Building local public action against a backdrop of ecological emergency: A public management paradigms-based approach

Abstract

This article examines the production of local public action relating to environmental issues, in the specific case of coastal areas, which are subject to specific challenges in the context of ecological emergency. The research focuses on the public management paradigms underlying the production of public action. The approach adopted aims to identify the organizational routines at work in the production of environmental public action, in order to reveal its the founding paradigm or paradigms. The data, collected as part of a comparative study of two French Atlantic coastal conurbations, is based on observations and on interviews with stakeholders involved in the production of environmental public action. The results reveal that this production takes place within a combination of paradigmatic frameworks, inducing organizational tensions which require implicit or explicit coping strategies that differ between cases. They also highlight the advantages of co-producing environmental public action.

Points for practitioners

The comparative analysis of how environmental public action is produced in two coastal local authorities, conducted in this article, serves to inform elected officials and local authority managers in two ways:

• it reveals the need to implement coping strategies in response to the combination of paradigmatic frameworks within which environmental public action is produced;

• it underscores the value of co-producing environmental public action as a means of overcoming the paradoxes arising from the coexistence of different paradigmatic frameworks.