through concrete“actions”. Moreover, media reaction hit the nail on the head in highlighting the importanceof this decision, signalling it as one of the mayor’s main sources of legitimacy and a key tohis possible electoral victory in 2008.3 The tram project statement thus encapsulated notonly the definition of an object, which it transformed into a “solution”, but also a theory

1. Let us cite here, for example, an excerpt from the “Letter From Bertrand Delanoë” contained in the introductionto the dossier devoted to the extension of the T3 tram line, a case file for public consideration, in January2006: “The tram constitutes a modern mode of transport, one that is rapid, comfortable and respects theenvironment. [...] The T3 tram, currently being built along the southern boulevards Maréchaux between theGarigliano bridge and the Porte d'Ivry, will be up and running in 2006. [...] This line will constitute a highlyimportant link for movement along Paris's southern ring road and within the surrounding municipalities: 100,000travellers per day are expected. The development of the T3 tram line will also contribute to the renovation ofareas that for too long have been neglected, and which are plagued by the nuisance of traffic.”

2. “Mayors all over the world, all of us, we must take action against pollution to protect both our health and ourcivilisation. We must change our modes of transportation. What's more, with the tram we can make our cityeven more attractive.” Extract from Bertrand Delanoë's inaugural speech, cited in Le Parisien, 17 December2006.

3. “By delivering on the Maréchaux tram, Bertrand Delanoë and his team hope that the good times are finallyahead of them. Maligned for his transport policy, accused of having invented traffic jams ‘even in the dead ofnight’, and struggling to demonstrate the effects of his decisions on the fight against pollution, Paris's socialistmayor had a rather nasty year in 2006. But he gritted his teeth and patiently waited for a red-letter day marked

❘ REVUE FRANCAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 63 No 3-4 ❘ p. 133-155

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of policy change in which the mayor is a leader capable of deciding on and reforming publicpolicies in order to address the problems of his fellow citizens.

Nevertheless, the theory of policy change contained within these kinds of statements is ingeneral quite at odds with what researchers discover when studying the dynamics of changein action. These researchers list a number of very different phenomena to explain suchdynamics, including: the complexity of decision-making processes;1 the fragmentation ofpower;2 the weight of constraints – be they institutional,3 systemic4 or cognitive;5 and therole of experts,6 networks,7 and special interest groups.8 Furthermore, researchers analysingpolitical discourse on policy change have shown that, in reality, changes are never as greatas those initially announced. Finally, researchers have also pointed out that processes canonly be read over the medium-term,9 and that a solution generally exists prior to the prob-lems it is supposed to resolve.

The disjuncture between how policy change is described in political discourse and how itis actually observed by researchers has led many authors to relegate this discourse to asecondary position.10 Instead, they have sought to discern, in the most objective way pos-sible, all of the things that such discourse seeks to mask: namely, practices, ideas, habits,constraints, paradigms, interests, values and so forth. In this vein, Patrick Hassenteufel hassuggested that “establishing distance from political rhetoric and symbolism is the first mainconcern of any analysis of policy change”.11 In the introduction to their collected volume

in his calendar: the 16th of December, the day of deliverance. For the Parisian tram will be at the heart of thenext municipal elections, one and a half years from now” (Le Parisien, 16 December 2006).

1. “In reality, the moment of decision appears as an elusive process during which actors of various types con-tribute to a sort of gradual sedimentation of choices”. (P. Muller, “L'analyse cognitive des politiques publiques.Vers une sociologie politique de l'action publique”, Revue française de science politique, 50(2), 2000, 189-208,191). See also H. D. Lasswell, The Decision Process. Seven Categories of Functional Analysis (College Park,Bureau of Governmental Research, College of Business and Public Administration, University of Maryland, 1956);and A Preview of Policy Sciences (Houston: Elsevier Co, 1971); C. E. Lindblom, The Policy-Making Process (Eng-lewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968).

2. R. Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); L. Sfez, Critique de la décision (Paris: Pressesde Sciences Po, 1992).

3. P. A. Hall, Governing the Economy. The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (Cambridge/Oxford:Polity Press/Blackwell, 1986); P. Pierson, Politics in Time. History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 2004); L. Dumoulin, S. La Branche, C. Robert, P. Warin (eds), Le recours aux experts.Raisons et usages politiques (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2005.

4. D. Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 1965).5. H. A. Simon, Administration Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1945); A Theory of Administrative Decision(University of Chicago, Department of Political Science, 1943); and “Rationality as process and as product ofthought”, The American Economic Review, 68(2), 1978, 1-16.

6. F. Fischer, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise (Newbury Park: Sage, 1990), A. Benveniste, “Expertisecontrainte ou dés-implication du chercheur”, Journal des anthropologues. Association française des anthropo-logues, 108-109, 2007, 115-30; A. Quemin, J.-Y. Trépos, “La sociologie de l'expertise”, Revue française de soci-ologie, 38(1), 1997, 168-9; L. Dumoulin, S. La Branche, C. Robert, P. Warin (eds), Le recours aux experts.

7. D. Marsh, R. A. W. Rhodes, Policy Networks in British Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).8. S. Saurugger, “L'expertise. Un mode de participation des groupes d'intérêt au processus décisionnel commu-nautaire”, Revue française de science politique, 52(4), 2002, 375-401.

9. See, for example, the collected volume edited by Yves Surel and Jacques de Maillard, for whom the “multi-plication of presidential announcements as well as the nature of the media debate often have the effect ofshortening the political timeline, demanding in contrast an analysis that is attentive to the mid- and long-term”.J. de Maillard, Y. Surel (eds), Politique publiques, volume 3: Les politiques publiques sous Sarkozy (Paris: Pressesde Sciences Po, 2012), 16; K. H. Goetz, M. Howlett, “Time, temporality and timescapes in politics and policy”,ECPR Workshop, Antwerp, 2012; C. Pollitt, Time, Policy, Management. Governing With the Past (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2008).

10. P. Zittoun, “Policy change as discursive approach”, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 11(1), 2009, 65-82.11. P. Hassenteufel, Sociologie politique. L'action publique (Paris: Armand Colin, 2008), 225.

❘ REVUE FRANCAISE DE SCIENCE POLITIQUE ❘ ENGLISH ❘ VOL. 63 No 3-4

134 ❘ Philippe Zittoun

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on public policy during Sarkozy’s presidency, Jacques de Maillard and Yves Surel alsohighlight the existence of a “gap between the aggressive discourse of political will, and theminimal real changes that occurred”, arguing that the only true “rupture” during Sarkozy’smandate was the “tone” of his discourse.1 Reduced to its purely rhetorical dimension,discourse is generally considered to be a mere illusion at worst, and, at best, an attemptat symbolic justification realised after the fact and without any influence on the processesof policy change.

But even if we accept that policy statements might not describe the reality of the processesof change at work, should we then infer that they play no role at all in this change? Inanalysing change, have we forgotten that discourse does not only have a descriptive dimen-sion, but also – as authors as diverse as Wittgenstein, Austin, Perelman, Foucault, Edelman,Searle, Bourdieu and Habermas2 have illustrated – a definitional, cognitive, normative, illo-cutionary, practical, communicational and indeed prescriptive dimension, especially whenone takes into account the pragmatics of discourse3 – i.e., the act of making statements whensocially re-contextualised – as opposed to its simple discursive content?

The fact that the different dimensions of discourse are often overlooked when trying todescribe the processes of policy change is even more surprising, given that researchers dotake these dimensions into account when analysing how public problems are placed on thepolitical agenda. Without entering into the numerous debates that can be found in theliterature on the sociology of social problems,4 it is interesting to note that most authorsattempt to trace the construction5 of a problem starting with the trajectory of its originalstatement. First the statement renders a given situation problematic and “unacceptable”,6

then a collective actor is designated as “responsible”,7 a “public”8 is identified, an injunctionto act is broadcast, and finally, multiple sources of support are aggregated.

1. “The rupture with the past is thus undoubtedly not there where we expect it to be, for it is through rhetoricaland communicational inflation that Nicolas Sarkozy broke most clearly with his predecessors.” J. de Maillard,Y. Surel (eds), Les politiques publiques sous Sarkozy, 43.

2. L. Wittgenstein, Recherches philosophiques (Paris: Gallimard, 2005); J. L. Austin, J. O. Urmson and MarinaSbisà (eds), How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); C. Perelman, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca,La nouvelle rhétorique. Traité de l'argumentation (Paris: PUF, 1958); M. Foucault, L'ordre du discours (Paris:Gallimard, 1971); and Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966); P. Bourdieu, Langage et pouvoir symbolique(Paris: Seuil, 2001); J. Habermas, Théorie de l'agir communicationnel (Paris: Fayard, 1987); and Vérité et Jus-tification (Paris: Gallimard, 1999); J. R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1969).

