Role and issues of public goods in the common agricultural policy : an institutionalist contribution ; Place et enjeux des biens publics dans la Politique agricole commune : les apports d'une lecture institutionnaliste

Abstract

During the debates about the future common agricultural policy for the 2014-2020 period, we noticed an increasingly use of the concept of public good in order to justify the continuation of this policy in a context of deregulation and economic liberalization.Drawing on an original theoretical framework that built at the crossroads of the French rural economy, of the former U.S. institutional economics and of the theory of regulation, this thesis proposes to examine the role played by the notion of public good dealing with a new agreement between the different actors and interests involved in the CAP debate.The first chapter of this thesis offers a state of the art of the concept of public good in economics and highlights the notion that finally appears somewhat stabilize in this area. In line with this first result, we propose to stabilize this concept for the rest of our argument by relying on a broader political economy framework of analysis.In the second chapter, we examine the origins of this notion in the European debates about the CAP, its interpretation by the European commission and its relationship with the concept of agricultural multifunctionality previously mobilized in these debates.Finally, we highlight through the last chapter , the existence of different interpretation of the concept of public good by some Member States and regions studied, linked with the interests defended by key stakeholder groups involved in the regional and national debates about the future CAP. ; Au cours des débats relatifs à la future Politique agricole commune (PAC) pour la période 2014-2020, nous avons pu constater un recours de plus en plus fréquent à la notion de bien public, permettant de justifier le maintien de cette politique dans un contexte de dérégulation et de libéralisation économique de plus en plus marqué. En nous appuyant sur un cadre théorique original, construit à la croisée de l'économie rurale française, de l'ancienne économie institutionnaliste américaine et de la théorie de la régulation, cette thèse ...