La valeur sociale du chiffre. La quantification de l'action publique entre performance et démocratie

This article offers an analysis of the phenomenon which organizes the process of modernization of the state: the quantification of politics. To be clear, it does not deal with the social uses of numbers (i.e. revealing the specific interests of those who trade on them), neither with the social construction of numbers (i.e. disclosing the tricks of statistics production), nor even with the scientific validity of numbers (i.e. discussing the reality of the facts they are supposed to bring to light), but with the social value of numbers. In other words, the article examines the role played by the availability of ?objective? descriptions of public problems in the political decision process as well as in the implementation of public policies and in the transformation of the practices of democracy. To substantiate its claim, this article examines the reform the French budgetary procedure underwent with the institution of the LOLF; and more precisely the effects directly stemming from the installation of a web of integrated and interconnected information systems in state administrations as it is currently done. The article concludes by comparing two different ways numbers are endowed with an opposite social value: performance and democracy.