3. The term “pragmatic” can be first traced back to the three philosophers who developed the eponymous branchof philosophy: Pierce, James and Dewey. They emphasised the importance of knowledge-building through prac-tical situations. Morris made the pragmatic a specific dimension of language, alongside its semantic and syn-tactical dimensions, evoking the inseparable connection between a statement's meaning and its effects and thecontext in which it is stated.

4. D. Céfaï, Pourquoi se mobilise-t-on ? Les théories de l'action collective (Paris: La Découverte, 2007); C. Gilbert,E. Henry, Comment se construisent les problèmes de santé publique (Paris: La Découverte, 2009); J. Gusfield,La culture des problèmes publics: l'alcool au volant. La production d'un ordre symbolique (Paris: Economica,2009); R. W. Cobb, C. D. Elder, “The politics of agenda-building: an alternative perspective for modern democratictheory”, The Journal of Politics, 33(4), 1971, 892-915.

5. Daniel Céfaï speaks of the “galaxy of constructivism” in which these theories can be situated (D. Céfaï, Pourquoise mobilise-t-on ?).

6. L. Boltanski, Rendre la réalité inacceptable. À propos de “La production de l'idéologie dominante” (Lonrai:Demopolis, 2008).

7. J. Gusfield, La culture des problèmes publics.8. J. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1927).


BETWEEN DEFINING AND DISSEMINATING POLICY SOLUTIONS ❘ 135

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The hypothesis that this article seeks to develop is the following: mobilising the pluralityof discourse dimensions in order to comprehend not only how problems are formed, butalso how new policy proposals are developed and institutionalised, opens new avenuesfor understanding policy change and determining the influence of political statements.To this end, this article examines a phase of public policy that is too often overlookedin policy analyses: namely, “policy formulation”.1 It is during this phase that proposalstake shape and gain meaning, before being incorporated into the repertoire of availablesolutions. By helping to transform a proposal into a problem’s solution, an instrumentinto a lever for change, a collective actor into the “owner” of a given solution, or a leaderinto the primary “decision-maker”, the process of discourse construction and its trans-formation into a stabilised utterance regarding change is in fact inseparable from policychange itself.

From this perspective, the case of the Parisian tram line that I will examine below is sig-nificant not only because it went through a long “formulation” phase (the project waselaborated over more than a decade), but also because it was the site of clashes betweentwo distinct proposals that both appeared to be “good” candidates for change, before onewon out over the other. Two elements make this case even more interesting. Not only didthe mayor of Paris hesitate between the two proposals for several years, thus allowing usto expose the strategies of persuasion, conviction and influence that represent as many usesof discourse “in action”; but, and more importantly, in light of the motley compositionof the two coalitions which cut across all of the large organisations involved in the project,it remains very difficult to see the victory of one proposal over the other as anything buta complex discursive process composed of attempts, failures, agreements and strugglesbetween various actors.

In order to better understand how solutions are formed and then institutionalised, thisarticle makes an important heuristic choice; namely, it concentrates on three keymoments of this process, each of which reveals the importance of a specific and distinctdimension of discourse. Firstly, we shall examine the activities involved in the formationof policy statements and how, by assembling disparate elements, they grant meaning toan instrument and transform it into a credible “solution”. However, we will also examinethe costs and constraints imposed by these “language games”.2 Secondly, we shall focuson the dissemination of these utterances, which relies on the argumentative dimensionof discourse, and on the activities of conviction, persuasion and agreement that thisdimension makes possible. Finally, we will take into account the confrontational dimen-sion of discourse, examining the power relations and clashes that governed the debateover the tram’s route.

1. C. O. Jones, An Introduction to the Study of Public Policy (Belmont: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1970); J. Anderson,Public Policy-Making (New York: Praeger, 1975); J. Craft, M. Howlett, “Policy formulation, governance shifts andpolicy influence: location and content in policy advisory systems”, Journal of Public Policy, 32(2), 2012, 79-98;P. J. May, “Policy learning and failure”, Journal of Public Policy, 12(4), 1992, 331-54.

2. L. Wittgenstein, Recherches.



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Methodological annex

The empirical section of this article is based on a study of the Parisian tram system

carried out between 2007 and 2010. The study was developed using a sizable collection

of documents including a press review, the transcription of debates in the Parisian

municipal council, technical dossiers prepared by the RATP, the APUR, City Hall, the

STIF, the DRE1 and documents prepared by local civil society organisations (consumer

and resident associations, etc.). It also draws on seventeen interviews, of between

1 hour and 15 minutes and 4 hours and 25 minutes, with project stakeholders, including

political, technical and civil society actors.

The methodological decision made while conducting these interviews was to encourage

the interviewee to reconstruct discussions and debates in which s/he participated.

Particular attention was paid to the conflicts and agreements that occurred during

these discussions, to the arguments exchanged and to the successive variations of the

project that these discussions engendered. Hence the aim was to methodologically

privilege the position of the interviewee as an “eyewitness” who recounts scenes s/he

personally experienced, rather than as an analyst discussing the project with the

researcher outside of the temporal context. In other words, analyses given by actors

during the interviews were only taken into account if they could be repositioned as

discursive practices that took place throughout the whole process.

The priority given to discursive interactions allowed me to establish an objectifiable

perspective during the interviews, based on lived social situations that the actor

attempted to recollect. The implicit hypothesis of such a method is that reflections on

the project, just like coalitions between actors, are first forged during the course of

these concrete interactions.

There is of course a very significant risk of distortion associated with the reconstruc-

tion of events after the fact. I attempted to mitigate this risk through the use of chro-

nologically aligned elements that were brought into the interview to confirm or

challenge the events recounted (such as press articles, meeting minutes, other eye-

witness accounts). I also attempted to cross-reference eyewitness accounts recounting

the same meeting or discussion. Finally, I assumed – an assumption which obviously

merits further discussion – that the moments that actors remembered most clearly

were those during which the project made significant progress.

Finding a problem that the tram line could solve: creating meaning throughdiscourse

The question of meaning is not new in the field of public policy analysis.2 In France,it pervades the self-styled “cognitive” approaches3 that study the role of representationin public policy. In these approaches, the issue of meaning surfaces at several levels.

1. RATP – Régie autonome des transports parisiens [Autonomous Operator of Parisian Transport]; APUR - Agenceparisienne d'urbanisme [Parisian Urbanism Agency]; STIF – Syndicat des transports d'Île-de-France [Île-de-France Transport Union]; DRE – Direction régionale de l'équipement [Regional Facilities Directorate].

2. G. Pollet, La construction du sens dans les politiques publiques. Débats autour de la notion de référentiel(Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995).

3. P. Muller, “L'analyse cognitive des politiques publiques. Vers une sociologie politique de l'action publique”,Revue française de science politique, 50(2), 2000, 189-207; and “Les politiques publiques comme construction



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It is instrumental in showing that the role of a policy is not simply to solve problems, butalso to advance a certain vision of the world and, as such, to contribute to the constructionof a certain social order.1 Analysing meaning also highlights how these representationsstrengthen the domination of a given social group. Finally, this perspective helps to explainthe subjective behaviour of actors, who act in relation to these representations in order tomaintain or change a policy.2 At the international level, the question of meaning has beenaddressed by supporters of “discursive” approaches,3 for whom a public policy can first andforemost be equated with a normative discourse about the world.4

Nevertheless, all such attempts at studying meaning are confronted with the same paradoxwhen they address the field of public policy: namely, the empirical incoherence of publicaction. How can one grasp the meaning of public action as a whole when it initially appearsfragmentary and incoherent? How can one identify a policy’s development and modificationswithout presupposing that public policy itself is coherent? Does the researcher not riskimposing meaning and coherence onto a complex whole which might be neither of thesethings? In any case, this is the primary criticism made by sociologists of public actionregarding political scientists who study public policy.5 Revealing the incoherence of publicpolicies – whether that concerns how policy instruments are arbitrarily linked to one another,or the empirical discovery made by March, Cohen and Olsen,6 according to which a solutiongenerally pre-dates the problem it is supposed to solve – is in some ways very problematicfor those who want to make meaning a central dimension of policy processes.

But if researchers are not to impose meaning, at the risk of distorting their data by creatingcoherence where perhaps there is none, must they therefore be forced to abandon the questfor meaning altogether? To answer this question, I suggest shifting focus away from observingpublic policy as an object towards the work of defining public policy as carried out by variousactors. Meanwhile, we must avoid being “blinded by the signifier”, as Wittgenstein warned,by explicitly observing the “language games”7 that form this meaning. The question is thus

d'un rapport au monde”, in A. Faure, G. Pollet, P. Warin (eds), La construction du sens dans les politiques pub-liques (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995), 13-23; B. Jobert, P. Muller, L'État en action, politiques publiques et corpora-tismes (Paris: PUF, 1987).

