Contenu du sommaire : Transitions et gouvernance territoriale

By analyzing how four major public funders (The French Agency for Acological Transition - ADEME, European Regional Development Fund- ERDF, the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Occitanie Region) allocate their funds targeting ecological transition to public and private stakeholders, we assess energy transition in terms of spatial justice : do the transition policies fit into the traditional approach of territorial equality? Or do they reinforce the concentration of resources in the richest territories? Or, conversely, do they fall under the definition of spatial justice proposed by Edward Soja, which implies increased support for the least endowed territories ? To answer these questions, we mobilize a multidisciplinary analytical framework, both quantitative and qualitative. After presenting the energy transition main public funders, we analyze the spatial distribution of their funds at the scale of a French large region i.e. Occitanie. Statistical and cartographic analyses highlight under- and over-endowed territories, it also highlights inequalities of access between territories with similar characteristics. This is why we thereafter seek to identify the quantitative determinants of the distribution of funding. First we argue the norms and procedures (legal, professional, financial, organizational and political) of the project-based funding heavily weight on and frame the allocation process. These norms encourage a snowball effect : the best-endowed actors (i.e. large communalities or firms) capture most of the funding. Second, we identify few « hard » and « soft » local factors explaining the unequal capacities of local authorities to capture subsidies. The technical and a-territorial approach characterizing energy transition policies so far fails to correct existing spatial inequalities.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, social investment has fuelled many Welfare state reforms at the international level. This notion offers a third way between the Keynesian paradigm and the neoliberal approaches advocating the dismantling of social policies. In fact, it distinguishes itself from social protection, focusing on risk prevention rather than compensation. It also enhances social expenditure considering it generates positive social and economic benefits if it aims to support human capital and capabilities in order to develop skills, employability and autonomy. Therefore, it promotes direct programs and actions towards childhood, youth, and occupational integration. This paper aims to shed light on the spreading and implementation of social investment in multi-level governance systems. Therefore, it examines national and subnational territories' contribution to its deployment, using the example of the 2018 French Poverty Plan called “ Stratégie nationale de prévention et de lutte contre la pauvreté (SNPLP)”. The analysis is based on a documentary survey and an interview campaign with 164 stakeholders conducted at the national level, as well as in 6 regions and 13 departments. The article contains two parts. On the one hand, we document the declination of social investment in national territories and show its recent development in France through the Poverty Plan. On the other hand, we look at subnational territories' mobilization in the dissemination of this perspective through the same Plan. Three main results stand out on this point: first, the appropriation of social investment by the French subnational actors remains relative even if the notion's influence is noticeable in their speeches; then, its spreading is hindered by governance's complexity; finally, social investment is contributing to the development of a new vision of subnational territories in the management of social problems.

As a result of a changing context - the development of digital technology, new forms of work, the withdrawal of public services, the desire to relocate activities - third places are defined as innovative spaces for experimenting with multi-stakeholder activities. They are explicitly considered as initiatives aimed at social transformation, as key players in local development, addressing the challenges of economic, social and environmental transition. In France, these third places, supported by the public authorities at national level, are most often the result of original local initiatives, combining entrepreneurial dynamics and citizen participation. They are also sometimes the result of local public policy. Whatever their origins, and this is our hypothesis, they are likely to lead to processual local social innovations. We therefore question the nature of the innovations generated by the third places and their contribution to the reshaping of the local development strategy. From a theoretical point of view, our analysis is based on a neo-institutionalist perspective, combining the theory of the network actor and appropriation through use. This type of analysis enables us to understand third places as hybrid organizations, in tension. By bringing together heterogeneous players, they are likely to change the dominant norms and contribute to the emergence of new development strategies. We base our analysis on a single case study, carried out in a fragile and isolated rural area. Based on an in-depth case survey supported by interviews with a wide range of local players, we show that the emerging social innovations take two complementary forms. The first concerns the way in which local public policy is designed, with the introduction of participatory processes. The second highlights new ways of addressing local issues and solidarity in the design of business development.

Since the 2010s, civil society initiatives have been developing in the fields of the environment and the social economy. They constitute a heterogeneous group of collectives tackling socio-environmental issues which, in the view of their promoters, are insufficiently addressed by public authorities. The actions undertaken are diverse: improving the living environment, protecting the environment, healthy eating, recycling, reusing, sustainable mobility, renewable energy. Over and above the specific features of their activities, the aim is to understand the type of socio-ecological transformation to which these mobilizations are contributing. These collectives usually start from observations of the malfunctioning of existing political and economic systems, both in terms of their impact on the environment and on health, as well as the loss of social ties and the weakening of collective capacity to act. They then form "publics" (in Dewey's sense) to intervene in the regulation of problems, offering local spaces and means of resistance to the dominant socio-technical, political and economic regimes. Their approach to transition issues is transversal, in the way they integrate social and environmental issues and raise the question of change from the perspective of everyday practices. In this article, we analyze the contributions of these collectives to socio-environmental transformations from two complementary angles. The first is that of experimentation, based on the idea that citizens are endowed with agency and a capacity to test concrete solutions to problems that concern them. The second concerns the relations that these collectives maintain with local public authorities, and their contribution to a more or less advanced democratization of climate issues. To do this, we draw on the contrasting cases of two Greater Paris communes, Clamart and Ivry-sur-Seine. The comparison allows us to analyse the influence of local contexts and socio-political trajectories on the potential for local social-ecological transformation.

By questioning the presence of care in the business support policy in priority neighborhoods, this article shifts the focus from market and instrumental logics to the attention paid to others in economic activities. To do so, it focuses on the interpersonal bonds of care that organize entrepreneurial action and support. It is based on a qualitative field survey conducted between 2018 and 2020 during a Ph.D in urban studies, in the Nantes metropolitan area and Paris suburbs. I observed the actions of advisors working in business support associations which are located in priority neighborhoods, where specific policies are implemented to reduce economic, social and urban inequalities. I also observed the actions of supported entrepreneurs to understand their ideas and their practices of entrepreneurship. Drawing on work that blends the geography of inequalities with critical management sciences, the results reveal implicit daily practices of care on the part of advisors and entrepreneurs. These practices generate a mutual assistance relationship to human beings in depreciated territories. The advisors care about the specific needs of precarious entrepreneurs and take care of them by adapting their actions of support. The entrepreneurs care about discriminated people to whom they feel close and take care of them by creating adapted services and products. Although these care practices form the basis of a relationship of solicitude to others and to the world that opposes the image of an individualistic and productivist entrepreneurship, they remain inter-individual and heteregeneous. Consequently, they do little to reduce structural inequalities, or even reproduce them.