Expérimenter le développement? Des économistes et leurs terrains

Through the work of French economist Esther Duflo, a particular method for public policy evaluation has come to prominence in recent years: randomized experiments. Popularized by their widespread use in poor countries since the early 2000s, they are inspired by medical randomized clinical trials. This article initially revisits the conditions of their emergence in the field of poverty reduction before focusing its attention on J-PAL, the research center Esther Duflo directs that specializes in the approach. We then turn to the transition from theory to practice. The pressure to publish that is widely present across the academic field takes on a particular importance here, since randomized experiments are likely to have very concrete consequences on the populations concerned. The relatively distant relationship such researchers have with their field sites leads to a skewed account of local reality and development-related issues, which is itself a reference to a compartmentalization of disciplines that devalues qualitative methods and thus limits the effects of knowledge.