Contenu du sommaire : La réforme de l'Etat et la nouvelle gestion publique : mythes et réalités

Paradoxes of Public Management Reform : the UK Experience. This article offers a critical evaluation of NPM in the context of developments in the UK over the last two decades or so. It approaches this evaluation from a very specific perspective – that of what might be called “paradoxical systems theory”. The author suggests two fundamental polarities in public management. The first is the paradox between centralisation and accountability on the one side and decentralisation and involvement on the other. The second polarity is between rational choice and decision making and judgement and compromise. If these two paradoxical pairs are combined resulting four ‘types'can represent the four paradoxical models which underpin the New Public Management : let the politicians decide; let managers manage; let customers choose; let stakeholders participate. The tensions between them will not go away. The only real issue is how best to manage these contradictions.

State Reform in Brazil : the Influence of New Public Management. In order to examine the implementation of New Public Management principles in Brazil, one must go back to the origins of the Brazilian state. The historical approach shows that NPM principles were put into practice mainly between 1995 and 2000, during the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a period which saw the broad privatization of public services, the setting up of regulatory agencies and an evaluation system, the development of electronic administration, etc. This reform program was not as successful as it could have been, in particular because it did not have the support of the governmental structure. Nonetheless, what it did achieve was to trigger debate on the necessity of reforming the state apparatus.

True and False Changes in European Administrations. The distinction between true and false changes involves a study of contemporary history that poses huge problems : the absence of chronological correspondence from one country to another, and particularly that of measurement tools and yardsticks with which to make useful comparisons in time or in space : even in the case where a comparative analysis in quantitative terms could provide significant results, the broader the field of analysis, the more difficult it becomes to obtain data. The elaboration of a matrix for the classification of administrative reforms and its application to various cases makes it possible to refine the analysis of change and to look more deeply into the notion of true and false changes.

Mere Improvement or Transforming modernisation ? Reform of the Administration of the European Commission. If the need for change and improvement in the Commission's ways of working became evident as of 1979, the reform process began with the Santer Commission. Although the public management reform seems to focus on reducing personnel and expenses, it goes further in the sense of modernization : budgetary reforms aim at budgeting results and performance; emphasis is put on individual responsibility and evaluation and on a more flexible approach to personnel management, strategic planning, and transfer of authority.

Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe : an Emerging Model sui generis or a Derivative of Different European Traditions. The development in central and eastern Europe of new systems of public administration has raised interest among a number of specialists. Paradoxically however, the first years of the reform showed a lack of New Public Management elements. Only with the introduction of reforms in the Baltic States and the change of orientation in Hungary in the mid 1990s was there a significant turning point : in order to face the economic crisis, some elements of managerial reform were introduced in the administrative system, though without deeply modifying its structure. The role of administrative capacity in the European Union's admission criteria for central and eastern European countries will favor change, however limited its impact.

Should we Abandon or Strengthen the Weberian State ? The merchant economy model, new public management, and network governance tend to blur the Weberian state model. Nonetheless, the imperatives of democratic control, of accountability and responsibility — the basic principles underlying the professionalism and ethics of civil servants — take priority over the efficiency emphasized by the merchant model and “democratization” promised by “new governance”. Contrary to what is often heard, the Weberian model continues to serve as a basis for reforms. But it is especially in its links with democracy that it remains most useful today.

The Crisscrossing Functions of Lawyer and Manager in French State Reform Policy. The French experience of state reform, especially since the Rocard directive, shows that two concurrent rationales inform and structure both the space and the time in which public administrations redeploy. Interaction between law and management is a constant, and it is on the various combinations of the two, generating change but also blockage, that the nature of the new administration depends. Whether it concerns different modes of organization and decision-making or forms of supervision, the crisscrossing demands of law and performance play an important role in redesigning the institutional identity of the state.

Reform or Re-Form the Projected Administrations in African Countries ? Between Routine Antipolitics and Political Engineering. Since the mid 1970s, the states and administrations projected in African countries have been subjected to reform procedures as intensive as they are contradictory. A general agreement on the architecture of the state apparatus, summed up in “The Washington Consensus” or in documents produced by the OECD's PUMA at the end of the 1990s, approved and legitimized the options chosen by the structural adjustment plans and techniques linked with New Public Management. This reform however, built around an outspoken refusal of a system dominated by politics and grounded in the strategic games of decision-makers of rich and poor countries alike, is all the more uncertain not only due to the insistence on a purely developmentalist and externalized understanding of change, but to a continual change of tools and theoretical orientations as well. Faced with these difficulties, it seems evident that institutional engineering should be given back its political and social dimension.

Reform or Recompose the State ? Sociopolitical Aspects of a Coming Mutation. In the past few years, the question of state reform has become increasingly important in France. Administrative reform aimed at internal improvement of the bureaucracy was followed by reforms of another dimension entirely, calling into question the very nature of the state's relations with civil society. The convergence of France with other European countries on this issue should not be taken for a resolution of all differences between them ; however, one cannot but note the presence of a common doctrine based on the conjunction of a liberal philosophy of the state and a critical reappraisal of the civil service. A sociopolitical reading of state reform shows however that this whole process in fact corresponds to the recomposition of a complex system of institutional orders which do not all obey to the same norms or time schedules. Thus it seems difficult to discern the appearance of a “model” which would work for all actors.

History of Public Governance in the Netherlands. Underlying the diverse traditions of post-war public governance are the secular traditions of corporatism, polarisation, and consensus that characterized the Republic in the 19th and 20th centuries. An analysis of types of public governance therefore calls for historical research. However, such research cannot limit itself to the mere description of developments in the state and in policy : state, policy and governance can only be well understood in a socio-cultural, socio-economic, and socio-juridical context.

The End of the Nation-State. The evolution of local systems in the various European countries is characterized by the strong increase of regionalism and at the same time, by greater flexibility in the distribution of normative competences among different levels. This evolution is not uniform, since in the beginning at least, these systems are shaped in accordance with a national rationale. However, the development of European integration and of the subsidiarity principle tend to standardize this evolution, and in so doing, challenge if not the nation-state, at least its traditional way of functioning.

Reform of a Stateless State ? Change in the American Government. The administrative apparatus of the United States has seen important reforms in the past decades. However, they have not given rise to significant changes in the state : they rather represent a break in continuity within a well established tradition of the state in the United States. That the United States has not introduced as extensive reforms as the United Kingdom or New Zealand during this period is in part due to the fact that managerial changes brought in elsewhere were to a certain extent already present and well integrated in the administrative culture of the US.

Governance, a New State Paradigm ? Although governance is a broad concept, it is also an analyzer which enables us to apprehend changes in ways of exercising power in contemporary societies, and particularly in classical governing techniques. This is because the concept of governance goes beyond the notion of state government and includes the ideas of refoundation and readaptation of the state. Governance thus shows that the state exists in a context of structural interdependence requiring it to renew in depth its modes of action and principles of organization.

The Constitutional Anchoring of Territorial Authorities : Between Innovations and Complexities. The constitutional Act no 2003-276 of March 28,2003 considerably strengthens the constitutional support of local authorities. Besides a complete rewriting of articles 72-74 of the Constitution and minor modifications of other articles, six new articles have been added. However, if it introduces real innovations, such as those relating to the status of the DOM (French overseas departements) or to local democracy, it also contains measures of principle integrated into the Constitution in order to guarantee their efficiency; this is particularly the case of article 72-2 concerning the resources of local authorities.