1. “The cognitive approach [...] tends to formulate the question of policy-making in a different manner: as soonas the purpose of policy-making is no longer simply to ‘solve problems’, but to construct frameworks for inter-preting the world, it is then possible to pose in fresh terms the question of the relationship between policiesand the construction of a social order” (P. Muller, “L'analyse cognitive des politiques publiques”, 189).

2. See the three référentiels [reference frameworks] in P. Zittoun, “Référentiels et énoncés de politiques publi-ques. Les idées en action”, in O. Giraud, P. Warin (eds), Politiques publiques et démocratie (Paris: Seuil, 2008),73-92.

3. See above, in the introduction to this special issue, 33-41.4. “As politicians know only too well but social scientists too often forget, public policy is made of language”.G. Majone, Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989),1.

5. C. Musselin, “Sociologie de l'action organisée et analyse des politiques publiques. Deux approches pour unmême objet ?”, Revue française de science politique, 55(1), 2005, 51-70.

6. M. D. Cohen, J. G. March, J. P. Olsen, “A garbage can model of organizational choice”, Administrative ScienceQuarterly, 17(1), 1972, 1-25.

7. Eschewing any approach in which language is removed from its social usage in order to make it the reflectionof some pure inner thought, Wittgenstein considers meaning as a “language game”, which is to say, a “totalityformed by language and the activities with which it is interwoven”. The game reconciles the existence of rulesand social conventions that enable exchange, the contingency of each component that plays out between actors,and the multiplicity of possible discursive practices. Thus, Wittgenstein sees a diverse range of activities aslanguage games, such as: “giving orders and obeying; posing questions and responding to them; describing an



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no longer whether researchers should prioritise a perspective which accounts for policyincoherence or one which imposes coherence where there may be none. Instead, we willexamine how actors create coherence by defining public policies on the basis of disparateand fragmentary public interventions. Similarly, it is not merely a question of knowingwhether the solution comes before or after the problem, but of observing how actors attemptto recreate order by transforming a given instrument into a problem’s “likely” solution.

Bearing in mind these observations on the definitional work that takes place in relation topolicy proposals, this article hypothesises that this work, which occurs throughout the entireprocess of proposal formulation, has an impact on the proposals themselves, whose contentand form vary accordingly. In other words, in order to make a proposal compatible withthe problem that it is designed to solve, and in order to enable it to survive the discursivechallenges to which it will be submitted, actors must not shroud a proposal in discourse, asthough the proposal was somehow unchanged by the words that define it; actors must usediscourse to redefine and transform it.

The three meanings of the Parisian tramIn order to understand this work of redefinition, let us return to the example of the Parisiantram. Specifically, let us consider the manner in which, over the course of the different stepsthat won it a place on the agenda of possible solutions, it saw not only its meaning but alsoits form and physical route vary. In fact, a tram project in Paris was seriously considered onthree separate occasions, and its meaning, form and route were redefined each time.

The tram project first surfaced during the 1980s. At the time, it was the brainchild of ahandful of technicians who conducted studies while working for the RATP, the APUR, theDRE, the STP and the SNCF,1 and who specialised in these different types of transport. Theseactors attempted to implement a mode of rail-based transport in an abandoned urban zone:the Little Belt Railway (PCF – Petite Ceinture Ferroviaire).2 While their reports did touchupon the problem of this urban wasteland,3 they primarily emphasised the existence ofanother problem which rail transport could address: namely, the difficulty of travelling in acircular direction around Paris without being forced to travel through the centre. They thushighlighted the existence of a public of victims and identified the problem’s cause – the“star-shaped” distribution of transit lines that forced these victims to travel via the centre –and a solution: the implementation of a circular mode of transport along the Little Belt

event; inventing a story; telling a joke; describing an immediate experience; conjecturing about events in thephysical world; and creating hypotheses and scientific theories” (L. Wittgenstein, Recherches, 39).

1. STP – Syndicat des transports parisiens [Parisian Transport Union]; SNCF – Société nationale des chemins defer français [French National Railway Company].

2. The Little Belt Railway was a 23km line of train tracks constructed between 1852 and 1867. In that era itencircled Paris and linked its eight train stations, which each belonged to a different private company. In 1900,the year of the Exposition Universelle, close to 40 million travellers used the Little Belt Railway. By 1934,however, this figure had dropped to no more than six million. A victim of the metro, the Little Belt Railway wasessentially replaced that same year by a bus, which ran along another circular route parallel to the railway: theboulevards Maréchaux. The last segment of the railway was closed to travellers in 1988 in order to enable theregional train (the RER C) to use the route over a three-kilometre stretch, and for use by freight trains in 1993.

3. “At the time, the key question, in my mind, was ‘how to reuse this existing infrastructure?’ This had alwaysbeen the obvious question that had persisted. .. bearing in mind that things weren't quite so simple, it wasbecause there was a corridor with the rails already in place that it was still simple enough to decide on some-thing. [...] I believe that many people at the time thought that it was an outstanding opportunity.” (Interviewwith a RATP manager, 13 April 2008.)



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Railway. In other words, these actors used their reports to define a problem, a cause, apublic, a policy and ultimately a solution. But they also used their reports to sequentiallyre-link these various elements into a cohesive policy statement; the solutions proposed werefirst and foremost there to solve problems by correcting the adverse consequences of apreviously implemented public policy.

At this stage of the policy statement, only one route was envisioned – that of the Little BeltRailway linking the two Portes1 at the south end of Paris, with the eventual aim of forminga complete loop – and four modes of rail transport (the tram, the regional express train,the subway or the VAL [light automatic vehicle])2 were proposed as possible means to solvethe circular transit problem and rehabilitate the abandoned urban zone. In other words, byreducing the choice of route of the tram to a single possibility, and the possible solutionsto rail-based means of transportation, the stated solution allowed for four different possiblemodes of transport. Nevertheless, these reports did not lead to any sort of implementationand ended up on the administration’s shelves.

In 1993, the Parisian tram proposal was back on the agenda, not only taking on a newmeaning but also following a new route. Taking advantage of the debate over the extensionof the T2 tram to the edge of the city, which was to link Puteaux to Issy-Plaine – a proposalwhich had only recently been validated by the STP board of directors3 – Parisian tramadvocates proposed further extending the line in order to cross over Paris’s outer ring-road[le périphérique] and follow along the Little Belt Railway.

The experts responsible for carrying out the study had already worked on the former project4

and thus appended the tram project onto the planned extension. They set out to redefinenot only the problem but also the solution, in the hopes of recycling their previous ideas.The problem was no longer that Parisians were unable to travel in a circular manner aroundthe city, but that the T2 tramline provided suburbanites with no stops in the city. It was aquestion of giving new meaning to the tram project in order to present it as the solution toa problem. The tram was no longer one mode of urban transport among others, enablingrapid and circular movement for Parisians, but the mode of transport that would allowsuburban commuters to cross the périphérique and reach several of Paris’s Portes. Hence, theParisian tram was no longer the means to change a transport policy seen as too “star-shaped”,but instead the way to modify a transport policy that forced suburbanites to pass throughthe centre of Paris. With regard to the tram’s route, since it was no longer envisioned as ameans to circumnavigate Paris, it was no longer circular in shape but serpentine. A changein the target group, a modification of the physical route and the impossibility of choosing

1. Translator's note: Paris is encircled by a ring-road highway, le périphérique, which also demarcates its admin-istrative boundary. From the outer suburbs, one is only able to enter the city of Paris through its “gateways”,or portes, that cross under this ring road at several points located along the périphérique.

2. “Let's discuss the Little Belt then. I'll skip over the earlier studies; there were shelves upon shelves full ofthem. Particularly the studies carried out for the STP [...] They were often written by the RATP. Not only though,they were done by APUR, too. All of the studies were interesting. Very rich in detail. They showed the benefitsof reactivating the Railway, from the point of view of transport, inter-urban mobility, and efficiency” (Interviewwith an APUR manager, 5 May 2008).

3. STP Board of Directors meeting, 11 May 1993.4. “At the time, the STIF had asked us to add a little complementary circuit to the Railway, which would extendpast the Porte de Versailles, simply by way of exploring possibilities, and not in any way reflective of a decision.This was another extra stage, starting in '89. There was this period of transition. We re-did a summary study.They only asked us to explore the possibility. As in, here's how many people would use it, how much it wouldcost, more or less.” (Interview with a manager from the RATP, cited above.)



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any other mode of transport are in some ways the price that the project’s original advocateswere forced to pay in order to graft their solution onto the extension of the T2 line. Andyet, while this redefinition helped to foreground the Parisian tram project, it was not enoughto help it see the light of day.

