It has become common to say that States and State action are undergoing recomposition insofar as States have been seeing their capacity to steer public policy decline over the past 20 years or so. Nevertheless, States are still major players in policy making. At the very least, they can be considered to have lost their freedom of action. States are increasingly in competition with other players when it comes to policy making, which has resulted in the reconfiguration of their action and means of intervention. Their "rivals" are:

• markets and private players, which seem to relegate States to the role of supporter rather than regulator,
• new players keen to influence public policy and impose their philosophies and world views (NGOs, international product certification bodies, networks of technicians or experts),
• endogenous territorial dynamics resulting in regulatory idiosyncracies on various levels. The work being done on this topic primarily concerns: i) partnerships and relations between public and private stakeholders, and ii) policy contractualization instruments,
• the recomposition of State vocations and the new tasks incumbent on the public sector,
• "partial regimes" regarding public action and the role of public policy coalitions and networks.