Unlike other countries where public policy expertise comes primarily from academia or think tanks (Desrosiere, 1999; Medvetz, 2012), governmental administration in France has historically been a privileged site for the production of knowledge pertaining to the state and its interventions. This state expertise consists of myriad recommendations from experts and research institutes affiliated with various ministries and the Prime Minister's office. Taken together, they are the primary site for the production of statistical knowledge of the French economy and society, and the main source of administrative reports intended to guide and evaluate state intervention. Most knowledge of the state, which could be considered the French equivalent of American ‘policy analysis’, is produced in these institutions. Today this field of state expertise bears the legacy of three reconfiguration processes. The first consists of the establishment of indicative planning after the Second World War, followed by the liberal turn economic policy began to take in the mid-1970s. The second is associated with the transformation of the top tier of the French civil service, within which the great corps of engineers (graduates of two exclusive state technical schools, commonly known as ‘X-Mines’ and ‘X-Ponts’) first assumed responsibility for state expertise, only to face competition subsequently from the corps of statisticians (administrators of the French statistics institute (Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques [INSEE]) and the administrative corps (financial and social affairs inspectors). The field of French state expertise also shows traces of the institutionalisation process experienced by the social sciences, which initially took place on the fringe of French universities.

State reports and the institutional logics underlying their being requested, their creation, and their reception cannot be understood without considering the structure of the field of state expertise in France and how it has changed since 1945. This is obviously true for reports coming from councils, commissions and research services affiliated with various ministries and the Prime Minister's office, but it is also true of reports produced by the ad hoc commissions to which the French President, Prime Minister and Ministers may turn from time to time, since their work tends to rely heavily on the work of these longer-lasting bodies.