Evaluating long-term care policies in a decentralised context: models of justice, evaluation criteria and comparison[Évaluer l’offre de prise en charge des personnes en perte d’autonomie dans un contexte décentralisé : modèles de justice, critères d’évaluation et comparaison]

The EQUIDEC research project aims to study the conditions for evaluating public policies in terms of territorial equity when they are partially decentralized, taking as a case study policies relating to dependent elderly people. The question is under what conditions the central government can impose a normative framework on the départements, through the evaluation of local policies. The principle of decentralization aims to allow each local authority to pursue its own objectives, in accordance with the democratically expressed wishes of the local population, within a framework set by the central state. In this context, should we set a national objective and evaluate local policies against it, or should we let each département set its own objectives and adjust the evaluation accordingly? A first family of solutions proposes to articulate different levels of evaluation, depending on whether we take the perspective of the central government or that of the départements. The second family of solutions groups together theories of justice that are compatible with variable local decisions.