"Symbolic Policy", by Laurie Boussaguet and Florence Faucher

Symbolic Policy, by Laurie Boussaguet and Florence Faucher, Cambridge University Press, November 2024 (Print publication date: January 2025)

Free online from 3rd December 2024 - 31st December 2024!

Description

Symbols are everywhere in politics. Yet, they tended to be overlooked in the study of public policy. This book shows how they play an important role in the policy process, in shaping citizens' representations thanks to their ability to combine meanings and to stimulate emotional reactions. We use crisis management as a lens through which we analyse this symbolic dimension, and we focus on two case studies (governmental responses to the Covid-19 crisis in Europe in 2020 and to terrorist attacks in France in 2015). We show how the symbolic enables leaders to claim legitimacy for themselves and their decisions, and foster feelings of reassurance, solidarity and belonging. All politicians use the symbolic, whether consciously or otherwise, but what they choose to do varies and is affected by timing, the existence of national repertoires of symbolic actions and the personas of leaders.

Authors

Florence Faucher is a Full Professor of political science at Sciences Po and the Director of the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics. She is Associate Fellow at Nuffield College and in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. Her research has developed in several strands, connected by an interest in understanding the transformations of modes of doing politics in contemporary Europe. She has extensively worked on political parties in France and in the UK (green parties, centre right and centre left parties).  She argues that an «anthropological imagination» can renew and stimulate analyses of contemporary political institutions and practices.

Laurie Boussaguet is a Full Professor of political science at the University of Rouen and at the the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (currently on leave) and a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. Her research focuses on agenda-setting, comparative politics, European governance, citizens’ participation, and gender. Throughout her research, she consistently addresses the link between policy and politics, exploring the dynamic between those in power and the citizens they serve.