Steering from the Centre in France in the 2000's. When Reorganizations meet Politicization
Résumé
Over the past thirty years, there is no doubt that the French state has been affected by many major transformations, potentially sufficiently significant to have altered the forms of governing and specific modes of steering from the centre. Starting in the 1980s, major privatization and decentralization programs have been implemented and have generated dynamics ‘decentring’ government activity. As in other Western countries, new ideas drawn from New Public Management (performance management, contracts, public-private partnership, etc.) have been subjected to specific importation and interpretation processes, giving rise to administrative reform programs characterized by their gradual development (Bezes 2009)