Adapting to protest as a form of state restructuring.:Airport planning as a case of contentious policy

Based on a comparative and long-term analysis of conflicts around airport planning in France and Germany, this presentation seeks to make three contributions to the understanding of State restructuring in air transport policy domains. First, it explores the general assumption under which some elements of the logics of State restructuring in the European Union can be explained by evolving relationships between public policies and their challengers (see also Dupuy and Halpern, 2009). The growing number of protest activities centred on policy outcomes has contributed to put the question of evolving relationships between public policies and their challengers back into fashion. This larger phenomenon led numerous scholars to assume that social mobilizations had structuring effects on forms of policy-making. By contrast and drawing on a comparative analysis of politics of airport planning in France and Germany, this presentation challenges this general assumption and shows that conflict resolution dynamics are primarily explained by changes within policy structures, whereas political factors intervene as intermediary variables.Séjour de recherche MPIfG (financement commission scientifique IEP