According to the democratic rules applicable under the rule of law, when any public policy is established or undergoes a major change to its content, it needs a legal basis that has been approved by a parliamentary majority (sometimes also the population and, possibly, the cantons). This approval gives it “primary” legitimation which differs from “secondary” legitimacy, which depends on the assessment of the policy services and implementation procedure by social groups (see … “resource Consensus”). Hence, while consensus is associated more with the implementation stage, this resource … refers to the capacity to produce legislation within the political-administrative programme (PAP). In particular, it is … the priority weapon of public actors and enables them to assert themselves through the legal resource that it legitimizes vis-à-vis minority social groups.

However, even in the case of legislation supported by a comfortable majority of the executive, the implementation of a public policy can experience periods of crisis, during which this majority support can fluctuate. For example, a public policy can lose its legitimacy and acceptability in the eyes of the majority if the measures are challenged due to adverse affects or impacts that run contrary to the policy objectives (for example, in the absence of accompanying measures, a policy for the restriction of parking in a town or city centre can lead to the transfer of the problem to peripheral communes), or due to conflicting interpretations of the effects of certain provisions (for example, challenging of the right of appeal for organizations by the political right, which see it as a source of unhelpful blockages, while the left consider this right indispensable for the protection of the environment). Indications of the weakening of this resource are reflected in the submission of an increasing number of parliamentary intervention demanding changes to the legislation.

The resource … makes it possible to save on the use of other resources, or in the case of its absence it can lead to their use or, indeed, abuse. Public policy actors that enjoy extensive political support can temporarily dispense with other resources, for example consensus (for example, nuclear policy in France in the 1970s), law (defence policy), time (acceleration and simplification of an intervention while short-circuiting procedures considered as too costly) and the cognitive resource….