Contenu du sommaire

DATAR : forty years of history. Although land management was a government concern at the time of Vichy, it was not formally organised until 1963. DATAR (Delegation for Territorial Planning and Regional Action) was set up so as not to get in the way of existing institutions. Before becoming a bureaucracy it was a light structure with considerable authority, the latter soon weakening as the administration passed from one ministry to another. Yet DATAR remained creative and innovating, pulling its weight indirectly by means of foresight, encouragement and assistance, but never finding favour with government policies. Was it an administration with a purpose ? What was its role in land planning ? DATAR was a true political and administrative entrepreneur, a leader of change in administrative practices, its modes of action moving in parallel with the evolution of the state : it tended towards centralisation in a centralised state and became more of a negotiator and more open to governance in the context of decentralisation.

From DATAR to the new DIACT : the place of economic issues in land-planning policy. As of January 1st 2006, DIACT (Interministerial Delegation for Land Planning and Competitiveness of the Territories) replaced DATAR, with much stronger competencies in economic matters, due on one hand to the promotion of competitive strategies (competition poles in particular) and on the other, to new methods of accompanying the economic mutations affecting certain industrial basins. This evolution however is not indicative of rupture, since from the outset DATAR carried out actions relevant to economic matters : the localisation of industrial sites in the 1960s, conversion contracts in the steel and coal basins, and more recently, site contracts and the promotion of local productive systems. DIACT, placing the territory at the heart of local development and combining aims of cohesion and rationales of competition, is rooted in a solid precedent.

The (postal) bank, “a different bank” : postal identity vs. market rhetoric. Though the creation by the La Poste group of a subsidiary specializing in loan banking, written into the May 2005 law regulating postal activities, is based on the idea that the extension of financial services is a necessary condition to ensure the modernisation and durability of the group, it should not be taken lightly. The model of rational choice would have us believe that no other solution exists. Calling into question this deterministic view, the article shows that in order to create a successful bank, its founders must be able to instil meaning into their project, enabling them to combine the specificity of the La Poste group's identity with market rationales, thereby countering any attempts at criticism. The project, which promotes the idea that this new bank “is not like the others”, has thus become the focal point of symbolic disagreements between political actors, representatives of the banking sector and postal workers, the bone of contention being each group's understanding of the social and economic consequences of creating a fully-fledged “postal bank”.

Fiscal federalism, constitutional attributions of fiscal competencies and regional equalization : USA, Germany and Brazil in comparative perspective. This paper addresses the institutional and constitutional aspects of the Brazilian federal system with the view to deal with the problem of regional equalization. The paper develops an analytical framework focusing on the articulation between constitutional fiscal attributions (including the taxation competencies sharing and the main related transfers) and the task of regional equalization in Brazil, starting by an comparative institutional study involving the United States of America, Germany and Brazil.

Curbing corruption and improving fiscal governance : Strengthening budget oversight and public sector auditing in emerging economies. It is increasingly acknowledged that improving economic governance and fostering fiscal responsibility in emerging economies necessarily requires greater transparency and accountability in the management of public finances. Additionally, new and old forms of aid delivery, notably direct budgetary support and policy-based lending, involve greater reliance on national public finance management systems. Therefore, improving aid effectiveness and mitigating fiduciary risk also entail strengthening external scrutiny, financial oversight and fiscal control. These twin trends have led to a renewed in interest in the institutions overseeing the budget, in particular parliaments and external audit agencies. This study reviews a decade of support by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to parliaments and external audit agencies in Latin America. It underscores recent developments in development finance reflecting a broader understanding of the determinants of fiscal credibility and financial integrity. It reveals a learning curve in multilateral assistance to budget oversight institutions. It argues that there exists unexplored potential to improve the effectiveness of multilateral assistance to fiscal control institutions, including in the choice of lending strategies and the synergies between instruments. More fundamentally, it underscores the need to tackle the underlying political economy of public finance accountability.

Quality management as an instrument for bottom-up european regulation. To cope with the requirements of accession, EU countries were (and some of them still are) seeking to achieve the standards of reliable and efficient public administration. The European Commission doesn't provide a specific model for the organisation and functioning of public administrations. In management literature those models for the organisation and functioning of public administrations are presented. Quality management models, nowadays, have evoluted into frameworks for organisational management. With the construction of the European Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a self-evaluation tool was designed for the public sector. This tool presents the principles for a well performing organisation. With the spread and use of this model all over Europe in recent years, the principles of a well performing public sector organisation also become widespread. In this article we look at the convergence (discursive, decisional, practice and results) across the EU in the use and implementation of management tools, i.c. the use of quality models, arguing the principles of quality management, as principles of decent governance, are spread across the European Union and form a kind of ‘bottom-up European regulation', coping with the fact no formal criteria or legislation concerning administrative reform are existing for candidate countries.

Thirty years of programme evaluation in Canada : how institutionalisation aims for quality. This article presents the history of the institutionalisation of programme evaluation within Canada's federal administration. It gives a chronological picture of the principal milestones and normative foundations of that process and describes the institutional changes aimed at improving the quality of evaluations. Finally, it shows how the internal evaluation programme developed in Canada allows managers to analyse their actions and modify public programmes when necessary.

The reform of the Portuguese public administration : New Public Management or Neo Weberian State ?. The article analysis the recent process of reform undergone by the Portuguese public administration, begun in 2004 under the Social democrat government and continued in 2006 under the Socialist government. It acknowledges that the reform introduces aspects of managerialism, but sustains that the concept of “neo-Weberian state” (developed by Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert) describes more adequately than that of new public management the features of the Portuguese Administration as shaped by this reform. The reform is situated in a context of financial pressure resulting from the need to comply with the requirements of the Growth and Stability Pact in the context of European monetary integration. However, some of its measures can only be fully understood in the framework of the evolution of Portuguese public Administration, since they are directed at tackling specific dysfunctions that resulted from changes occurred in the three decades that preceded. A brief look at this evolution will identify some of the persistent problems that the current reform of the public Administration sought to alleviate. The article gives an account of the measures adopted, underlines the influence of managerialism (as well as of contractualism, less influential in this reform) but also the Weberian traits that persist, demonstrating that the reforms of 2004-2006 have not inscribed in the Portuguese public administration characteristics that could be fully captured by the concept of new public management. Furthermore, it underlines the bias of the reform program of 2006 towards reducing the number of administrative structures and addresses the question of whether this organic restructuring implies a reduction of the welfare functions performed by the State. It stresses the complexity of the question posed and the fact that a possible answer given on the basis of the analysis undertaken, is a limited one. Nevertheless, it argues that the reform is directed mainly at the redesign and reallocation of formal functions within the structure of the Administration (executive functions, consultative functions, management of resources), not resulting necessarily in a substantial reduction of welfare state functions. In doing so, it acknowledges the normative conception of the State underlying the reform and the possible need to review this conclusion in light of further developments.

On the Second Edition of Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert's Book : Public Management Reform : a Comparative Analysis. This article is a commentary on the second edition of the reference work on public management by Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert, Public Management Reform : A Comparative Analysis. This second edition contains so much fresh material in terms of updating and new ideas that it is practically a new book. Along with a comparative analysis by subject and a detailed study of the twelve OECD Member States, the author comments on some of the basic themes of the book, such as the possibility of exporting successful reforms from one state to another and under what conditions, or the need to find the right balance point between the tensions that any (attempt at) reform will produce or reveal (reducing the size of the administration while increasing its efficiency), or finally, the autocratic nature of evaluation, part and parcel of any serious reform.