Changing the rule, hiding the problem: performativity at the heart of public policy

This article draws on the literature on the performativity of accounting language (Fauré et al., 2010; Gond et al., 2016), particularly acts of calculation, to demonstrate how implementing a single indicator can contribute to rendering inequalities both visible and invisible. We use the 2014 Lamy Law in France as an exploratory case study to address this issue. This law aims to refocus public policies on fewer urban priority neighbourhoods to simplify and improve their effectiveness. Building on documents produced by various actors involved in the 2014-2022 city contracts, we explore the choice to switch from a composite criterion to a single criterion on income to define these neighbourhoods. First, we aim to unpack the social reality performed by this new criterion and to make visible the consequences of the single criterion. We are particularly interested in the presence/absence of discourses around the neighbourhoods excluded from this new urban policy and the evaluation of its effectiveness, which both reinforced a statistical approach rather than a contextualised one of poverty. Secondly, we discuss how rendering inequalities invisible is compensated for by local interpretations that distort and divert the performative nature of the indicator. We underline how these interpretations, although attempting to reveal a reality hidden by the single indicator, ultimately reinforce the social reality it performs. This article thus aims to provide a critical illustration of how indicators construct what counts while ignoring what no longer counts (Kornberger & Carter, 2010) and their conditions of performativity.