This paper aims to characterize the wide range of research dealing with the governance issues in Integrated Coastal Zone management (ICZM) policies. The rationale of these policies is to apply sustainable development principles to coastal zones. We developed an analytical framework to describe theses researches from the questions addressed to the methods used for studying coastal zone governance. This framework was used to study research programs dealing with ICZM in France. Our results showed that the governance issues are dealt according two main directions. The first direction considers the governance as a tool to improve the efficiency of public policy. The second one refers to governance as an objective, which contributes to a democratization process. The research programs studied in this paper exhibit a focus on mobilisation, stakeholders’ participation and negotiation processes. The challenge is then to scale up the approaches from local and empirical studies to more generic findings on ICZM implementation and enforcement.