Session 5 of the CEPEL Seminar on Current Research Trends for Young Researchers – May 15, 2024

As part of the “CEPEL Seminar on Current Trends in Social Science Research,” we are pleased to invite you to the 5th and penultimate session of the seminar for the 2023–2024 academic year:

Wednesday, May 15, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Linz Room of Building 3 at the University of Montpellier’s Faculty of Law and Political Science (in-person only), where we will welcomeViolette Larrieu, apostdoctoralresearcherat ENSTA Bretagne, for a presentation titled:

Defense in the Era of New Public Management, 2023 Research Prize from the Foundation for the Social Sciences

Abstract:

Since the 1980s, public policies have been undergoing a transformation: the rise of agencies, the development of performance indicators, evaluation, privatization… the “neoliberal turn” [Jobert, 1994] is underway. Perceived by some as evidence of the state’s withdrawal and by others as its redeployment, these new public policies are fundamentally redefining public action. What about the Department of Defense? Has it, too, succumbed to the allure ofNew Public Management?How can operational and budgetary imperatives be reconciled? This chapter will attempt to answer these questions. After reviewing the recent policies of “market mimicry” [Ansaloni and Smith, 2017] implemented in recent years within the Ministry of the Armed Forces, we will show how the ministry was no exception to the exponential reliance on consulting firms, which act as true “conduits” for neo-managerial thinking within the civil service and the armed forces. We will examine how this phenomenon reveals the consolidation of a modernizing elite whose careers are partly based on the success of these new policies. However, we will also highlight how, particularly in the face of announced outsourcing plans, the stakeholders involved—both military and civilian—sometimes mobilize against challenges to certain of their prerogatives, reaffirming the sovereign nature of defense policies.

Overview of the research context:https://www.fondation-sciences-sociales.org/violette-larrieu/