Contenu du sommaire : Généalogies de la réforme de l'Etat

Introduction

Entrepreneurs de réforme et innovations organisationnelles dans l'entre-deux-guerres

• Les offices en France sous la Troisième République. Une réforme incertaine de l'administration - Alain Chatriot, chargé de recherche au CNRS, CRH – Approches historiques des mondes contemporains p. 635
  Offices in France under the Third Republic : an uncertain reform of the administration. Between the First and Second World Wars, the question of offices was doubtless one of the most important topics of French administrative and economic debate. Behind the diversity of institutional forms involved, the issues raised concerned the administrative and budgetary organisation of the state and how it would adapt to new economic functions. The article examines the origin and development of these heterogeneous administrative structures before and during World War I and during the 1920s. The office created in 1924 to produce fertilizers, in particular its subsequent misadventures, serve to illustrate why this new institutional form was contested and to better understand the task of the Offices Commission in charge of reforming these structures. The commission's determination to rationalise did not however prevent the creation of new offices, including the important Wheat Office in 1936.
• L'État vu d'en haut : La réforme de l'État au sein des espaces internationaux de la science administrative dans l'entre-deux-guerres - Renaud Payre, maître de conférences, Unité mixte de recherche CNRS « Triangle », Université Lyon II p. 651
  The state seen from above : state reform in the international spheres of administrative science between the First and Second World Wars. The article studies international exchanges during the first half of the 20th century aimed at elaborating an administrative science. These exchanges have for a long while seemed too technical or too practical to arouse much interest; the author considers them here from the point of view of their intellectual coherence. Administrative science refers to – as much as it goes along with – the transformation in relationships between political, economic, and social matters. The article observes these changes from an international point of view, emphasising an international milieu of academics and high-level civil servants dedicated to state and administrative reform.
• L'État moderne, une contribution originale des fonctionnaires des finances à la réforme de l'État (1928-1940) - Florence Descamps, maître de conférences en histoire à l'École pratique des hautes études p. 667
  L'État Moderne, an original contribution to state reform of the civil servants of the Finance Ministry (1928-1940). In the constellation of 1930s reform groups, L'État Moderne had a very distinct character. Both a discussion club and a specialized review that made an original contribution to thought on state reform – its sole subject of analysis and action – it consisted mainly of mid-level civil servants in the Finance Ministry actively involved in civil servants unions. The variety and practical nature of their proposals for reform in matters concerning taxation, the budget, accounting, parliament, institutions and administration show the determination of this group of technicians to turn their competencies to the management of public affairs and thus contribute to the renewal of the state model at a time when the parliamentary regime had been weakened by the war.

La difficile rationalisation de l'administration sous la quatrième république

• La réforme qui n'a jamais eu lieu : projets et réformes administratives en Italie et en France en 1943-1948 - Giovanni Focardi, chercheur associé et chargé de cours, Département d'histoire, faculté de lettres et de philosophie, Université de Padoue p. 679
  The reform that never took place : projects and administrative reforms in Italy and France 1943-48. Our intention here is to analyse a few main themes of the reform in public administration in Italy and France after the Second World War, in particular its primary goal – to democratise the administration –, its far-reaching effects and its protagonists, The reorganisation of the new political regimes was necessary, all the more so as they had to be a symbolic and legal demarcation from those preceding. It proved to be a decisive period for republican Italy, one that would influence its institutional history for many years to come. The prosopographical study of the members of various reform commissions (with their different profiles and socio-biographical experiences) reveals facts that could explain certain differences between the political and judiciary culture of the Italians and that of the French.
• L'impossible renouveau du modèle préfectoral sous la quatrième République - Patrick Le Lidec, Chargé de recherches au CNRS, Centre d'études et de recherches de science administrative (CERSA), Université Paris II p. 695
  The impossible renewal of the prefectoral model under the Fourth Republic. Since the law of 28 Pluviose, year VIII, prefects have been charged with the prestigious role of representing the whole of the French government and of coordinating public action on the local level. Despite constitutional recognition of their role in 1946, prefects have nonetheless seen a sharp decline in their authority and coordination capacities. The article suggests three explanations for this decline and analyses the reasons for the failure of attempts at reform undertaken in the 1940s and 50s in the aim of renewing the function.
• L'Institut technique des Administrations publiques, entrepreneur militant de la productivité administrative (1947-1968) - Jeanne Siwek-Pouydesseau, directrice de recherche, Centre d'études et de recherches de science administrative (CERSA), Université Paris II p. 711
  L'Institut Technique des Administrations Publiques, militant entrepreneur of administrative productivity (1947-1968). This article analyses the creation and role of the Institut technique des administrations publiques (ITAP), set up in 1947 by Jean Milhau, expert in organisation and founder of CEGOS (Commission générale d'organisation scientifique du travail) before the war. Among the bodies promoting reform during the Fourth Republic, played an important role centred on productivist methods and theories that could be applied to the administration. ITAP was a private association with the aim of studying the techniques of public administration, making them more productive, and proposing its collaboration with official entities in charge of furthering the improvement of working methods. The article examines the conditions under which ITAP was created and its unusual mode of functioning : in the context of the semaines de l'Administré (users'weeks), an original idea at the time, it asked for suggestions from users of public services, but was also one of the first to organise training courses for top-level civil servants until the 1970s.