It was not until 1995 that the project was again taken off the shelves and dusted off, thistime for good. The issue was no longer the extension of the T2 tramline, but the city’spollution during the summer of 1995. Taking advantage of the fact that the tram had reap-peared on the political agenda, its advocates once again recycled their project, this timecoupling it with a new problem. This new coupling not only modified the meaning of thetram project for a third time, but also helped to change the terms of the debate, the targetpublic, the identified route, and the public policy that was to be transformed.

The tram project’s re-emergence began with a warning sounded during the summer of 1995by Airparif, the agency in charge of monitoring air quality in Paris. For the first time in thecapital, the prefect1 echoed this warning and “implored the residents of Île-de-France tominimise automobile use until Sunday 16 July in the evening”.2 Pollution dominated theheadlines of local newspapers and became an unacceptable problem for which the publicexpected a mayoral response.

A few days later, the mayor of Paris organised a press conference during which he announceda series of new measures, including the tramway.3 Below, I shall discuss the conditions thatmade it possible for the tram to figure on this list. First, however, let us consider the wayin which the mayor and the tram’s advocates managed to redefine not only the problem,but also the tram project itself in order to make them fit neatly into a single policy statement.

Firstly, the tram’s advocates began by designating the root cause of the problem: traffic.4

The process of attaching a cause to a problem merits particular attention because it is notjust a matter of causally linking two phenomena, in this case pollution and traffic. First andforemost, the goal is to replace an unsolvable problem with a solvable one. While the problemof pollution is very complex, including variables such as the weather, the strength of windsand the lie of the land, that of urban vehicular traffic simplifies the issue, mainly by singlingout automobile drivers as concrete individuals against whom actions can be taken. In otherwords, sorting through all the possible candidates in order to discern a specific cause helpedto shift the problem from pollution to traffic.

Similarly, the tram solution was redefined in order to link it with the pollution problem. Itspurpose was no longer responding to the difficulty of round-Paris transportation or catering

1. Translator's note: Representative of the central state at the regional and departmental level. Paris is the onlymunicipality in France to have a préfet on its city council.

2. “L'usage de la voiture est déconseillé à Paris”, Le Monde, 14 July 1995.3. “In the long term, the mayor of Paris wishes to propose ‘diversified transport solutions for Parisians and thoseliving in the metropolitan area’. Having discarded ‘inappropriate solutions’, such as urban tolls, alternate trafficdays or driving bans in the city centre, Mayor Tiberi indicated the main outlines of the ‘ambitious politicalpartnership’ that he plans to carry out in collaboration with the RATP and the SNCF: the publication of a study‘as soon as possible’ concerning a tram project that would service the southern ring road” (Françoise Chirot,“Jean Tiberi n'exclut pas des mesures coercitives pour limiter la pollution”, Le Monde, 23 July 1995).

4. “One thing is clear: the levels of atmospheric pollution that we have just witnessed pose the more widespreadproblem of the evolution of automobile traffic in urban agglomerations. For, indisputably, while industrial pol-lution has been effectively combatted over the past years, atmospheric pollution has continued to grow, largelydue to automobile transport.” (Transcript of debates in the Paris City Council, session on 24 July 1995. 10 –1995 – D1082).



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to the needs of suburban residents, but rather solving the issue of pollution. In order toconnect the problem to a solution, the actors shifted the problem towards its cause (auto-mobile traffic), and the solution towards its anticipated outcome (a reduction in automobiletraffic). This twofold shift helped to transform the problem into a “solvable” problem, andthe solution into a “tailor-made” solution.

This shift thus not only altered the tram’s significance (since its purpose was now fightingpollution), the public being victimised (now “Parisians” suffering the effects of pollution),and the guilty party (vehicular traffic), but also redefined its physical route. After September,the mayor no longer spoke of the tramline along the Little Belt Railway but along the“southern ring road” [Rocade sud]. He thus indicated the existence of not one but twopotential routes to fight pollution, that of the Little Belt Railway and that of the boulevardsMaréchaux.

The important point is not that the revised policy statement introduced a new route, butrather that it made it possible. In other words, as long as the problem to be solved was theabandoned urban space of the Little Belt Railway, or the extension of the T2 line, therecould be no place for an alternative route. The policy statement and the constraints onmeaning that it imposed limited the field of possibilities. Yet, as soon as the problem wasredefined as pollution, the choice of route was no longer pre-determined in the same manner.Although the mayor announced the extension of the T2 tramline in July of 1995, in Sep-tember he modified his discourse to speak of the “southern ring road”.

The production of a policy statement thus presents itself as a way to ascribe meaning to aproposal. It works through a specific process during which the various elements that con-stitute it are redefined, making it possible to package them as a whole. While this assemblagefunctions as a “language game”, this game nevertheless has its own rules which regulate thefield of competing possibilities, and has substantial effects on both the problem and thesolution.

Conviction and persuasion as the means for dissemination:the challenge of the argumentative struggle

The production of a solution’s meaning is thus a delicate and costly operation, includingfor the solution itself. It presupposes respect for rules that offer certain opportunitieswhile excluding others. But what is it that forces actors to respect these rules? Why

do they not simply link a problem to any solution they like, or even forego the creation ofmeaning and preserve the incoherence and fragmentation of public policies so often observedby researchers?

In order to understand the process of producing meaning, it is not enough to study thecontent of a statement,1 one must also observe the conditions of enunciation in which astatement was made, the intentions of the actors who produced the statement, and thesometimes unintended effects that a statement may produce. What I am suggesting hereis that meaning production does not only stem from a cognitive usage that helps to shapean actor’s thinking, as he or she seeks to imbue an action with meaning, but also from

1. This is the advantage of the concept of “statement” [énoncé] over that of “discourse”: it allows us to referenceboth the content and the social activity of making statements.



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an argumentative usage that pertains to social interaction, whereby a speaker acts withthe intention of persuading his or her interlocutor, in order to disseminate a givenproposal.

Thanks notably to the work of Charles Perelman1 on rhetorical renewal, the question ofargumentation has witnessed renewed interest in recent years, not only in studies on dis-course analysis, but also in sociological approaches and work on public policy.2 Refusing thesimplistic opposition between the logical and the illogical, Perelman distinguishes between,on the one hand, proof – a concept limited to mathematics, and whose statements follow alogical and unique reasoning that is self-sufficient – and, on the other hand, argumentation,which applies to all other domains of social life and whose reasoning is at best pseudo-logical.Here, argumentative activity plays a central role in making a given statement seem “prob-able”. Perelman thus insists that argumentation only takes shape in the context of interactionbetween a speaker and an audience, whose position the speaker seeks to alter. He thusattempts to differentiate conviction from persuasion, not in accordance with the nature ofthe arguments employed, but rather through the type of audience that the speaker addresses.In the case of conviction, this involves a large and mute audience, while in the case ofpersuasion, this involves a limited audience capable of discussion.

Research employing discourse analysis has often limited its observation of argumentation tothe large public speeches of conviction that Vivien Schmidt3 refers to as communicationdiscourse. The speech given by the mayor of Paris cited in the introduction is a typicalexample of communication discourse. The aim is to convince one’s audience – in this case,Parisians – of the benefits of a given project. Such discourses of conviction have very par-ticular rules of composition. And, as demonstrated by Austin, actors know – or learn at theirown risk – that these discourses have their own effects. When delivered by politicians, dis-courses of conviction are not judged purely on the basis of their descriptive validity, butabove all for how they reveal the speaker’s intentions. If a researcher publicly declares, “thestate cannot do everything”, it is a safe to assume that this will not provoke much reaction.However, if a prime minister were to make the same statement, s/he would be taken to taskfor exhibiting a lack of political will. Communication discourse is thus governed by rulesthat are essential for understanding its particular logic.

Research stemming from the “argumentative” turn helped to widen the analytical scope bydemonstrating that public policy analysis – which is to say, the dissection of a public policy,its objectives, means and outcomes – was simply an argumentative process, whose aim wasto convince a given audience of the validity of a policy already in place, of a change to bemade, or of a proposal to be implemented. Furthermore, such policy analysis does not onlyattempt to convince a broad audience, but also to persuade specific interlocutors in the moreintimate exchanges that take place at every step of the policy process.

1. C. Perelman, L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, La nouvelle rhétorique; M. Meyer, Perelman: le renouveau de la rhétorique(Paris: PUF, 2004).

2. F. Chateauraynaud, Argumenter dans un champ de force. Essai de balistique sociologique (Paris: ÉditionsPétra, 2011).

3. V. A. Schmidt, C. M. Radaelli, “Policy change and discourse in Europe. Conceptual and methodological issues”,West European Politics, 27(2), 2004, 183-210.



