New Public Management à la Française: The Case of Regional Hospital Agencies

In 1996, French authorities—committed to developing an innovative, decentralized style of public intervention in a country with a reputation for administrative conservatism and a historical bias toward centralization—created the Regional Hospital Agencies. The author asks whether these agencies exemplify the modernization of French public administration. A survey of all 26 such agencies indicates that they did introduce novel management practices and do, in fact, illustrate New Public Management “ à la française.”