Governance deals with time, space, and people. It consists of three levels: general policy, decision making tools, and scope of control. In French society, governance is historically far removed from Anglo-Saxon liberalism. Current managerial governance is based on a techno-scientific, individualistic, and liberal doxa, which is strongly criticized nowadays for its excesses. However, the French state is committed to generalizing that orthodoxy to the public sector in spite of the fact that current neo-managerial practices and models are trying to discover new rules of governance. JEL codes: G32, M00, H1, O32, L1