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Mon ami le Professeur Michel Bouvier m'a demandé, comme à un certain nombre d'acteurs de la LOLF, dont bien entendu Didier Migaud, de proposer une tribune pour la dernière livraison de la [...]

Experiments in other countries have led to the assumption that simultaneous action is necessary when dealing with financial reform and public management reform. With an end goal of promoting a managerial type culture and thus improving decisions on public finance which translate state policy, the LOLF includes France in a procedure that several countries have already adopted. The culture of management based on results has repercussions on the budget, but also on the implementation of policies and programmes. The model-type of the approach to management through results comprises : strategic planning, a budget-programme based on results, the follow-up of accounting, an annual performance report, and the rendering of accounts to Parliament. This article analyses budgetary reforms inspired par these principles, for the purpose of seeing to what extent their application has been fruitful. It describes the reform process in four countries : Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden, and presents the comments of observers.

After the intensive preparatory work of establishing budgetary categories and accounting norms, defining indicators, choosing new actors, information systems, and numerous other matters directly involving thousands of civil servants ; after the actual changeover of public management to the “LOLF (Loi Organique relative aux Lois de Finances) mode”, the time has come to take perspective on medium-term changes in the administration – to put aside voluntarist and operational discourse and take a close look at the various concepts pertaining to the reforms, the precise content of the budgetary and administrative changes in question, and the link between the two. What appears is that technical concepts were widely tested in France in the context of the rationalisation of budgetary choices, or partake of a certain continuity, going hand in hand with progress in the domain of state reform are most specifically felt in the modernisation of public neo-liberal shrinking of the same. Finally, it is clear that the success of the LOLF will depend essentially on the involvement of society as a whole – civil servants and citizens alike.

Voted in a context of sparse public funds, the “letter” of the LOLF aims at ensuring efficiency in the use of credits and the evaluation of state services. It targets not only the performance objectives of civil servants, but also a true evaluation of the state's patrimony. For this reason, the “spirit” of the LOLF is founded in the economic analysis of law, in that the latter involves a utilitarian procedure in the form of a calculation of efficiency. However, the efficiency aim of this law –whose eventual goal is to reduce public deficit –must be nuanced in “practice” : in certain areas, the notion of “performance” is ill adapted to public service missions, added to which is the difficulty of establishing reliable indicators.

State reform, in the sense of a more effective and efficient state – maximum performance for a given cost – is one of the LOLF's main objectives. The architecture of the state budget in terms of missions and programmes is the backbone of new public management. Missions are the large units of public policy ; they can be inter-ministerial, in which the notion of public policy is above that of a ministry. Programmes are the basic unit of new public management. A programme is ministerial, belongs to a single mission, and is piloted by a high-level civil servant, an individual responsible for the programme and who must account for its management. Each programme has objectives, targets, and results indicators, all of which make possible a performance evaluation of the manager. Other tools resulting from the LOLF are of a kind that should bring about a modernisation of the state – accounting tools (accrual accounting, patrimonial accounting, and the putting in place of analytical accounts), as well as piloting tools (the LOLF goes along with the generalisation of management control). However, state reform can only be achieved on condition that there be a true cultural change, exhaustive information systems, and strong political determination.