`titrebElements for a sociology of public policy evaluation in France`/titrebAt first sight, as a professional activity, evaluation of public policies and programmes (EPP) has met more difficulties in France than in the United States and in many other European countries. It is, in fact, possible to show that its integration among administrative and political practices has come relatively late when one compares the French case especially to English-speaking and Scandinavian countries. However, since the report for the Commissariat général du Plan (State Planning Commission) in 1986, numerous stakeholders have defined their activity as “evaluation of public policies”. Multiple initiatives from the central government were recorded, while the EPP resolutely developed in local territorial governments. After the National Evaluation Council eventually ground to a halt from 2002 on, numerous developments did, however, occur, such as the devising of “ministerial reform strategies”, and the launching of a “general revision of public policies”, but also the modification of the constitution in the summer of 2008, etc. New stakeholders appeared in the EPP professional field and it is difficult today to anticipate how their systems of action will be reorganised: in order to do so, one has to also consider activities which are in a way ‘contiguous’ to evaluation, regardless of their undeniable specificities, whether they be complementary or in competition with. Activities such as ‘performance audit’, for instance, should be seen as processing a polymorphic commodity that can be considered as “evaluative information”, which serves the management of public actions in more or less transparent conditions. It is possible that, with the new developments, evaluation will tend to be mainstreamed and become more trivial in the future.