Résumé
The increase of alternative food networks outline an agricultural controversy : in order to “eat better”, we should first “produce better”; which means that the agricultural model the food industry depends on should be transformed. This research addresses the way this controversy is translated into local policies and managed on a sub-national level: do agricultural components of local food policies renew the local public regulation on agriculture? To answer this question, we have built a database from one hundred interviews with key players from nine local food policies originating from different French regions : Grand Est, Bretagne and Occitanie. Thanks to an original analytical framework which draws from the studies of social problems as well as from the cognitive analysis of local policies, we were able to show that local food policies act as if the agricultural sector was undergoing changes, although these changes are, indeed, minor. On the urban government scale, when food political outsiders have access to power, they can campaign for different ways of developing agriculture, but the competencies of urban administrations and their internal power struggles largely impediment the impact and the operational implementation of such political programs. On a regional scale, the promotion of “local food” is a way to support conservative agricultural policies. Regional food policies are thus largely dominated by local hegemonic farmers’ organisations but their actions vary a great deal, from one place to another (be it channelling food controversies or overriding them). In addition, we demonstrate that local food policies become part of communication strategies (local marketing or political marketing), making them new symbolic resources of power for local authorities and agricultural elites. Thus, with this thesis, we aim to help renew the way political change is analysed, by studying the new dynamics in public regulation that local policies and integrated policies are bringing
Source: http://www.theses.fr/2020PESC2025
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