Probabilités épidémiologiques et décisions politiques à l’épreuve de la covid-19

Project holders: 

• Mathieu CORTEEL (Sciences Po, CSO) 
• Henri BERGERON (Sciences Po, CSO, LIEPP) 

Project description : 

During the covid-19 crisis, the government mobilised, in a preponderant way, the statistical tool and the calculation of probabilities in order to guide and to legitimate the action of public policies. By predicting the evolution of the virus on the national territory, mathematical modelling of the incidence, exponential growth and reproduction rate of the virus within the population led to the implementation of strict sanitary measures and the identification of quantified results to be achieved in order to guarantee the public interest. However, epistemological and organisational obstacles have made the political decision and the legitimisation of the measures among the population more complex. The ProbaPol research project thus intends to analyse the limits of the statistical reasoning that guides political power in times of health crisis in order to understand the epistemic and organisational modalities of political decision-making in the face of the numerical hazard of the epidemic. Uncovering the foundations of political conjecture through the tools of statistical scenarios opens up new approaches capable of improving crisis management and collective deliberation skills.

Publications : 

• Mathieu CORTEEL, Renaud CRESPIN, Une politique sous l'emprise des modèles : la gestion de la crise de Covid 19 en France en 2020 LIEPP Working Paper n°159, 2024
• Mathieu CORTEEL, "Les boîtes noires de la pandémie : modélisation épidémiologique et pouvoir politique durant la crise de Covid-19" in Multitudes, n°86, 2022 
• Mathieu CORTEEL, Covid 19 : la santé publique comme laboratoire du contrôle social, AOC, 24 novembre 2021

Poster of the project - May 2022