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How did state action become an object of scientific enquiry? Any answer to such a question implies recognition of the fact that the management of both human beings and systems is carried out and legitimized thanks to specialized skills. Since the advent in Europe of absolute monarchies and the development of administrations with a monopoly over all government functions, power has been legitimized by science, rather than by secrecy. As a result, scientists, administrators, philanthropists, writers, magistrates and many others put their knowledge at the service of the “governmental sciences”. Under the pretext of introducing reforms, they impose new notions of rationality on state action and thus contribute to changing the way the administration functions. To explain the emergence of “State engineering” through the institutionalizing of these “disciplines”, we must use two intersecting viewpoints, the first focusing on the job of rationalizing the conditions of state intervention, and the second on the practices that justify and create the need for these specialized “skills”.