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It was indisputably Giandomenico Majone who first introduced this line of thought, whenhe showed that policy analysis constitutes an argument whose purpose is to persuade.1 Inan occasionally confusing manner (as is often the case with argumentative approaches),Majone interwove two steps: on the one hand, a comprehensive approach in which analyticalactivity is understood as a process closer to subjective argumentation than to objective proof;and on the other, a normative approach advocating for argumentative analysis. He therebyemphasised the manner in which certain actors use analysis in order to persuade others toadopt a specific policy instrument. Majone thus reminds us that policy instruments, as wellas their value, objectives, and ensuing consequences can all be interpreted in different ways,consequently paving the way for an interpretive struggle. Thus, for Majone, an instrument’sperformance depends less on its properties than on the political and administrative contextin which it operates.2

By no longer situating argumentation solely within the scope of conviction but rather withinthe more discreet work of persuasion, we open up new forms of inquiry, both to grasp thestrategies deployed by actors, but also to understand the conditions of their successes andfailures. While studying how the president of the United States formulated foreign policyduring the 1960s, Richard Neustadt3 illustrated that far from relying on his authoritativeposition or his power of decree, the president spent most of his time attempting to persuadesenators to adopt a given project. On the subject of urban policy, Robert Dahl4 likewiseemphasised the manner in which advocates of an idea would expend considerable energy topersuade other “sub-leaders” to adopt their project, by demonstrating to the latter that theproject furthered their own interests. This often made for strange bedfellows in coalitions.

We shall now turn to a more in-depth analysis of persuasive work, in order to better under-stand its role in the process of proposal formulation. We argue that persuasive work is basedon two major challenges: the solidity of a convincing statement that can be delivered inpublic; and appropriation, or the extent to which the audience sees its own identity strength-ened or confirmed when adopting the policy statement.

Persuasion as a means for promoting the two routesIn order to determine the significance and role of persuasive work, let us return to thetramway project, and more specifically to the crucial moments when new actors appeared,adopting positions in favour of one or the other of the two proposed routes. The appearanceof these actors and the positions they adopted were not the result of a spontaneous movementor of a synchronised phenomenon, which would imply that all the actors in a network agreed

1. “Whether in written or oral form, argument is central at all stages of the policy process. [...] Political parties,the electorate, the legislature, the executive, the courts, the media, interest groups, and independent expertsall engage in a continuous process of debate and reciprocal persuasion. [...] The policy analyst is a producer ofpolicy arguments more similar to a lawyer – a specialist in legal arguments – than to an engineer or a scientist.His basic skills are not algorithmical but argumentative” (G. Majone, Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in thePolicy Process, 1, 21).

2. “Many authors write as if it were possible to base the choice of policy instruments exclusively on their technicalproperties. Unfortunately, this cannot be done. To begin with, policy instruments are seldom ideologically neu-tral. [...] Instruments cannot be neatly separated from goals. [...] The performance of instruments depends lesson their formal properties than on the political and administrative context in which they operate.” (G. Majone,Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process, 117-8).

3. R. E. Neustadt, Presidential Power. The Politics of Leadership (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1960).4. R. Dahl, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965); and “The concept of power”, BehavioralScience, 2(3), 1957, 201-15.



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to adopt the same position overnight. On the contrary, these actors appeared gradually,advancing in fits and starts, as they hesitated about which position to adopt and had theirpositions altered through persuasion. It is these interactions that interest us the most: boththe argumentative work of actors, who positioned themselves as advocates for one route orthe other, and the reactions of those who hesitated between options. Under what conditions– but also at what price – did actors agree to support the tram project? In order to understandthis issue, we shall revisit three crucial moments in the process.

The first concerns the position taken by the mayor of Paris in July 1995 during a pressconference on pollution, and helps us pinpoint the importance and nature of argumentativework in a discrete competitive situation which makes appropriation possible.

In order to understand how this position was adopted, we need to examine the discussionsthat unfolded around Jean Tiberi when he had not yet come to a decision, other than thathe needed to announce a number of measures to be taken in response to the appearance ofthe pollution problem on the political agenda.1 These discussions took place internally, inthe presence of the members of the mayoral cabinet, highly placed administrative staff andcertain elected officials. Argumentative work appears all the more important here given that,in this context, we are dealing with a competitive space in which each actor sought toprioritise his or her measure.

In the case of the tram project, it so happened that three actors made the same suggestion– one which had previously been absent from the political landscape2 – to the mayor. Overthe course of these discussions, these actors not only argued for the tram’s potential as a“good” solution to the pollution problem, but also emphasised the benefits the mayor couldderive from endorsing such a “modern” and “innovative” form of transport. In other words,these arguments emphasised the credibility of the tram statement just as much as the identityissues implied by its appropriation.

This qualification process is all the more interesting because it refers to a major characteristicof the discursive process – the inseparable link between a policy statement and its enunciator– and from there, to a resulting specificity: the close relationship between a proposal’s qual-ities and those of its spokesperson. When the three actors submitted the tram project fordiscussion, in so doing they established a connection between the modernity of this modeof transport and their own “progressive” identities.3

Consequently, persuading the mayor no longer involved simply telling him that the tramproject was a convincing solution to the pollution problem, i.e., because it would providethe mayor with a policy statement that could survive the challenges of media attention. Italso involved convincing the mayor that adopting the policy statement would confer to him

1. “We were looking for a list of measures” (Interview with an administrative official at City Hall [Ville de Paris],25 September 2008).

2. “At the political level, the project wasn't ripe yet. It wasn't really in people's heads. It was a bit of a trend atthe time. Honestly, in 1995, doing a tram in Paris was as crazy as doing bicycles.” (Interview with a member ofJean Tiberi's cabinet, 10 October 2008).

3. “That was the slightly progressive current around Tiberi where there were guys like Vaquin, I found myselfthere too, pushed toward new ideas and moving away from the previous mandate. In all sorts of areas: we didfewer office buildings than Chirac, we did more bikes than Chirac. We were in the midst of a renewal. Chirachad built the city like a minister would. Tiberi, he was something else. We became a local collective authority.With new ideas. We said to ourselves: why not a tram, that's new.” (Interview with a member of Jean Tiberi'scabinet, ibid, 10 October 2008.)



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the very qualities of the object being defended: he would become a “modern” mayor, distinctfrom his predecessor. From this perspective, it becomes apparent that the transfer of identitybetween a proposition and its advocate is particularly important in the context of policy-making, given that it remains very difficult for an actor to legitimately describe him- orherself as “innovative” or “progressive” in the public arena.

Thus, while it was not easy for Jean Tiberi to directly distance himself from his predecessor[Jacques Chirac], to whom he owed his position as mayor, he could distinguish himself byvirtue of his ability to propose innovative solutions that signalled an important change: atleast, this was the argument that his councillors used in order to convince him of the project’smerits. Following these discussions, the mayor went on to adopt the tram as a possiblesolution. And yet, far from being a mere parrot, Tiberi refused to make the tram the mainsolution, as his councillors had recommended.

The second essential moment occurred two months later in September 1995, as Jean Tiberilaunched studies of the tram along Paris’s “southern ring road”.1 This implied, of course,that there were no longer one, but two routes in competition. Tiberi’s calls for new studiesillustrated that the redefinition of the project’s perimeter was the result of argumentativework whose purpose was to place two different routes in competition. In fact, while onlyone route had been envisioned in July at the moment of the press conference on pollution,a second route emerged after an informal meeting between the mayor and the president ofthe RATP, Jean-Claude Bailly.2 It was during this encounter that Bailly persuaded the mayorto consider a second route. The shift in positions over time allows us to better understandthe argumentative process and its effects.

While it was unfortunately not possible to find a record of what these two actors said toone another, I have been able to reconstruct one discussion that took place in preparationfor this lunch meeting. It occurred three days prior to the meeting, and involved the presidentof the RATP and his close advisors. This encounter is particularly interesting because itenables us not only to understand how arguments are produced – constructed and selectedto fit the interlocutor who is to be persuaded – but also to observe the specific effects ofthese arguments, which are at the source of the RATP president’s stance on the issue.

Gathering his main advisors, Jean-Claude Bailly organised a meeting in preparation for hislunch with the mayor, in order to decide upon his position3 – still not fixed at this point –and determine the strategic arguments that would be best suited to persuade Tiberi to sup-port the tram project.

1. “One thing is sure: it's going to be a tram. Regarding its exact implementation, I'll make my decision in thefirst months of 1996, when I will have all the necessary technical and legal information at hand.” (Libération,1995).

2. “Very quickly, once they started speaking about it in the media, it was the SNCF project that had the upperhand. Not the RATP. So all of a sudden, it was then that Bailly went to see Jean Tiberi and said to him: there'san alternative project along the boulevards Maréchaux” (Interview with a member of Jean Tiberi's staff, citedabove).

