Management control and evaluation of public policies

Abstract

Research demonstrated that the evaluation of public policies, in its practical sense, is recent in Morocco as these assessments took place only in the 1990s. Both the legal and regulatory status of these policies remains under the ongoing reforms. To illustrate, international organizations, specifically the financial ones, have carried out assessment actions in some sectors such as health and education, which pointed to relevant deficiencies including structural weaknesses. Along with these organizations, the donors have proceeded to evaluate the public institutions following a logic structure of the alliance, partnership and cooperation. In fact, most of these international initiatives do not correspond with the content of the public discourse concerning the administrative reform. If we have a deep look at the legislative and regulatory arsenal, we can easily understand that the evaluation is rarely understood as a specific activity. In addition to that, public decision-making centers are now in front of a new challenge, which is the emergence of a managerial culture based on the logic of effectiveness and efficiency. The management of the public institution becomes no longer protected from monitoring and control. Now, management is required to be an important part of a modernization culture advocating the evaluative actions as a crucial strategic component of its well-established system. In this context, this article attempts to shed light on the existing links between management control and the evaluation of public policies.To achieve this objective, we propose via an exploratory study a conceptual and theoretical framework allowing to clarify the links between these paradigms concepts. Thus, our study made it possible to clarify paradigm « evaluation of public action », even if it is distinguished from management control, maintains the necessary links with the latter.

JEL Classification : H83, M4

Paper type: Theoretical Research