Formuler l’action publique en termes de tests. Les stress tests européens comme réponse aux crises financières et nucléaires

Abstract

In Europe, stress tests are used by institutional leaders as a tool for regulating the banking and nuclear sectors. They were first used in 2009 in the banking sector in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis and in 2011 in the nuclear sector following the Fukushima accident. Where in the former case their purpose is to convince investors of bank stability, in the latter they seek to reassure the European public as to the safety of nuclear power plants. Both explicitly aim to offer an “objective and transparent” evaluation of technical objects. This evaluation defines “crisis” and the ways for resolving it in well-delimited terms. Stress tests result in an expansion of the domain of European institutional intervention, which is centralized in the case of banking and distributed in that of nuclear power. While doing so, they also eliminate alternate ways of conceptualizing crisis and possible responses thereto.