French Public Administration and Policy Evaluation: The Quest for Accountability
本文探讨法国公共政策评估的争议，分析行政改革（如数据公开、设立监察员）对加强问责制的作用，指出议会权力弱化与行政权力扩张的失衡，适合研究法国公共行政与政策评估的学者参考。
Considerable debate has recently arisen in France concerning public policy evaluation. Numerous scholars and managers are currently exploring ways to update tools of political oversight and administrative accountability.' During the past few years, some important administrative reforms have been enacted in France, resulting in increased public access to administrative data, the establishment of a national ombudsman (Le Mediateur), and the multiplication of independent commissions to assure impartial regulation of the national television network and administrative records. Each of these institutional reforms, in fact, was conceived as a counterbalance to offset the ever-growing bureaucratic power center. However, the real growth of the administrative apparatus, due to an intensification of welfare policies under the Fifth Republic, has not been successfully balanced by these attempts to strengthen the organs of political oversight. During the course of the Fifth Republic, Parliament's role in the policy-making process has been notably weakened. First, Parliament has not succeeded in articulating political party influence on policy design, and second, the tendency towards a presidentialization of the French political system has tended to concentrate the powers of initiative, control, and oversight within the executive branch of government.2 Many researchers have also pointed out an important shift in the classical administrative model: the traditional configuration of political forces in France has been partly challenged by the new, increasingly political role adopted by administrative institutions and their capacity to regulate lobby pressures.3 Today, the great diversity of organizational arrangements and the wide spectrum of public interventionism indicate a need for new political and administrative procedures both to identify and verify the demand, delivery, and impact of public programs. The growing needs of managers to legitimate their choices in an era of scarcity, as well as the increasing pressures of the mass media and public opinion, have provided further impetus for reexamining policy evaluation procedures. This pressure in favor of administrative accountability is all the more important given that, since 1981, the Socialist government has been following an interven-