Alizée Delpierre, Didier Demazière, Hajar El Fatihi
{"title":"The stealth legitimization of a controversial policy tool: Statistical profiling in French Public Employment Service","authors":"Alizée Delpierre, Didier Demazière, Hajar El Fatihi","doi":"10.1111/rego.12541","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Statistical profiling algorithms claiming to predict which jobseekers are at risk of becoming long-term unemployed are spread unevenly across countries. However, the pathways and histories of these tools are understudied. Because the profiling path in France is a winding one, it is fruitful to study the production of profiling acceptability within the Public Employment Service (PES), and upstream of its reception by frontline advisers. Using a mix of interviews and written sources, we show that the production of profiling acceptability sits at the crossroads of two processes: technical and political transformations of the instrument itself and broader institutional and managerial transformations of the PES. On the basis of this case study, the paper enriches our understanding of the slow and incremental rationalization of public services that we have termed “professional rationalization.” We argue that, far from being a softened or moderated form of bureaucratic rationalization, it is powerful—perhaps even irreversible—precisely because it transforms its target (frontline advisers) before the rationalization instrument is even deployed.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":"5 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regulation & Governance","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12541","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Statistical profiling algorithms claiming to predict which jobseekers are at risk of becoming long-term unemployed are spread unevenly across countries. However, the pathways and histories of these tools are understudied. Because the profiling path in France is a winding one, it is fruitful to study the production of profiling acceptability within the Public Employment Service (PES), and upstream of its reception by frontline advisers. Using a mix of interviews and written sources, we show that the production of profiling acceptability sits at the crossroads of two processes: technical and political transformations of the instrument itself and broader institutional and managerial transformations of the PES. On the basis of this case study, the paper enriches our understanding of the slow and incremental rationalization of public services that we have termed “professional rationalization.” We argue that, far from being a softened or moderated form of bureaucratic rationalization, it is powerful—perhaps even irreversible—precisely because it transforms its target (frontline advisers) before the rationalization instrument is even deployed.
期刊介绍:
Regulation & Governance serves as the leading platform for the study of regulation and governance by political scientists, lawyers, sociologists, historians, criminologists, psychologists, anthropologists, economists and others. Research on regulation and governance, once fragmented across various disciplines and subject areas, has emerged at the cutting edge of paradigmatic change in the social sciences. Through the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, we seek to advance discussions between various disciplines about regulation and governance, promote the development of new theoretical and empirical understanding, and serve the growing needs of practitioners for a useful academic reference.