Qualité spécifique et systèmes d'innovation territoriale

Abstract

Specific quality, local governance and systems of innovation. There is currently a consensus among the agricultural professional officials, the development and research organizations' executives and the rural economists about the emergence of a new model of production. This latter is rather unanimously described as a shift from a «productivist logic» to a «logic of quality», with the taking into account of a diversified demand and opportunities linked to the transformations of the rural areas functions (an agriculture of service), of the relationships with the environment (a durable agriculture ), and of national and regional development objectives (a «citizen agriculture» one could say). In the analysis of the technical aspects of that transformation North-European and North-American authors put the stress on biotechnology and, at the same time, on the economy's globalization whereas the French, Spanish and Italians are more interested in the normalization of the specific quality products, which, for them, goes along with the international integration of the markets. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the role of territory and as corporate as professional networks in agrifood system of innovation and in this shift. The localization of economic activities implies a cooperative process in order to build up specific resources that is supported by localized institutional networks. The taking into account of the innovation systems' territorial dimension implies the analysis of the part held by firms and local but also sectorial, professional or «global» institutions that take part in the innovation processes. This paper is limited to the question about the transformation of the innovation management modes and the institutional mechanisms of normalization and qualification of products. First, we deal, in a general way, with the relationships between innovation and territory, we then analyze the consequences of the European integration on competition, according to the different forms of normalization. Then, after noting the ambivalence of the new regulation and its enforcement, we show that a great and relatively stable diversity of the production modes of the specific quality products, basically corresponds to that regulation. We deal with the diversity of the innovation systems and the specific qualities production in accordance with the three dimensions, technology, market and territorial governance, after reviewing the different public and professional systems that manage the world of products of specific quality. Compromises between actors provide a contractual management of innovation systems' transformation and an «adjustment» between the micro and macro levels. But, it is not a convergence process towards sectorial models. Among «appellation d'origine» cheeses and «Red Label» poultry brand, one can distinguishes some «typical» produces with narrow market (with «connoisseur» patronage), some differencied «industrial» produces and some featuring intermediate combinations, like generic produces supported by local agencies.