3. “It was just before that meeting [with Tiberi] when Jean-Paul got us all together, but only a small group. Hewas saying: what card should we play? Not as a company but for the Parisian community. What are the forcesat play? The pros and the cons. How should we position ourselves? [...] The director of the RATP was a very,very important actor [...].” (Interview with a manager at the RATP, cited above).



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During this meeting, two groups challenged each other’s statements. The first group com-prised the “bus” specialists, plus a new generation of transport experts1 who were moreattentive to the interaction between transport and urbanism. The second group representedthe “metro” specialists,2 commonly seen as all-powerful within the RATP. This group hadalready worked on the preceding tram projects, and thus defended the idea of a route fol-lowing the Little Belt Railway. The bus specialists, however, made the case that the tramshould follow another route, along the boulevards Maréchaux, thus replacing the over-burdened Little Belt bus line.

While both groups insisted that their tramline would best combat pollution and thus respondto the mayor’s concerns, the defenders of the Maréchaux route clearly managed to convincethe president of the RATP. Upon leaving the meeting, he adopted a position in favour ofthe second route and suggested persuading the mayor to conduct studies into this possibility,designating the southern ring road as the project’s perimeter.

The process of persuasion, or more exactly its success, is a complex phenomenon toanalyse. In fact, it is always very difficult to link an intention – that of the person attemptingto persuade – with an effect – the adoption of a position, in this case by the RATP’spresident, as many other factors can enter into the equation. It is, for example, difficultto distinguish the respective importance of arguments and positions from the persons whopresent them. In this case, however, given that the bus specialists could throw less “weight”around, compared to the metro specialists, we can assume that it was the arguments theydeployed that played an essential role. According to those present, it was the argumentthat the tram along the boulevards Maréchaux would be more visible, more urban, moremodern and would be less likely to resemble a “disguised metro” which elicited the mostpositive response from the RATP president.3

As the previous projects had previously been locked into the Little Belt Railway route,changing the problem and subsequently altering its meaning provided an opportunity forthe actors involved. And yet, only the argumentative work that they carried out enabledthem to open up new possibilities and propose the tramline along the boulevards Maréchauxas a serious solution to the pollution problem.

The third “moment” that interests us here was in reality a period of three years, duringwhich the advocates of one or the other route attempted to persuade the mayor, who hadsince positioned himself as the arbiter of the tram’s route. This period is interesting becauseit allows us to observe the stabilisation processes of two stated solutions, each of which hadits own meaning, route and justifications for being the “best” choice. Furthermore, we can

1. “PZ: Was it those who thought the tram could be urban? Absolutely. Look where I situate them. It was thosepeople who went on to convince the RATP president, without any trouble. [...] I remember that meeting in hisoffice where, really, we were at the end of our arguments and even he left there convinced. [...] No troubleconvincing Jean-Paul Bailly during a meeting that has stayed in our minds.” (Interview with a manager at theRATP, 25 April 2008).

2. “PZ: Because there are both bus and metro experts? Of course. There are the metro experts, the bus experts,and some general experts. General experts are the ones who say: there is no such thing as a mode of transportin and of itself. A mode of transport is an urban system, conceived in interaction with its urban environment.In this respect, the metro is not an urban system, it's a transport system. Doesn't matter if it goes under theboulévards or a bit further, what matters is where it surfaces in the city.” (Interview with a manager at theRATP, 13 April 2008).

3. “And that's him. The arguments, the civilised route, the wild route, and we're not going to do the 14th metroline, he's the one who formalised it all like that.” (Interview with a manager at the RATP, 25 April 2008.)



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also use this moment to study the dissemination process of these two arguments, whichengendered the creation of two distinct coalitions.

As pollution gradually moved to the edges of the political agenda and experts were calledupon to give their opinion, the debate took on a slower rhythm. During this more nuancedperiod, an increasing number of actors entered the debate and took a position in favour ofone of the two routes. Promotion was equally strong for the both the Maréchaux and theLittle Belt Railway proposals, with the result that each produced a coalition structured arounda route-specific discourse.

In studies on networks or coalitions, the actors who compose them are often assumed tohave pre-established connections with one another, thus explaining their capacity for col-lective action. In this case, it remains difficult to establish any specific commonality otherthan adhesion to one of the routes, so scattered throughout various institutions were theirrespective proponents. Whether we look at the RATP, the STP, Paris City Hall, the APUR,or even the FNAUT,1 at every level we find defenders of the Little Belt Railway project andadvocates for the boulevards Maréchaux route. We can thus observe the formation of twocoalitions whose discourse, as it grew progressively richer and more institutionalised, becamethe crucial binding agent.

For each route, the policy statement and its accompanying arguments stabilised such thateach option could present itself as the best answer to the problems which needed to besolved.

The first route, the Little Belt Railway, became the best project for solving transport problemsin the south of the capital and reducing traffic by proposing a rapid form of urban transit.Experts from the RATP, the STP, City Hall and the APUR were its most forceful advocates.As these experts were specialised in transport engineering, they were called upon to partic-ipate in a joint commission to draft a comparative report on the two routes. In this com-mission, presided over by a member of the STP who was favourable to the Little Belt route,these experts mobilised their knowledge and technical know-how to demonstrate that, withrespect to the classical indicators of transport, the Little Belt route appeared clearly more“efficient” [performant]. Twice as fast and therefore doubly attractive, the tram would allowfor the transport of a greater number of people, and would thus better satisfy the public.The coalition also included important Parisian politicians, such as the mayor of the 13th

arrondissement, Jacques Toubon; deputy mayor Jean-François Legaret, in charge of publicfinancial procurement at City Hall and considered to be “close to the mayor”; elected officialsfrom opposition parties, including the Socialist Party, the Green Party and the CommunistParty; important directors from the municipal administration; and highly engaged civilsociety leaders, including some from the FNAUT.

The second route along the boulevards Maréchaux became the “best” proposal for developinga new, more modern, vision of the city. It promised to replace cars and provide a form oftransportation that could rehabilitate an entire neighbourhood. The actors supporting thisroute were equally numerous. Among them were the president of the RATP, along withsome important members of his team, the vice-president of the STP, Georges Dobias, mem-bers from the APUR and officials from City Hall. These experts emphasised the route’s

1. FNAUT – Fédération nationale des associations d'usagers des transports (National Federation of TransportUser Associations).



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spatial importance, which physically took the place of the car. They also highlighted the issueof its integration into the urban space, making the tram an inherent element of the city.This coalition had the support of the mayor of the 15th arrondissement, Gally de Jean, severalelected officials from the RPR, the Socialist Party, the Green Party, and a number of com-munity associations, including certain FNAUT managers.

Caught in the middle of these two coalitions were the undecided, starting with the mayorof Paris himself, who refrained from taking a stand on the issue between 1995 and 1998,and who therefore became the central focus of attempts at persuasion by both coalitions.He was not the only one to remain undecided, however: if we look at the official positionsof spokespeople representing the Green Party, the Socialist Party and even the FNAUT,indecision reigned. The tactic of indecision was not solely an attempt to avoid internal strifewithin organisations due to differences in opinion; indecision also provided the undecidedactors with the means to position themselves at the centre of the strategies of persuasion.

Deciding on a route: power in action

By enabling the consolidation of a convincing policy statement and its disseminationthrough appropriation, the persuasion process added two serious contenders to therepertoire of available solutions, both of which had the potential to transform trans-

portation policy. In a way, this process acted like a filter that eliminated or transformed anycandidate unable to survive an argumentative challenge, whether they sought to test thestated solution’s robustness or the quality of the identity it conferred.

Nevertheless, this tells us very little about what happened when several proposals made theirway into this repertoire. In reality, although the mayor had announced that he was would takea position as early as 1996, he patently prolonged his indecision until 1998 because both routeswere highly convincing. The case of the tram project is all the more interesting given that themoment when the mayor made his decision public – during a major political crisis when hislegitimacy was being seriously questioned – reveals the necessity of taking into account anotheraspect of discourse: namely, its role as an instrument of power and a tool to legitimate authority.

When one takes argumentative work seriously, this complicates any attempt to analyse issuesof dominance, authority and the balance of power. As Hannah Arendt has highlighted,1 thesetwo approaches draw on radically different conceptions of the political and social space.

