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In recent years, the concepts of “policy tools” and “government technologies” have undergone a marked revival in French-language research. That research is based on an Anglo-American tradition that goes back over 40 years and is now highly diversified, but it has enriched that tradition with various contributions ranging from theories of power to the sociology of science. This paper presents a panorama of the literature in the field, bringing out the diversity of coexisting viewpoints and their development. An instruments-based approach is a good way to track changes in public action, as well as in regimes and political styles. It also conduces to grasping the tangible nature of public action. Understanding instrumentation is a way of comprehending changes in the state by focusing on its practices and reconfigurations, particularly in the ongoing tension between incentives and constraints.
