Ce que révèlent les discours des acteurs institutionnels sur un "au-delà du PIB"

Geraldine Thiry, Léa Sebastien and Thomas Bauler

ULB Institutional Repository from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: New indicators "beyond GDP" have increasingly sparked interest among various actors, whose status, objectives and visions are very different. While the pioneer reflections on economic growth and GDP were first limited to environmentalist and activist movements, civil society and local policies, they have progressively entered national and international institutional spheres. The diversity of theoretical approaches and normative positions regarding the opportunity and motives of going "beyond GDP" makes it hard to clearly identify the stances of the actors and the power balances ruling the debates. We therefore ask: what does the current interest of institutional actors in "beyond GDP" issues mean? Are they a new rhetoric liable to elude a confrontation with the structural problems resulting from the crisis? Are they an opportunity window for relaunching societal debates that are hardly raised elsewhere? Or are they a real driver toward a paradigmatic change? We try to answer that question by analyzing the discourses of institutional actors (politicians, administration, technicians) involved or not in "beyond GDP" initiatives. We show that, at the institutional level, beyond GDP debates, while raising new societal issues, do not contribute to erode the central role of economic growth. Pragmatism dominates the debates, in that dominant interests are focused on short-term constraints and objectives where GDP growth remains pivotal. The involvement of actors in "Beyond GDP" debates reveals more a need to adapt public management and policies to new constraints rather than a critical reflection on the productivist model on which our economies have been built for more than sixty years.

Keywords: beyond GDP; discourse analysis; environment; governance; sustainability indicators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: SCOPUS: ar.j
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Published in: Natures sciences sociétés (2016) v.24,p.3-14

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