Résumé en anglais

While the adoption neoliberal positions by the French right may seem like an ideological and conjunctural phenomenon, discourse that is critical of public intervention contributes to and accentuates the legitimation crisis being undergone by public services. By defining itself ever more narrowly as providing services to the public, this sector comes up against the market model of economics and politics. What is at stake is not so much the simple elimination of public services as the redistribution of the public vs. the private share in the provision of services. Business is referred to as the mainspring of modernization, especially when it comes to personnel. But it can also lead to an alteration of the principles defining public services as they affect beneficiaries.