32

Many criticisms are raised today against the use of semi-structured interview in public policy analysis. In this article, we highlight the limits of such criticisms and state that semi-structured interview remains necessary to study public policy, in its historical dimension as well as in its synchronic dimension. We propose to clarify and mobilize two uses of interview that are too rarely made explicit and that we call the informative/narrative use and the comprehensive use. The first one can be mobilized in order to reconstitute public policy processes in their historical development, whereas the second one makes it possible to analyse the daily practices of the actors of public policies and the representations that orient them.