Arbeitspapier

Governance by labels

Many of today's public policies aimed directly or indirectly at regulating the behaviors of individuals and organizations provide for the implementation of a certain type of instrument which can be qualified as a label. They share some features with what the literature tends to identify as proper standards (e.g., they aim at defining the best practices, they may represent - at least - a symbolic resource for those who adopt them), but they also have some peculiarities, which we will present here. In this paper, we propose to analyze the characteristics and dynamics underpinning this mode of governance as part of a study of two particular public policy domains chosen for their complementarity as well as their contrasts: the fight against obesity, and sustainable consumption. In both of these fields, labels have become a preferred mode of governance - and even, we might say, a kind of standard. Based on Foucault (2004), we emphasize the fact that the logics of distinction, which regulate utilities and sanctions in a particular social field, are instrumentalized by public policy as an incentive to the actors to deliberately take action whose value is endorsed by a label. Hence, the aim and outcome of this mode of governance are not the uniformity of a field, but the ongoing creation of increasingly demanding labels that only some of the participants can hope to obtain.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: MaxPo Discussion Paper ; No. 14/2

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Bergeron, Henri
Castel, Patrick
Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)
(wo)
Paris
(wann)
2014

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Bergeron, Henri
  • Castel, Patrick
  • Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie
  • Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies (MaxPo)

Entstanden

  • 2014

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