Jonathan Fayeton – Crisis management exercises: a test of the state? Or the state's exercise put to the test of crisis management

Crisis management exercises, inherited from the military world, are now common practice in civil society. In recent history, their number and visibility have increased considerably in the context of the state's response to the 2015 attacks. They are thus one of the main tools used by crisis management organizations to prepare for events that threaten the population. To fulfill this mission, the exercises are designed to be as realistic as possible, with the dual objectives of training and identifying weaknesses in crisis management systems that need to be corrected. However, observation of the exercises organized by the General Secretariat of the Paris Defense and Security Zone—a department of the Prefecture of Police—only allows for partial verification of these objectives. To explain this apparent difficulty, it is necessary to consider the overlap of two missions assigned to the exercises. The first, official mission focuses on protecting the population. The second, latent but priority, is to protect the State, whose legitimacy and very identity – based precisely on the protection of the population – are called into question by the occurrence of crises.