Identifying controversies leaders in a French touristic area: from the sociology of translation to a graph theory approach[Identification des leaders de controverses au sein d’un territoire français : de la sociologie de la traduction à une approche par la théorie des graphes]

Modern public policies have to take account of complex societal problems, with the need to converge towards a sustainable balance at the economic, ecological and social levels, involving autonomous but interdependent public and private stakeholders with different perceptions and interests. Public management research underlines the complexities and the multitude of stakeholders that policy-makers have to deal with, and recommends that researchers identify the networks in which public decision-makers participate, get to know the key stakeholders, identify their concerns, and identify the elements that optimise network coordination and therefore management of the area of competence. With a view to optimising the management of public policy, our research is structured around this central question: how can we identify the leaders of controversies within a touristic area? To answer this question, we propose a framework based on a mixed-methods approach, firstly qualitative and then quantitative. The first phase of the research, based on a qualitative study and the actor-network theory, consists of identifying a network of controversies built up from negotiations between several stakeholders in an area. The second phase aims to visualise this network and identify the leaders according to their structural positions using quantitative techniques derived from graph theory.