Quantifying the effects of public action on the unemployed: disputes between experts and the rethinking of labour market policies in France (1980-2000)

Abstract

Taking as a starting point, the genesis of the experimental investigations in the assessment of employment policies in France in the 2000s, the article proposes to put at distance ethical and / or technical controversy on them in order to favor a sociology of State’s knowledge. The spread of econometric methods is placed in sociology of investigation on the unemployed where the initial listing of issues and techniques in the social sciences is supplanted by reference to medical science and the measurement of « net effects » of the action of the State. Statistical tools then not only support redefining the forms of evaluation of public policy but also its design, from the correction of inequalities in the labor market to the smoothing of its functioning. These changes cannot be understood without analyzing the transformations on the sociology of the agents that support them and on academic, bureaucratic and political strategies of a new generation of economists.