Un jeu redistribué sous la cinquième république : nouvelles formes et nouveaux acteurs de la réforme de l'Etat

• Publiciser et politiser la question administrative : généalogie de la réforme néo-libérale de l'État dans les années 1970 - Philippe Bezes, chargé de recherche au CNRS, Centre d'études et de recherches de science administrative (CERSA), Université de Paris II p. 721
  Publicising and politicising administrative issues : genealogy of the reform of the neo-liberal state in the 1970s. The 1970s are an important period for our understanding of the contemporary phenomenon of state reform. During that period, three dynamics contributed to the notion of the administration as a “public problem”. The press increasingly decried bureaucracy, devoting page after page to the only remedy for it, administrative reform. This made for a publicising and “socialising” of administrative matters, previously shaped only by internal issues of the state apparatus. During the same period, the administration also became a subject of political importance, at the core of a two-sided electoral competition with rightand left-wing programmes. Inherent in this politicisation was the demand for greater control of the administration by elected representatives. Then, New Public Management and its neo-liberal recipes began making their way to top-level administration and feeding into various reform positions, as testified to by the writings of high-level civil servants published in the 1970s. These partially independent but nonetheless interwoven elements continued to shape and naturalise “state reform”, the critical attention paid to the functioning and arcane complexities of administrative machinery.
• Le consulting et l'État : une analyse comparée de l'offre et de la demande - Denis Saint-Martin, professeur agrégé de science politique, département de Science politique, Université de Montréal p. 743
  Consulting and the state : a comparative analysis of supply and demand. This article examines the growing importance of management consultants in state reform from the point of view of supply and demand. Although they vary from one country to another, the size of the state, the openness of the consulting system in matters of policy-making, and the reforms inspired by New Public Management, have all contributed to the increase in demand for consulting services within public administration. On the supply side, the author examines three factors : the development of the consulting industry, the marketing strategies used by consultants to promote their products, and finally the efforts at representation made by consultants to build networks of contacts with government decision-makers. If consultants have contributed to the “privatisation” of government, it is paradoxical to note that their more or less intimate relationship with the government has turned them into less “private” and more “public” actors than they were previously.
• Les pannes de la déconcentration : L'échec du rapprochement des directions départementales de l'Équipement et des directions départementales de l'Agriculture et de la Forêt en 1993 - Patrice Duran, professeur des universités, directeur du département desciences sociales, École normale supérieure de Cachan, Institut des sciences sociales du politique, CNRS p. 757
  Devolvement breakdowns : the failure to establish closer links between the departmental directorates for urban development and the departmental directorates for agriculture and forestry in 1993. Starting with the failure of the attempt to establish closer links between the departmental directorates for urban development and the departmental directorates for agriculture and forestry in 1993, the article aims to throw light on the delicate situation of devolved services after the decentralisation process begun in 1982 and the difficulty of finding an adequate response in the context of an active reform policy. Given the importance of the services concerned, there is much to be learned from this example. Not only does it make a point of the nature and quality of the piloting process of any reform, but reminds us that devolved services cannot be reorganised without giving serious thought first of all to how the administrative organisation will function, given today's means of public action, and secondly, without defining the missions themselves of the devolved state. Lacking real support, devolved administrations today must bear with the present more than they are able to contribute to their future in a context of action where devolvement is no longer a simple affair. In a country where the now devolved services had been the pillars of a centralised state, “devolvement breakdowns” are revelatory of a deep mutation of the state itself, which neither researchers nor those involved on a practical level can disregard.
• Le cercle ou la spirale ? Remarques en forme de conclusion - Marc Olivier Baruch, directeur d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Centre de recherche historique – Approches historiques des mondes contemporains (CRH-AHMOC) p. 777