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Unlike other stages of the public policy process such as agenda-setting or implementation, political science has paid relatively little attention to the moment when public action has tangible consequences on the ordinary individuals who were the intended targets of a given policy. By looking at the idea of policy reception, we examine both the direct effects of policies and their appropriation by individuals, including objective and subjective dimensions. In this article, we first establish the theoretical and methodological implications of this approach and then identify two complementary modalities to study reception processes, which vary according to the scale of analysis: policy instruments and public policy sectors.