In order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach presented in this book, which was written over the last four years with numerous interruptions and periods of doubt and reflection, let us return to its initial objectives. The aim was – and still is – to produce a textbook aimed at Master's and doctoral students and the heads of administrative services, private consultancies, NGOs and the staff of professional associations that protect the interests of target groups during public policy processes. The initial objective was to assemble and structure the experiences encountered in the context of their own activities as analysts and/or managers, and to process them in light of concepts already largely developed in our initial textbook of 2006 on public policy analysis and management (first version: 2001, English translation 2011).

What I did not intend initially was to attempt to combine the public action resources approach with that of institutional resource regimes (IRR), which was developed simultaneously on the basis of theoretical and practical research in the area of natural resources. This research initially concerned sustainable development in the area of natural resources (water, forests, landscape, climate and the genetic programme) and subsequently, in the areas of manufactured resources (for example, national memory, stock of rental buildings) and social resources. Today we can confirm that the latter development (presented, essentially, in Part II of this book) constitutes a real innovation that will, however, require future conceptual development.

Throughout the compilation of this book I battled with certain difficulties that I feel I have not quite succeeded in overcoming in this final version (see ‘Weaknesses’). Other aspects of it have proved to be more successful (see ‘Strengths’), at least in their application in the context of teaching and in the development of doctoral theses.

Strengths

Like several other authors who have addressed the topic of public action resources (see Chapter 3), my main preoccupation is to consider these resources as transferrable, objectifiable and in principle, dissociable from their actor-users. It was possible to sustain this conceptual belief throughout the book. This is not something that emerged in the course of my initial teaching or during the compilation of the basic textbook on policy analysis and management.