Resilience in local public action: standardizing environmental risks and professional practices

Recently, we have witnessed the social progress of the notion of resilience and its rise to prominence in territorial public action. It is becoming a key word in current risk management strategies. The notion of resilience is now widely used in all contexts, but it is not without a certain vagueness. Thus, my research focuses on the mobilization and emergence of the notion of resilience by public actors in the Toulouse metropolis, France. I conduct interviews and observations with public agents involved in the local governance of environmental risks. It emerges that the use of resilience is not unanimous among actors, depending on the areas of public policy involved. We are witnessing a process of transformative change in environmental risk regulation since the continuous institutionalization of “resilience” in public action. If resilience is massively integrated into different public action instruments (local urban plans, climate and air plans, master plans, land use plans…), its use becomes a norm that would allow the agents to renew their professional practices of risk management. More than a term, resilience would become a standard of action, a policy narrative (Roe, 1994) which provides a renewed framework for public action. In my survey experience, the use of the term resilience is a defining factor of the public agents’ role (Lagroye, Offerlé, 2011) within institutions. With caution, I differentiate three types of agents. - Those who strictly adhere to the regulations advocated by resilience policies. The interactions between agents lead to the creation of a norm of rigor. By respecting the precautions induced by the instruments of public action, the agents set up a policy of control. - Those who see resilience as a technical issue. These agents have more of a background in biology, ecology, or geography. For them, the resilience of a territory cannot always correspond to legal rules and must be adapted to each space. These agents sometimes look for ways to get around the rules of the institution (the discretionary authority of the street-level bureaucrats) because their professional practices come up against institutional attempts to standardize “resilience”. - Those who consider resilience to be a communication and territorial marketing enterprise specific to the neo-managerial government of public action. These agents do not believe in the overpowering nature of the term and see it as a way to obtain funding and procedural agreements from municipal officials. For them, resilience is a catchword, full of injunctions, often even seen as green washing, but which allows them to implement projects. Resilience is enshrined in laws (Climate and Resilience Act, 2022), in plans, in public action instruments. The juridification of the concept is currently unclear. It seems that it is becoming institutionalized through the practical work of the public actors who use it. So, do these observations point to a profound change in public practices, an interesting appropriation, or is resilience just a cover for neo-managerial practices of public action? Are the new and increasingly rigid regulations a façade that masks a lack of interest in change?