Third volume of a long history, the RCB moment or the dream of a rational government (1962-1978) is a key stage in the deployment of public finance management in contemporary France. The first stage (1815-1914) was marked by the slow, very indiscriminate development of budgetary and accounting law and of practical instruments giving effect to it in the administration: there was an alternation between the dominance of legal concerns (the definition of accounts, the setting of accounts, etc.).