An Accounting Company for the states ?
Since the 1990s, a number of increasingly important states set up accountancy, very close to business accounting, to produce a balance sheet and income statement, and to calculate the full costs of public action. Based primarily on an investigation by interviews with those responsible for the development of new accounting of the French state and the analysis of archives, the work presented here has two objectives : first, to analyze the process of building the new accounting for France, its results in terms of mode of development of wealth and public debt and the changes it can induce in social representations of the state, second, analyze the use of this new accounting and changes in modes of public action they are likely to generate.