State Reform in France: From Public Service to Public Management?

Cole, Alistair

doi:10.1080/15705854.2010.524405

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…France (Bergeron et al, 2018). This is to be situated within the context of the shifting styles of 'performance culture' and 'new public management' that have come to characterize state reform in France in recent years (Bezes, 2009(Bezes, , 2020Cole, 2010;Cole and Jones, 2005). The context is also that of a particular approach to budgetary austerity in France, marked by recurring debates on public debt and public budget (Clift, 2012;Lemoine, 2016; see also Grant and Wilson 2012).…”

Section: Emerging Paradigms Of Behavioural Government Have Attracted ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exercising knowledge of costs: behavioural politics of economic restraint in French public service reform

2020

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The tropes of restraint and remediation that accompany the reform of public services and public administrations often locate in efficient costing the key to the state's economic fitness. Knowledge of costs does not feature in such reforms solely as information conducive to the strengthening of budgetary reform. It is also knowledge that needs to be practised and exercised in order to achieve a virtuous modification of the conduct of the state. The case of public hospitals and universities in France illustrates how knowledge of costs is made sense of by state practitioners as a behavioural lever. A Foucauldian angle on the narratives and policies that inform such exercising of knowledge of costs reveals the contours of a new paradigm of the state's self-care.

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Section: Emerging Paradigms Of Behavioural Government Have Attracted ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exercising knowledge of costs: behavioural politics of economic restraint in French public service reform

2020

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“…While "Europeanization," with its normative, discursive, symbolic and "soft" governance rules, turned out to be a double-edged sword used for both justifying reform and resisting it (in the name of protecting national models from perceived threats, cf. Cole, 2010) it does seem to bring about convergence, and so does "globalization," in some sectors more than in others. Nationalized "natural monopolies" in sectors such as energy, rails, water and sewage (Levi-Faur and Vigoda-Gadot, 2006) turned into private regulated entities and more autonomous central banks, highly independent of political echelons, became ubiquitous (Niculina et al, 2010).…”

Section: The Inheritance Warsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The provenance of public management and its future: is public management here to stay?

Kisner

Vigoda‐Gadot

2017

IJPSM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the views of authors in regard to the provenance and future of PM and the advantages of using management science in administrative science. The authors point to the meaning of both sciences for government studies and to the use that both theoreticians and practitioners may gain from adequately balancing the disciplines for the public interest. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on a wide literature review of empirical and epistemological studies on new public management (NPM) and its evolvement across continents and cultures, and on a critical analysis of lessons learned from implementations of ideas and practices. Findings The authors identify the managerial reform in public administration as one of the more influential reforms of modern nations that cut across multiple policy areas, public agencies and cultures. The authors expect that public managers in the years to come are about to play a decisive role and be required to build collaborative capacity while governing creatively but without bending the rules. Ingenious civil servants are going to carry weight and devise new mechanisms for coping with prospective challenges; no doubt they will have to be savvier, more adept and open-minded than ever to be able to step up to the plate and assist governments to deal with impending crises. Originality/value The originality of this essay is reflected in the wide coverage of transitions in the managerial language of the discipline. Using manifold examples from different perspectives on NPM provides a unique and balanced look into what became the most influential reforms in public administration since the second half of the twentieth century, and is still alive and kicking.

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“…In an earlier article, I argued that processes of state reform in France since the late 1980s might be observed through the lens of two rather different forms of justification that are labelled as public service and state productivity (Cole, 2010). The public service narrative emphasised the need to ensure an efficient state and an effective public sector in order to defend a French social model; its proponents looked to forms of contractualisation between public service providers, but did not advocate a radical overhaul of existing processes, professional public sector norms or established bureaucratic hierarchies (Gaudin, 1999;Clark, 2000;Chevallier, 2003).…”

Section: Divergencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Not saying, not doing: Convergences, contingencies and causal mechanisms of state reform and decentralisation in Hollande’s France

Cole

2014

Fr Polit

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Are States in contemporary Europe subject to new forms of convergence under the impact of economic crisis, enhanced European steering and international monitoring? Or is the evolution of governance (national and sub-national) driven fundamentally by diverging, mainly domestic pressures? Drawing on extensive new data, the article combines analysis of the State Modernisation and Decentralisation reform programmes of the Hollande-Ayrault administration, drawing comparisons where appropriate with the previous Sarkozy regime. The limits of President Hollande's anti-Sarkozy method were demonstrated in the first 2 years; framing state reform and decentralisation in negative terms prevented the emergence of a coherent legitimising discourse. The empirical data is interpreted with reference to a comparative 'States of Convergence' framework, which is conceptualised as a heuristic device for analysing variation between places, countries and policy fields. The article concludes that the forces of hard convergence are gaining ground, as economic, epistemic and European pressures continually challenge the forces of institutional inertia.

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State Reform in France: From Public Service to Public Management?

Cited by 8 publications

References 20 publications

Exercising knowledge of costs: behavioural politics of economic restraint in French public service reform

Exercising knowledge of costs: behavioural politics of economic restraint in French public service reform

The provenance of public management and its future: is public management here to stay?

Not saying, not doing: Convergences, contingencies and causal mechanisms of state reform and decentralisation in Hollande’s France

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