Research in Partnership against Scientific Work? A Return to Comparative Experiments

A large number of research projects on subnational public policies are carried out in response to orders and invitations to tender drawn up outside the academic field. This situation raises important epistemological and methodological questions, including when the research partners belong to the public sector, due to underlying political issues and the risk of shifting from comparison to a form of territorial benchmarking. In light of two comparisons (PhD work on railway regionalization in France funded by a big railway organization, and a research project on local water policies supported by the European Commission), we analyze what this kind of partnership implies in practical terms as far as comparative enquiries are involved and to what extent it remains compatible with the pursuit of scientific goals.