At stake with implementation: trials of explicitness in the description of the state
Abstract
We develop the notion of "trials of explicitness" as a conceptual instrument for the study of the state from a pragmatist, sociological angle. We present results from an empirical case study on how state practitioners (i.e. actors in charge of expressing, evaluating, executing or reforming the action of the state) confront the problem of the clarification of the agency of the state. We focus on the implementation, from the early 2000s onwards, of a reform of public management in France which called for a revision of the description of the perimeters and achievements of the action of the state. The reform targeted the rules governing the budgetary process and included, along with new accounting methods, new forms of reporting and assessment aiming at identifying the performance of governmental and administrative action. We consider the implementation process as a set of trials of explicitness in which a number of state practitioners struggled to elucidate the meaning of the reform and to flesh out its orientation. We analyze, using archival material, a number of such trials in the domain of national science and research policy.Download Info
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Paper provided by HAL in its series Post-Print with number halshs-00362285.Length:
Date of creation: 2009
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00362285
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00362285/en/
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Related research
Keywords: Science and technology studies; science and technology policy; political sociology; government; France; LOLF; performance; New Public Management; statistics;Other versions of this item:
- Fabian Muniesa & Dominique Linhardt, 2009. "At stake with implementation: trials of explicitness in the description of the state," CSI Working Papers Series 015, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), Mines ParisTech.
- D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption
- D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy-Making and Implementation
- E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
- E65 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
- H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
- H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
- H - Public Economics
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2009-08-22 (All new papers)
References
References listed on IDEASPlease report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Godin, Benoit, 2007. "Science, accounting and statistics: The input-output framework," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 1388-1403, November.
- Christopher Hood, 2007. "Public Service Management by Numbers: Why Does it Vary? Where Has it Come From? What Are the Gaps and the Puzzles?," Public Money & Management, Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, vol. 27(2), pages 95-102, 04.
- Emiliano Grossman & Fabian Muniesa & Emilio Luque, 2006.
"Economies through transparency,"
Post-Print
halshs-00087886, HAL.
- Emiliano Grossman & Emilio Luque & Fabian Muniesa, 2006. "Economies through transparency," CSI Working Papers Series 003, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), Mines ParisTech.
- Godin, Benoit, 2004. "The obsession for competitiveness and its impact on statistics: the construction of high-technology indicators," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(8), pages 1217-1229, October.
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