Solidarity is among the values most frequently cited by the French when asked about the foundations of living together. Recent opinion polls confirm a massive attachment to the republican principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
However, these same surveys reveal a growing gap: while liberty is perceived as relatively well applied, fraternity and equality are deemed very insufficiently realized in daily life. This gap between declared convictions and lived experience serves as the starting point for any reflection on social cohesion.
Dissonance between proclaimed values and lived reality
The phenomenon has a name in sociological literature: normative dissonance. Citizens adhere to a common foundation of principles but find that public policies, institutional practices, and social relations do not reflect them. This observation fuels a sense of distrust that does not concern the convictions themselves but their ability to produce concrete effects.
This distrust manifests in several ways. Participation in local democracy initiatives is stagnating, associative engagement has been declining for several years according to the barometer of the Collectif des Engagés, and political polarization makes it more difficult to identify a common project. Solidarity remains a declared central value, but the transition from conviction to collective action is eroding.
Initiatives like Shared Convictions attempt to connect these two levels by documenting the value convergences that exist between distinct social groups, even when their political positions diverge. The challenge is to show that the shared foundation is broader than public debate suggests.
Associative engagement and social economy: what field data reveals
The social and solidarity economy (SSE) represents a privileged observation ground. This sector is, by definition, based on shared convictions: democratic governance, limited profitability, social utility. In France, the SSE structures a significant part of employment and territorial action through associations, cooperatives, mutuals, and foundations.
The CRESS Grand Est has reported the adoption of a new national strategy for the SSE, which aims to strengthen the institutional recognition of the sector and better articulate its actors with local public policies. This strategy is based on an observation: SSE structures struggle to demonstrate their social impact in a standardized way, which hinders their access to funding and public contracts.
Field feedback varies on this point: some structures believe that measuring impact strengthens their associative project, while others see it as a managerial constraint that distracts from the social mission.
The limits of impact measurement
The evaluation of social impact relies on a value chain that distinguishes mobilized resources, activities carried out, direct results, and long-term social changes. This framework, promoted by Avise, offers a useful analytical framework. However, it does not resolve the attribution question: how to isolate the contribution of a shared conviction in a collective result that depends on dozens of factors?
The available data do not allow for definitive conclusions about the correlation between the intensity of shared convictions within an organization and measurable social performance. What emerges from existing work is that the coherence between stated values and internal practices conditions team mobilization.
Citizen assemblies and consensus building
Another field of experimentation has been developing for several years: randomly drawn citizen assemblies. The Citizens’ Convention on Climate in France has served as a case study, with proposals touching on food, housing, and transportation. The principle is based on the idea that ordinary citizens, informed and deliberating together, can produce legitimate recommendations because they are based on a process of mutual listening.
Feedback on these initiatives is mixed. On one hand, participants report a strong sense of convergence on fundamental values (climate justice, intergenerational equity) that transcends partisan affiliations. On the other hand, the political follow-up of the proposals remains patchy, which reactivates the dissonance described earlier between shared convictions and institutional translation.
- The random selection guarantees a sociological diversity that traditional electoral processes do not produce, thus broadening the base of represented convictions.
- The training and expert hearing phase allows participants to move beyond initial positions to build a common factual foundation.
- The lack of binding nature of the recommendations limits the concrete impact of these deliberative exercises and fuels distrust towards institutions.
Territorial solidarity: the role of local social ties
Research on territorial development shows that local sociability practices generate measurable positive externalities: better information flow, strengthening of collective action logics, increased capacity to capture public resources. The example of the Plaine Commune Urban Community, documented in academic literature, illustrates how a high density of social and solidarity ties can structure a territory marked by unfavorable socio-economic indicators.
The French institutional framework, through urban policy mechanisms, territorial cohesion contracts, and SSE project calls, formally encourages these dynamics. However, the resources allocated and the continuity of programs remain variables that condition their real effectiveness.
What is missing from the current debate
Most analyses on shared convictions focus on their declarative dimension or their institutional translation. A less explored angle concerns transmission: how these convictions are formed, strengthened, or weakened over generations. The popular education movement, historically supported by networks like the PEP (Pupils of Public Education), is based on the conviction that education emancipates and that solidarity is built through shared experience, not just intellectual adherence.
The open question remains that of scale. Shared convictions produce tangible effects in small groups (associations, local collectives, citizen assemblies). Their ability to structure an entire society depends on institutional mechanisms that, today, struggle to connect the local and the national without losing coherence or legitimacy.
