A Longitudinal Analysis of the Relationship Between Central Government and Universities in France: The Role of Performance Measurement Mechanisms

France differs from other European countries for presenting a heterogeneous higher education and research system in which multiple and different institutions are involved. In this system, universities have undergone substantial changes in recent decades, both in their relations with the central government and at the corporate level. The chapter dwells in particular on the transformations that have occurred with regard to: strengthening and centralising the evaluation of academic activities; contracts between the university and the ministry; interventions to promote mergers between universities and aggregation of universities; policies to promote excellence. Performance measurement mechanisms play a central role in each of these transformations even though their establishment does not follow linear trajectories and encounters resistance, especially at the university level.