Contenu du sommaire : 40e anniversaire de Politiques et management public

This article outlines the conditions of public management emergence in France from the founding of the Centre d'Études Supérieures du Management Public (CESMAP) in 1970. It shows that the dual and purposeful conception of public management (management of public organizations and policies) is the result of a learning process, of interactions between management and humanities, and particularly of their confrontation with the reality and the consistent ambiguity of public action. Based on archival documents and interviews with former members of CESMAP, the study highlights the context and the dynamics (individual and organisational) that favoured the rise of CESMAP and its threefold offer (training, consulting, and research). It also exposes, through the limits of its entrepreneurial model, the contribution of its actors to the conceptual coherence of public management.

Public management (PM) – designed as a hybrid between the management of public organizations and public policy analysis (Gibert, 2002) - is struggling to develop in France as an academic discipline in its own right. Its emergence is recent; it has walked along a rough path between ad hoc establishments for the training of state elites and the academic and consular world. However, through the consolidation of management as an independent academic discipline and the willingness of academics grouped together in a network, the PM has been able to take a modest place, a lot smaller than the one it should have in university curricula with regard to societal issues and the public action they require. The article traces this emergence in three stages: that of the rise of business administration, then of university autonomy after May 68 and finally of endogenous development thanks to the academic community and its networks.

This article explores the logics of appropriation of local public management tools. To carry out this research, the study is based on the appropriation theory. At the methodological level, a secondary research is mobilized. Two studies are used: a quantitative study analysing managers' representation of public management tools and a research-intervention exploring the implementation of a new performance management device. The results underline the technocratic and superficial character of the appropriation process of the new management tools used by local authorities.

Over the last twenty years, the state administration has undergone tremendous changes in terms of management control and performance management. The ambition was great! From a technical point of view, the vocabulary of management control is no longer taboo, and its tools have been widely disseminated within the central administration. Dashboards, indicators, management dialogue, cost control… are now part of the administrative jargon, right up to the highest level of the State, demonstrated with the Barometer of Public Action Results. But does this mean that management control is being truly used? Have the tools put in place allowed structural and cultural changes, expected for a better clarification of priorities? This research shows a partial use of CDG in French central administrations. Despite the routinization of the system, its appropriation seems to be rather symbolic. It has not challenged the traditional mode of reasoning and decision-making in the state administration, a necessary element for successful appropriation of the CDG. Success stories remain fragile and ephemeral, as they often rely on goodwill and require considerable human and financial investment. Under these conditions, the choices made while introducing CDG in state administration lead to perverse effects, such as centralisation of decision-making, reduction of room for manoeuvre at the deconcentrated level, or increased bureaucratisation, discussed in this work.

In France, evaluation policy has been developed for almost forty years, nevertheless one observes a call for more evaluation and for a better-quality evaluation as well as for a societal inscription although an institutionalized process has been taken place for more than thirty years. These two astonishments are the starting points of this article. The first part analyses the behaviors of those who ask for an evaluation. It will be discussed through the hypothesis of a risk avoidance. The second part will discuss the epistemic dimension as far as an evaluation policy calls for different academic disciplines and should be considered as a boundary/object. The article concludes on an interrogation: why government does not consider evaluation policy as an opportunity to learn about itself and society? © 2022 IDMP/Lavoisier SAS. Tous droits réservés

European Union (EU) considers that the activities of transnational companies should be more strongly regulated. Many regulations of transnational activities already exist. How does the regulation proposed by the EU differ from other forms of regulation proposed by transnational bodies or by other states or public bodies? Based on European law, and not on managerial standards, the vision promoted by EFRAG at the request of the Commission aims at a more complete protection of the environment. Biodiversity is notably taken into account. More generally, it is also the principle of double materiality that is put forward, leading to a more important consideration of other stakeholders, and not only investors. EFRAG's proposal illustrates the emergence of a European paradigm distinct from the one promoted by the IFRS Foundation. The governance model proposed by EFRAG will certainly be the subject of tensions with member states.