In the majority of studies stemming from the argumentative turn, the question of power isprincipally vested in discourse. For example, David Howarth2 uses the work of Foucault toexplore the way in which discourse, through its capacity to impose “truths”, norms andknowledge, structures the thoughts and behaviour of actors. In the same manner, DeborahStone3 demonstrates that analysis is an argumentative process that aims to influence

1. “Authority [...] is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process ofargumentation. Where arguments are used authority is in abeyance [...]. Against the egalitarian order of per-suasion stands the authoritarian order, which is always hierarchical.” Hannah Arendt, “What is authority?” inCarl J. Friedrich (ed.), Authority (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 82

2. D. R. Howarth, A. J. Norval, Y. Stavrakakis, Discourse Theory and Political Analysis. Identities, Hegemonies,and Social Change (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); J. Glynos, D. R. Howarth, Logics of CriticalExplanation in Social and Political Theory (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

3. D. A. Stone, Policy Paradox. The Art of Political Decision Making (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002);and “Causal stories and the formation of policy agendas”, Political Science Quarterly, 104(2), 1989, 281-300.



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behaviour. Hence, discourse becomes the means utilised by a social group to occupy adominant position. In a critical perspective, researchers condemn discourse’s power of influ-ence, which all too often helps to legitimise an elite, but can also become the means – froma Habermasian perspective that goes beyond strategic action to make use of communicativeaction – for attaining harmony as tempered through discussion.

Authors such as Pierre Bourdieu see this approach based on the power of language as aweapon used by those who already have power. Specifically, Bourdieu criticises Austin andHabermas for neglecting the effects of social position, basing his critique on what he identifiesas one of the main omissions in these authors’ theories: the study of the moments thatprecede discussion and in fact make it possible.1 According to Bourdieu, it is necessary tofocus on the person speaking and who has been granted the power to speak – he refers hereto the skeptron used by the Greeks to designate the person who had the right to speak – andnot confer exclusive importance to whatever that person might say. Bourdieu thus arguesthat the effect of social position precedes any speech act; by focusing solely on speech acts,these authors are in fact only observing a truncated version of reality. Only once positionaleffects have been taken into account can language become a weapon in service of thatposition. The importance that the author of La Distinction grants to the positions of actorsdoes not, however, diminish the role of language in his analysis. Language is indeed conceivedof as a weapon, but it is a weapon employed by individuals in order to maintain the positionsof power that they already occupy. Bourdieu thus argues that the performativity of languagecan only be understood as a function of the power of the person speaking, of the legitimacyof the situation in which s/he speaks, and of the legitimacy conferred to the speaker by thoselistening to the discourse. Critiquing Austin, Bourdieu explains that the weakening of reli-gious discourse was less influenced by the evolution of discourse forms than by the declininglegitimacy of the religious institution that produced it.2

Nevertheless, while it differs substantially from the approach taken by proponents of theargumentative turn, Pierre Bourdieu’s approach shares a key feature with the former. Namely,both approaches distinguish between the space of social positions and the space of adoptedpositions in order to better subjugate one to the other. In one approach, the positions areasymmetrical: the elite is already established and uses language as a weapon. In the other,positions are considered to be symmetrical and language is what creates the elite.

In order to transcend this radical opposition, I propose considering that social positions andadopted positions are as inseparable as policy statements and their enunciators. In otherwords, social position is gained through the adoption of positions just as the positionsadopted are informed by actors’ social positions. In our analysis, we shall forego the endlesstask of determining whether the argument or the person who pronounced it truly carriedthe most weight in how a position was ultimately adopted. Instead, we shall determine to

1. “Such is the principle of error, whose most accomplished expression is given by Austin (or by Habermas afterhim), when he believes to have discovered in discourse itself, which is to say in the purely linguistic substanceof speech, the principle of speech's effectiveness. Trying to understand the power of linguistic manifestationslinguistically, seeking in language the principle of the logic and the efficacy of institutional language, these aretantamount to forgetting that authority comes to language from the outside. Homer's skeptron reminds us ofthis concretely: it is extended to the orator who is about to take the floor. At best, language represents thisauthority, manifests it, symbolises it.” (P. Bourdieu, Langage et pouvoir symbolique, 161).

2. “The symbolic efficacy of words can only ever be exercised to the extent that the one who receives it recog-nises the one who delivers it as legitimate to do so.” (P. Bourdieu, Langage et pouvoir symbolique, 173).



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what extent actors’ “weight” influences the formation of policy statements, and how thesestatements help to define the asymmetrical positions of actors.

To this end, we must conceive of asymmetrical positions not as an objective and stable realitythat is forced upon actors, but as a subjective and fluid construct that guides their action andmoulds their discourse without fixing it. In other words, an actor who chooses to addresshim- or herself to a mayor in the hopes of changing the latter’s position must simultaneouslyreconcile the recognition of asymmetrical social positions with the power of arguments strongenough to alter the positions adopted by actors. An individual’s ability to influence the mayor’sposition thus depends on the policy statement’s capacity not only for solving problems andconferring a relevant identity, but also for taking into account this asymmetry of positions.

The tram’s route twisted by the “weight” of various actorsIn order to understand the full significance of the inseparable link between social positionsand the adoption of positions, let us return to two key events that occurred during delib-erations concerning the tramway and which both illustrate the importance of the “weight”of actors in the decision-making process.

The first event relates to the elaboration of a third route in 1997, the so-called “mixed route”.This new route, partly on the boulevards Maréchaux and partly on the Little Belt Railway,illustrates how certain actors tried to adapt the route to address not only the problems ofpollution and identity, but also the political obstacles to be overcome. These actors, whowere mainly technicians,1 presented a route that attempted to reconcile the stance of themayor of the 13th arrondissement, Jacques Toubon (who was also the former minister ofculture, close to Jacques Chirac, and an advocate for the Little Belt route) with that of themayor of the 15th arrondissement, Gally de Jean (who was close to Jean Tiberi, and an ardentsupporter of the Maréchaux route). First and foremost, the mixed route was the outcomeof a strategic analysis conducted by actors who believed that the mayor’s indecision stemmedfrom the strategic positioning of the two arrondissement mayors, who carried serious political“weight” and were not to be crossed. The new route in fact provided a technical means tostrike a political compromise. But above all, with its new twisting shape, it also became therepository for the political clout of these actors.

The mixed route sheds light on the inseparable link between social positions and adoptedpositions. As soon as the two arrondissement mayors adopted strong positions in favour ofone of the two routes, they made the final choice a benchmark by which to measure theirrespective political weight. It is thus not merely an issue of examining how the asymmetryof positions forced a route choice, nor how, conversely, the choice of route structured thenew asymmetrical space of social positions: rather, we must understand how, once a positionwas adopted, its route, its advocate and the latter’s political weight all became inseparable.

1. “We proposed a third solution to Tiberi. And I went for it myself. Why? I thought that it was technically afeasible solution, and it seemed to satisfy people [...]. PZ: Where did the mixed solution come from? It camefrom the imagination of Lambolay, who one fine morning came to see me and told me about it... He sensedthat the project wasn't making any progress, that it was dragging on. The resolution came out terribly late,even though the decision had been made so much earlier. In people's minds. We couldn't manage to get ourpet project out, we kept telling ourselves that we might not get a majority. And Lambolay came to see me. Hemust have spoken with Toubon. Toubon liked Lambolay, by the way, and tried to make it so the tram would beon the Little Belt. Lambolay came to see me with the project.” (Meeting with an administrative director at ParisCity Hall.)



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From this point of view, the mixed route was the physical expression of these varying weights,and would help locate common ground and avoid a political impasse: at least, this was theopinion of its creators. It is less important to determine whether their analysis of the actors’different weights was objectively appropriate than it is to understand that the subjectiveconsideration of weight consequently impacted the new route and distorted it. In a sense,the mixed route was proof of the existence of the political weight being thrown around,which was the main cause of distortion, since no other explanation could justify such atortuous route.

A second event also deserves our attention, insofar as it helped to enrich and nuance theissue of political weight: namely, the moment when the mayor decided to support the Mar-échaux route. Tiberi effectively took a stance in the middle of a major political crisis, duringwhich his legitimacy and authority were being seriously challenged. Adopting a position infavour of the Maréchaux route was thus a means through which he was able to assert hisauthority by proving that he was not under the influence of politicians such as JacquesToubon, whose political weight was in turn diminished. From this perspective, we can seethat the choice of a route was not only a reflection of political weight, but it was also ameans to alter this weight.

In order to properly contextualise the mayor’s decision, we need to address the politicalcrisis surrounding it. In the aftermath of 1998’s regional elections,1 Jacques Toubon blamedJean Tiberi for the defeat of Parisian right-wing parties, and created his own group composedof about 30 members (out of the 92-member municipal majority), exploiting a split betweenthe RPR and the UDF.2 He thus not only challenged the mayor’s image, tarnished by theseaffairs, but also highlighted the latter’s lack of a project and, by extension, his inability togovern.3

The confrontation between these two men lasted over three months4 and was particularlyviolent,5 with Jean Tiberi refusing any kind of negotiation despite the significant mobilisationof groups from the RPR and even from the president’s office.6 The conflict came to an endin July when Jacques Toubon finally relented, dissolving his group and falling into line. Aheadline in the newspaper Libération described the situation as “Toubon signs his surrender”.7

Beyond the political event itself, what interests us here is the fact that the mayor’s position,adopted right in the middle of this political crisis, was primarily an act designed to show

1. “‘We're trying to learn some lessons from two and a half failures, because the last municipal elections weren'tgreat for the UDF-RPR majority in Paris’, explained one of the dissidents, Claude Goasguen, Secretary-Generalof the UDF, on France Inter”, Reuters, 7 April 1998.

