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Short abstract:

This contribution presents the use and limitations of the notion of “tool of government” (Desrosières, 2008) to study algorithms together with their administrative contexts. It highlights its generativity by examining the case of the French risk-scoring algorithm to combat “social fraud”.

Long abstract:

Stuck at a disciplinary crossroads, the study of algorithms in administrative contexts often focuses either on singular technological artefacts or on broad governmental logics at play. The risk scoring algorithm to combat “social fraud” in the French Social security system is no exception. While criticism and mobilisation concentrated on the algorithm’s reliance on discriminatory variables, on the effects of automated decision-making and its lack of transparency (la Quadrature du Net, 2022; Geiger et al., 2023), sociologist Vincent Dubois highlighted the importance of contextualising the algorithm within the history of control policy, its practices, and varying conceptions of “social fraud” (Dubois 2012; 2022).

Studying algorithms as tools of government offers a middle ground for the study of technology within administrative contexts (Le Galès and Lascoumes, 2004), provided it uses a relational and materialist conception of technological objects (Simondon, 2012). In our case, it allows to follow the algorithm's genesis, how its production and deployment relied on the adoption of an increasingly individualized conception of risk (Dubois), on vast data collection and data sharing frameworks across administrations (Poulain, 2022). Its usage required to insert risk-scores with administrative regimes of proof and to reorganize pre-existing practices of control.

Examining jointly the co-construction of administrative fields and their tooling, such an approach allows to refine and ground materially sociological-political literature on welfare reform and privatization (Da Silva, 2022) and to explore the ways in which choices of administrative tools take part in policy orientations within established fields of social action.