Title : Public - Antoine Vauchez - book

Summary :

After three decades in which we thought we could do without them, everything indicates that we need the public's words more than ever. Faced with the risks of a State being diverted from its public framework, they are the key words of social and political mobilizations (...) and the best thermometer of our collective life and our democracies." A. Vauchez

At the risk of an unprecedented crisis of confidence among citizens in the State, whose "public" legitimacy they are now questioning, that is to say, the capacity, or even the will, to act as a relay for collective interests and to protect citizens. The general state of unpreparedness in which the State found itself at the start of the pandemic will have served as a revelation here; shedding a harsh light on the actions of previous governments which had followed a policy of cost reduction and managerial efficiency at the risk of depriving hospital services of the necessary masks and hospital beds. Since the government no longer appears to be acting as a "public authority", nothing seems to justify the state exception which confers on this political organization a derogatory status and exorbitant powers. It is this tension that the Yellow Vest movement has revealed, marked both by high expectations of the State in terms of public services (in terms of quality and equality of access to hospitals, public transport, etc.), and an unprecedented distrust of governments held responsible for the State's failure to keep its "public" promises. This crisis of confidence could not have come at a worse time, given that we collectively need a State and a European Union capable of leading, on behalf of all, the ecological conversion of our societies and economies, and at a time when we must face the profound health, but also economic and social, consequences of the Covid pandemic. A way of saying, in short, that reflection on the "public" and the links it maintains with the State is today a prerequisite for all our discussions on changing the direction of public policies. New democratic theories sometimes forget this, busy as they are with bringing out new mobilizing horizons - whether it be the ecological transition or new forms of participatory democracy. But, without reflecting on what the State has become over the last three decades, nor on the chains of dependency in which its action is now inscribed, they expose themselves to the gap by acting as if the State were this simple "lever" available and mobilizable provided that we are willing to give it the desired political meaning. But there is precisely reason to doubt this. This is why we must pick up the thread of the "public" and put back on the table a notion that we had lazily abandoned like an old relic. We must take stock of the landslides that have occurred over the past thirty years and have weakened the public foundations of the State, describe their political and democratic effects, and explore the possible paths of a new public spirit of government.

• EAN: 9782381910468
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