Social Costs in Public Policies: Stakeholder Perceptions, Institutional Obstacles and Integration Levers. The Case of the Oriental Region

Abstract

This article examines how social costs are defined, assessed, and incorporated into public policy. It begins with the observation that the literature on public policy evaluation often treats social effects as externalities to be measured, but pays less attention to the institutional conditions through which these costs actually become visible, admissible, and usable in evaluation tools and decision-making processes. To this end, it draws on a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with 48 institutional, local, civil society, economic, and academic actors. Data analysis was conducted using NVivo-assisted thematic analysis, focusing on four initial themes: conceptual understanding, institutional perception, evaluation methods, and integration into public decision-making. The analysis yielded the following thematic findings: a heterogeneous understanding of the concept, neglected social costs, instrumental invisibility, fragile institutional recognition, limited methodological operationalization, marginal influence on the final decision, and converging recommendations from stakeholders. The results show that the concept of social cost is widely recognized, but that it continues to be interpreted in diverse ways depending on the positions held by stakeholders. This recognition remains, however, largely non-binding due to three main institutional obstacles: the dominance of budgetary criteria, the prioritization of the short term, and the lack of standardization in social assessment frameworks, data, and procedures. Although several evaluation methods are known, their use remains limited, which reduces the effective influence of social evaluations on the final decision. Social costs thus appear not so much absent as poorly translated into public policy formats capable of making them comparable, debatable, and enforceable in decision-making processes. The interviews also highlight converging levers for improvement: institutionalization of ex ante social assessment, development of shared frameworks, hybridization of tools, transparency of results, and strengthening of user participation. The main theoretical contribution of our study is to conceptualize social costs as an issue of institutional translation, at the intersection of public policy evaluation, agenda-setting, and the capabilities approach. Our research thus contributes to the literature on public evaluation by showing that the challenge is not merely to measure social costs, but to give them genuine decision-making weight.

JEL Classification: H43; H83; D62

Paper type: Empirical Research