In countries and internationally, it has become common practice to use indicators to set quantified targets and assess the evolution of public policy and administrative functioning. Social science research, which deals with the development of performance indicators, is abundant and is part of a variety of intellectual traditions. Many see this movement as part of the neo-liberal turning point and a New Public Management event. This file explores the tensions between the use of indicators and the exercise of power, highlighting the ambivalence of this relationship, the figure being sometimes feared or sometimes desired. Three interdependent dimensions are distinguished for the analysis of the government by the indicators: the issues of knowledge, the logic of power and the forms of publicity associated with them. The four texts gathered focus on monitoring the results of public policies, whether national or international, addressed by authors from several disciplines. They pointed out that the development of indicators was part of the construction of the public problems addressed. They confirm the value of the analyses which take seriously the production of the numbers and the calculation conventions used and the governance arrangements of which they form part. Finally, they show that the government through the indicators leads to new forms of bureaucratisation.