At the beginning of this 21st century, accountability is taking on the form of performance-based and data-intensive accountability (PBA) in an increasingly significant if not unique way in the education field. PBA put together formal or informal procedures of control, various techniques and tools, and normative discourse aimed at making the educational organisations accountable of their performances in terms of learning or pupil socialization. This accountability apparatus is developed at several interlocking scales, such as those of a national or sub-national school system, a district or individual schools. In this introductive paper to our panel - and the related WYBE 2021-, we will elaborate, from the political sociology perspective (Le Galès, 2016), how and why PBA could be considered as a policy instrument. In short, we should consider PBA as a complex, malleable apparatus, a mix of 1) tools and techniques 2) (various) discourses bearer of a representation of education practices and goals 3) that (re)organizes the social regulations between (various) state authorities, public or private stakeholders and schools. We are drawing upon a political sociology perspective that open three interconnected, lines of inquiry about policy tools and instruments, namely instrumentation, autonomization and constituency generation. Instrumentation is grounded on the premise that tools’ choice does not respond to rationalistic or pragmatic reasons, but rather the complex interaction between institutions, interests and ideas operating at multiple scales (Peters, 2002). Accordingly, the instrumentation moment needs to be properly problematized and approached from a multi-scalar perspective. Autonomization refers to the fact that “policy instruments have an existence independent of the decisions that created them” (Kassim & Le Galès, 2010, p. 11) and evolve in ways that were unforeseen when first adopted. In many contexts, accountability systems expand their mission beyond their initial goals or generate performative pressures that were not initially intended by design. For this and other reasons, it is difficult to predict the form that any instrument will end up assuming, as well as their effects. (Bezes, 2007). Finally, policy instruments carry some form and vision of the State and societal regulation that privilege certain actors and their interests over others. Here, we will reflect on: how are accountability instruments restructuring governance and altering power relations in education? What political and economic actors emerge around or are reinforced by accountability systems? Is the generation of a measurement industry a common feature of performance-based and data-intensive accountability in various national contexts?

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