From the Objective of Sustainable Development to the Governmentalization of Change: Expressions and Effects of a Renewed Institutional Concern in France and the European Union

The objective of sustainable development contains a form of transformative ambition that, faced with the global risks it highlights, has tended to change the status of collective purpose that would need to be taken on and be accompanied by appropriate institutions. Based on government activities that have begun to implement this goal, this paper aims to analyze how rationales, instruments, and procedural arrangements are being assembled and are helping to make the management of change a renewed challenge in the institutional sphere. To understand its logics and orientations, this process of governmentalization of change is studied based on the initiatives of public authorities in France and the European Union, examining this interpretation of change as a problem in terms of the range of programmatic and instrumental by-products that take the form of documents labeled as “strategies” and the procedural foundations that are beginning to provide support.