Delivered. For nearly three decades, consulting firms and their management methods have penetrated all the workings of the French administration. In the investigation that Matthieu Aron and Caroline Michel-Aguirre, senior reporters at The Obs, dedicate to this revolution largely ignored until now, a tour de force is obvious: not a ministry nor a sector covered by the State escaped the covetousness of the consultants. From health to defence, via national education, justice, the interior, foreign affairs, but also the economy – whose agents resisted for a long time – and even the services of the Prime Minister, all went under the Caudines forks of these consulting firms. The best known being Accenture, BCG (Boston Consulting Group), EY (formerly Ernst & Young), PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), etc.
The influence of these large consulting firms on the functioning of the State is linked to a parallel revolution which has affected all administrations: the vast digitization and dematerialization of acts of daily life which has increased over the years. 2000, with the rise of the Internet. In a country of written law, where the culture of paper is dominant, the increased speed of execution of administrative tasks has caused congestion, the absence of financial means made available to State servants has done the rest.
A consenting state
Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that this change took place with a consenting, even submissive state. Several explanatory keys are given by the authors, first what they call the“ruling class endogamy” and “the hybridization of the elites”. At the head of the senior administration and these consulting firms, we find the same profiles, from the same Grandes Ecoles (ENA, HEC, Essec, etc.). The round trips from one to the other are frequent.
At the same time, ministers belonging to right-wing or left-wing governments have lost confidence in their administration, which they consider too cumbersome and outdated. Consulting firms have therefore come to the bedside of administrations that needed to be modernized. They imported the culture of “lean management” (production management based on profitability), with a systematic reduction in the number of positions with equal performance, which hospitals were able to experience, before and during the Covid-19 crisis. .
More seriously, to the culture of distrust has been added a desire to protect oneself. When the State outsources tasks that fall to it, it is no longer responsible for failures, which makes it possible to escape the pressure of citizens who are increasingly quick to take legal action.
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