This communication is about the contemporary transformations of occupational health policies mainly in France and involving the regulation at the European level. I am also at the beginning of a comparative work with the situation in the United States regarding the regulation of occupational exposition to hazards.
This analysis is an opportunity to put the question of power back on the scientfic agenda. This question is absent in the field of public policy analysis (Pierson, 2015). Analyzes of the contemporary transformations of occupational health policies allow us to take up the intuitions of Bachrach and Baratz on non-decisions (Bachrach, Baratz, 1962). This communication will show how power relations are at the same time invisible and integrated into technoscientific instruments that naturalize the inequalities of knowledge distribution between the different categories of actors involved in these policies. This makes possible to understand how the scope of a problem is limited, how a problem is constructed in discrete arenas, or even how non-problems are constructed.
This communication is based on empirical research in which the tools of qualitative sociology (documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews) are used to study scientists and experts participating in the scientific expertise on occupational health, as well as the actors involved in policy making at various levels.
Bachrach Peter et Baratz Morton S., « Two Faces of Power », The American Political Science Review, vol. 56, 4, 1962, p. 947-952.
Pierson Paul, « Power and Path Dependence », dans Mahoney James et Thelen Kathleen, direction, Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis, Cambridge University Press, coll. Strategies for Social Inquiry, 2015, p. 123-146.
