This paper investigates how the notion of intertextuality (M. Riffaterre) contributes to the understanding of the presence of history in public policies. To do so, I focus on a Franco-German reconciliation policy based on youth exchange. The paper argues that mainstream policy analysis does not account for the originality of this program, namely its voluntarist and utopian character. Indeed, according to its founding fathers, this policy was not simply meant to “promote international mobility” (like the European “Erasmus” program for instance). Its alleged objective was at the same time more precise and more ambitious: putting an end the old Franco-German antagonism. This was not a mere slogan: from 1963 to 1973 about 3 millions of young people learned to know each other in vacation camps or youth hostels of the Vosges, the Black Forest, or elsewhere. My point is that this mass youth exchange policy is not the mere result of the contingent aggregation of several interests in 1963 (as mainstream policy analysis would put it). An interpretive analysis reveals that this policy took sense in reference to an “intertext”: the social memory of the “hereditary enemies”. The overall structure of meaning or “metanarrative” (E. Roe) that carried this policy stated that the socialization of the whole new generation was the only means (or hope) to put an end to a cyclical history made of wars approved by revengeful populations.
