Métropoles (Dec 2015)

Savant et politique dans le renouvellement de l’action publique. Retour sur une expérience de production de connaissance scientifique au service d’un Schéma Régional d’Aménagement et de Développement Durable du Territoire

  • Laure Casanova Enault,
  • Jacques Garnier,
  • Hélène Reigner

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 17

Abstract

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It is an old question that of the relationship between scientists and politics. Since the famous two articles of Max Weber, this question did not cease being commented and theorized while seeking to typify the nature of this relationship (Habermas, 1973).Being based on this theoretical background, this article proposes a reflexive return on the participation process experienced by a group of scientists in a Scientific Council created by a French regional Authority (Conseil Régional) in order to revise and improve a document of strategic spatial planning (Schéma Regional d’Aménagement et de Développement Durable du Territoire) previously established in this French region. Analyzing retrospectively this collectively experienced process, the authors of this article report the evolutionary relationship between the regional Authority and the Scientific Council created by it. This relationship appears alternatively characterized by complicities and frustrations, consensus and disappointments, confidence and distrust. It testifies, in fact, that the Scientific Council “created” by the Regional authorities emancipated himself in a partly unexpected way. This article, thus, aims highlighting and objectifying the conditions of this emancipation. The first part presents the institutional framework and the conditions of creation of the Scientific Council. The second part analyzes the singular process of production of knowledge operated by this Scientific Council. The third part analyzes the conditions of setting up an unexpected relationship between the regional authority and the scientific council in which the requisite functions of both were combined without overflowing their respective limits.

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