Assessment-based governance. Quasi-markets in home care services

This article proposes a study of the increasing role played by the evaluation process in the governance of personal and home care services in Europe. The introduction of quasi-markets in several European countries goes hand in hand with an autonomization of the assessment function which becomes a real tool of regulation of the competition. An analytical comparison of several national cases (Belgium, France and the UK), both on the demand and on the supply side of the service, brings to light the recurring tensions in the objectives pursued by the evaluation process (quality of the service, control of the social budgets, creation of employment), the low consideration of the quality of employment as well as the limits of standardized tools of evaluation in the light of the consumers' free choice rhetoric.