2. Translator's note: RPR – Rassemblement pour la République (Rally for the Republic); UDF – Union pour ladémocratie française (Union for French Democracy).

3. “We want to reinvigorate the municipal majority, create the conditions for its victory during the next [munic-ipal] elections in 2001, use our presence and our actions to encourage a democratic and transparent governmentin City Hall”, quote from Jacques Toubon, Reuters, 6 April 1998.

4. “Chirac's councillors say that Tiberi starts every meeting by saying ‘We're not going to decide today’. That'snot true. The putsch proved that he knew how to decide pretty quickly. I use the word putsch because we usedthe term, on purpose, the idea being to break the system, which actually did work quite well, incidentally.”(Interview with a member of Jean Tiberi's cabinet.)

5. “Institutional chaos at City Hall, Jean Tiberi is close to a political knockout. The total warfare which kicked offlast Monday within the RPR itself, between the mayor and Jacques Toubon, continues to wreak havoc” (Libér-ation, 9 April 1998).

6. “Le conflit Toubon Tiberi dans l'impasse”, Le Monde, 25 May 1998.7. Libération, 28 July 1998.



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that he was indeed the mayor, which is to say, the one with the authority to govern. It wasin the dynamic of the action that his legitimacy and political weight were constructed, andnot in a static snapshot of the various actors’ positions.

Jacques Toubon saw Tiberi’s indecision as proof of his inability to govern. By adopting aposition right in the middle of a rowdy city council meeting, the mayor was therefore ableto affirm that he indeed possessed the necessary authority to be a leader. In other words, itwas not because Tiberi was the mayor that he took a decision – if that were the case, whywould he not simply have made a choice earlier? – but he made a decision in order to asserthis power as mayor and demonstrate that Toubon did not possess the political clout attrib-uted to him. Here, political weight played out in this show of strength.

Throughout this period, numerous internal discussions took place between Jean Tiberi andthose in his inner circle. Discussions centred on the nature of Jacques Toubon’s politicalclout, and whether negotiating with him was necessary or not. His political weight wasdebated, but nothing allowed it to be accurately measured. From this perspective, Tiberi’sstrategy was clear. He believed that Toubon did not have enough political clout to knockhim down, and therefore refused to negotiate with him. Tiberi thus explicitly rejected themixed route, which was not simply the consequence of this weight but its very basis.1

Based primarily on the mayor’s lack of progress in policy dossiers, the political crisis set offby Jacques Toubon concerning the mayor’s legitimacy in fact paradoxically strengthenedJean Tiberi’s hold on power. It also pushed Tiberi to adopt a position in order to movedossiers like the tram project forward. In a sense, the problems raised by Toubon andreported to the mayor by his internal team brought forth solutions both in terms of dossiersand new organisation.2 In the wake of the crisis, the mayor publicly and definitively adopteda position in favour of the Maréchaux route.

These two episodes thus confirm the necessity of seriously considering the role of politicalweight. However, we must do so on the condition that this weight, far from being theobjective value of positions, is permanently defined and redefined throughout the policy-making process. Policy statements are therefore not the site where problems and solutionsalone are defined, but also represent a veritable topography of positions and legitimacies.

** *

When we closely examine the policy statement made by the mayor of Paris on the subjectof the tram project at the time of its inauguration, it is clear that, far from being an ephemeral

1. “We arrived at Jean Tiberi's office, the answer was niet, and after hardly half an hour too. It was almost as ifhe was reproaching us for proposing a solution that would please Toubon. I don't think that he said no becauseof Toubon, I think he said no because, in his mind, the problem was already solved. There were so many choicesthat weren't made yet, technical choices, lateral or axial, that kind of stuff...” (Interview with an administrativeofficial at the Paris City Hall, 25 October 2008).

2. “The putsch was something terrible, which led to other resentments, which led to 2001. But at the same time,it is now clear that it helped out Tiberi... let him stand on his own two feet, you know? This is what the mediawas saying, after the putsch. He had the courage to go for it, he took some hits. He wasn't the little mayor thathe had been described as. The putsch entailed reorganisation in the administration. This is the problem thatToubon posed, after all, and rightly so. And what can you say to that? The answer is that some memberswithdrew from the delegation. But the mayor also had to respond. So his answer was: ‘I'm going to reform myadministration’. Elected officials will have more of a voice. Projects are going to progress more rapidly.” (Inter-view with a cabinet member.)



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justificatory discourse pronounced after the fact, without any influence on the decision, thispolicy statement was in fact the result of a complex and meandering discursive process whichgreatly contributed to the decision ultimately made. Producing a solid, convincing and sharedpolicy statement is an endeavour constructed over time, both by anticipating the efforts atjustification which will be necessary after the fact, but also by giving meaning to action inorder to better promote it.

The process of making policy statements can be grasped by observing the discursive practicesof actors, which are simultaneously definitional, argumentative and analytic, and throughwhich actors test out the different proposals they wish to see implemented. A policy statementthus begins to take shape as its ability to withstand challenges is confirmed: its hardiness istested through critiques of its ability to solve problems and to account for the identity andweight of those who produced it. The success of the Maréchaux tram route was due notonly to its ability to constitute a strong policy statement, which was gradually transformedinto a convincing solution to the pollution problem. Its success was also due to the state-ment’s ability to transform those who defended it into “progressives”, and to confer legiti-macy upon its main advocate, Jean Tiberi.

Studies on social problems have already demonstrated the importance of discursive practicesthat make it possible, during the agenda-setting phase, to transform a situation into anunacceptable problem, to identify its cause and to designate a responsible party: a processthat William Felstiner, Richard Abel and Austin Serat1 summarised with the tripartite epithetof “Naming, Blaming, Claiming”. Likewise, close observation of the solution’s formulationphase illustrates the importance of discursive practices when developing a repertoire of“credible” solutions. But this time, it is less a case of rendering a situation unacceptable but,on the contrary, of making solutions that are capable of resolving problems seem convincing;proposals that are capable of garnering widespread support seem persuasive; and decisionscapable of establishing a hierarchy of positions seem legitimate. We could summarise thissame process with a similar moniker, such as “Solving, Persuading, Empowering”.

Rather than endlessly wondering whether a public policy statement proposes solutions thatreally solve problems, actions that really change public policy, and changes that governmentstruly endorse – in other words, whether discourse is descriptively valid – we should firstlydetermine the role and the effects of any policy statement. Policy statements are part andparcel of the necessary political game of restoring order after the disorder left by socialproblems and those who must deal with them.2 As Georges Burdeau has explained,3 it islikely that politics is to the functioning of order what love is to reproduction: a necessarycharm that answers to a social imperative.

Philippe Zittoun

A research director in the field of political science, Philippe Zittoun is a researcher at LET-ENTPE(University of Lyon), an associate researcher at PACTE (University of Grenoble), and a professor at

1. W. L. F. Felstiner, R. L. Abel, A. Sarat, “The emergence and transformation of disputes: naming, blaming,claiming”, Law & Society Review, 15(3-4), 1980, 631-54.

2. P.Zittoun, La fabrique politique des politiques publiques (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2013).3. G. Burdeau, La politique au pays des merveilles (Paris: PUF, 1979).



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Sciences Po-Grenoble. He is vice-chair of the Public Policy Research Committee at the IPSA and amember of the editorial committees of several international academic journals (Critical Policy Studies,Journal of Comparative Public Policy, Policy and Society, and series editor of the “Studies in the PoliticalEconomy of Public Policy” book series at Palgrave Macmillan). He also organised the first Conférenceinternationale sur les politiques publiques (ICPP 2013, Grenoble – International Conference on PublicPolicies). His work focuses primarily on the processes of public policy transformation, with particularemphasis on the production, use and politicisation of public policy discourse. In 2013 he published Lafabrique politique des politiques publiques/The Political Process of Policymaking with the Presses de Sci-ences Po and Palgrave Macmillan (LET-ENTPE, 2 rue Maurice Audin, 69120 Vaulx-en-Velin,<[email protected]>).



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Presses de S

ciences Po

Between Defining and Disseminating Policy Solutions The Influence of Discourse in Action on Public...

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Transcript of Between Defining and Disseminating Policy Solutions The Influence of Discourse in Action on Public...