Subsidizing Unprofitable Industries: The Political Determinants of Agro‐Industrial Policy in French Overseas Departments
研究了法国海外省甘蔗农工业长期获得公共补贴的政治原因，发现经济、行政和政治三方联盟通过制度化和话语策略抵制改革，对理解产业政策中的利益固化有参考价值。
ABSTRACT Why do states subsidize unprofitable industries? This paper applies the Programmatic Action Framework and adapts it to neocorporatist settings to uncover the political determinants of industrial policies. Empirically, it explores how a longstanding coalition of economic, administrative and political actors has maintained public funding for the sugarcane agro‐industry in French overseas departments, despite new policy objectives for agricultural diversification and subsidy reallocation. Drawing on extensive archival and interview data, I argue that this tripartite programmatic group has leveraged long‐term institutionalized structures to resist subsidy reform and secure support for sugarcane production. Through coordinated discursive strategies to counter “transformative” policy proposals, and relational tactics to exclude challenging actors from the policy venue, each subgroup of this coalition has preserved its social position and the associated political resources gained from policymaking. These findings suggest that innovative policy reform in such sectors will require new public‐private alliances capable of challenging entrenched programmatic groups.