When Nicolas Sarkozy's government spokesperson announced that each minister's performance would be assessed according to criteria set by a private auditing firm, he probably did not expect to elicit a fierce response. But he should have. The opposition quickly attacked the move as a "dangerous gimmick and a "smokescreen. One pundit asked, "Will the time soon come when ministers are hired by head-hunters? And a young MP declared that "France cannot be managed like a bolt factory. But what is so absurd about establishing standards by which to assess the fulfillment of Sarkozy's campaign promises? As soon as they were appointed in June 2007, Sarkozy's ministers were given a clear set of objectives in the form of a letter of intent. Isn't it normal to create some means of holding ministers accountable? A culture of "results has become central to economic modernization in France, so shouldn't the same be true of French governments, with their entrenched inclination toward passivity and aloofness? And the issue of setting measurable standards for government operations is not confined to France. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made such quantifiable goals a hallmark of his leadership ever since he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of course, the institutions charged with supervising France's public sector, such as the Cour des comptes or the Inspection générale des finances , have the skills and capacities that are needed to fulfill their tasks. Moreover, French public policies are subject to a general review procedure. But the culture of a private auditing firm can bring something new by moving beyond a basic review of legality to a general assessment of performance. For the plan's opponents, the main causes of indignation are the criteria for assessment. Should the immigration minister be judged according to the number of illegal immigrants expelled? Should the education minister be assessed according to how much overtime work teachers are made to perform? Should the culture minister be assessed according to the number of visitors to free museums and the share of French movies in the domestic market? Such questions hide more basic ones: can the fulfillment of political goals really be quantified? Is it possible to evaluate a state in the same way that you evaluate a firm, thereby reducing its performance to a set of specific actions? To some extent, the answer is yes. After all, state bureaucracies are, on one level, simply a species of the large and complex organizations that, in the private sector, are subject to standardized performance indicators. In many Western democracies - New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and even Italy - efforts at administrative modernization have focused on forging a stronger link between management and performance. On another level, however, state bureaucracies are very different from private-sector organizations, for they have their own characteristics and objectives, which will be endangered were they are reduced to quantitative standards of performance and efficiency. Indeed, one of the main reasons why certain tasks are given to governments, rather than left to the private sector, is that ordinary market mechanisms do not work in the case of so-called "public goods because the market cannot determine the optimal level of their supply. Quantitative targets thus hide the crucial policy decision about the right "portfolio of services that a government should provide. And if assessment of state action were based only on a set of pre-defined quantitative targets, ministers would also understandably - but mistakenly - neglect quality and other important objectives. So, should the French be worried? According to Prime Minister Francois Fillon, "We are not at school. Beyond technical criteria, ministers will still be assessed according to the influence exercised by their party or political faction, election results, and their popularity among the media and the public. Thus, there is no contradiction between the aim of turning ministers into efficient managers and parliament's power to hold members of the government accountable. Eventually, the voters will have the final say. So, targeting quantitative objectives can be a useful innovation, but only as long as its purpose is to provide a new tool in managing certain aspects of the state's performance. Beyond that point, the goals of state action - the substance of ministers' responsibilities - will still be assessed according to values whose richness and complexity cannot be reduced to the cold one-dimensionality of a spread sheet. Raphaël Hadas-Lebel,author of 101 Words about French Democracy, is a member of the Conseil d'Etat and Professor at the Institut d études politiques in Paris. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
