Mobilizing reception studies for the multi-level analysis of public policy

This article shows how the perspective and tools of reception studies developed by Cultural Studies can be applied to the analysis of public policies, particularly as regards their production and their appropriation by street-level bureaucrats. This approach, which contributes to the theoretical diversification of the study of the State in action, involves an analysis of the design of policies through the lens of the anticipation of their reception by the agents in charge of applying them, and their implementation throughout the process of decoding the meaning of prescriptions as a symbolic good. I develop this analysis by considering the example of education policies, with the case of the Moral and Civic Education curriculum reform that came into force in September 2015.