331 Article Performance Management in France: A Police or an Electoral Issue? Sebastian Roche ∗ Abstract The issue of police performance in France has gained ground. However, its significance must be questioned. In this paper, four issues are considered. The first is related to recent changes in public finance rules in line with New Public Management practices. The second is related to the incremental changes in technical tools used to measure police activity and success at the operational level. The third issue is strategic performance management. Management of performance appears to be at best nascent and at worst a disguise for old structures and practices (sometimes favouring malpractice). The paper concludes that the reality of police performance management can be best explained with reference to its function in the political arena. The management of police performance became a weapon in the recent French elections because it emphasized the ‘results’ of the minister or government in charge. In the short run, the political dimension of police performance appears to be the key focus of the two last governments at the expense of real changes in police performance management as a means of increasing police efficiency, adaptation and police legitimacy generally. Introduction Performance measurement and management has had a growing influence in business firms. Since the 1980s, New Public Management (NPM) advo- cates have convinced a number of governments that a business-oriented approach in the public sector is appropriate for public organizations and a source of effectiveness and efficiency. Some of the more vehe- ment advocates insisted that the NPM was essentially a positive ‘reinvention of government’ (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992). Others deplored the over-emphasis on performance, notably in police organizations (for example Hough, 2002). ∗ Institute of Political Science, University of Grenoble, France. E-mail: sroche@upmf-grenoble.fr This paper suggests that the notion of a global policing approach to performance management is contemporaneous to a generalized shift in the French public sector. The aim here is to describe the actual management of performance of police practices in the French political and administrative context. Far from being the result of a simple world dissemination process, the success of the introduc- tion of a police management reform model appears to be dependent on administrative structures and politics. Police performance management can materialize at different levels of a law enforcement organization. Policing, Volume 2, Number 3, pp. 331–339 doi: 10.1093/police/pan032 C  The Authors 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org