Revue - Revue française de Finances Publiques n°168-2024 - 19

Public Finance: When Management Takes Over Politics
of the decision-making process " 13
XVII
without most citizens being aware of
the erosion of the financial power of their elected representatives, both
their power to set standards and to decide public financial policies.
All in all, we can wonder whether public finance is once again
the template, or at least the backdrop, for a change in the political
system. A new political culture based on the almost systematic use
of experts is in the making, at the same time as a kind of financial
cybernetics is being developed14
, resulting from artificial intelligence
and robotisation15
. It is possible to identify a common thread running
through the fiscal reforms that many countries are experiencing or have
experienced over the last few decades. Indeed, we can see the root of
a new kind of public financial decision-making that is gradually taking
shape. Its main characteristic is that it is based on automated systems
designed to make it more efficient and to avoid a certain number of
risks arising from an increasingly uncertain general environment. This
path is encouraged by a shift in discourse which, after having long been
focused on parliamentary initiative, has shifted towards managerial
issues focused on balancing the budget and urgently limiting the
increase in public debt. This approach is also based, as has been said,
on the use of new technologies that make it possible to envision, or
even already apply, a robotisation of the public financial chain, from
decision-making to enforcement and monitoring. We must be clear on
this. Under the guise of questioning management techniques there lies
a real societal choice, a political choice to be made.
This is why beginning by confining ourselves to a reflection purely
focused on legal, economic and managerial methods would be going
backwards. Indeed, it would be pointless to ask these methods to resolve
an issue that is primarily political in nature because it concerns public
financial governance as a whole. In addition, imposing economic and
managerial concepts on politics16
has revealed their limits in achieving
sustainable public finance many times over.
However, one thing is certain: the end is gradually taking shape,
not only of a particular way of practicing public management, but also
13. R. CASTEL, " Savoir d'expertise et production de normes " , in F. CHAZEL, J. COMMAILLE,
(under editor), Normes juridiques et régulation sociale, LGDJ 1991.
14. See M. BOUVIER, " Vers une cybernétique financière? " , in Alternatives économiques
n° 240-2005; also see " Utopie technicienne et cybernétique financière publique " , in RFFP
no
129-2015.
15. On this subject, see the Fondafip/TGR colloquium film downloadable at https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=xREYaOVfFv4.
16. See J.-P. DUPUY, L'avenir de l'économie, Flammarion, 2012.
RFFP n° 168 - Novembre 2024
https://www http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xREYaOVfFv4
Revue - Revue française de Finances Publiques n°168-2024

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