Contenu du sommaire

A philosophy of french nationalizations Three trends of very various origin seem to have met to convey to French public corporations their status and present image : a legal, a political, and a more recent yet not less efficient technocratical trend. After analyzing the impact of these various trends, the author shows that it is the combined effect, producing at times unexpected results, of such different forces which explains the contradictions encountered ail along the making of what is now known as the public sector, and its uncertain boundaries and provides an illustration of rather than a solution to the problems encountered by its functioning.

Diversification in public corporations Not to be confused with neighbouring concepts such as integration and affiliation, diversification obtains when an agency ventures into new activities not forming part of its traditional tasks. Considering that some operations belong to integration rather than to diversification and that others represent true diversifications but are more endured than intended, it becomes evident that actual diversifications are less frequent than it might appear and are explained by an industrial constraint common to both public and private sectors, ie. the imperative of evolution which no manager can ignore whatsoever. This however presupposes in turn the possibility for such managers of enjoying at the same time a certain autonomy to fix their strategies and choose the means for reaching the planned targets. That is why autonomy of management has to be the rule and State intervention only the exception.

Legal issues of tunisian public corporations The relations between the State and public corporations have reached a difficult stage. Are their structures still adequate ? Is their management approach confident ? A re-alignment on several counts is claimed : a clarification of legal classification ; an adjustment of the legal framework to the various activities undertaken ; a better coordination of public groupings. The legal instruments of an efficient and responsible autonomy should be given to the public corporations whose financial capacity ought to enable them to be at the service of users.

Legislation based on a “third generation of human rights” A whole series of laws issued in 1978 and 1979 embodies a fundamental right to information or delineates a'third generation of human rights'. Although the various texts had been commented on piecemeal in the past, no synthetic study on them has been available thus far. The author has attempted to fill this gap by analyzing one by one the different common features of this legislation, its inter-relations, and the novelty of telematics. This study shows that, whatever the ‘generation', these laws conferring rights to individuals need, in order to become actually applicable, a fundamental political intent operating right down to the base and as the result of custom which takes time to shape up. The ‘third generation' rights are still beset by teething troubles, which means that their application will have to evolve with time ; they will reach maturity at a later stage... if ever, according to society and the whims of EDP, telematics and the audiovisual media.

Management and the principle of legality By tradition, the legitimacy of intervention of Public Power is mainly based on the regularity of proceedings, which is demonstrated by the principle of legality of administrative action as evidenced by the various countries' public laws. The adoption by administration of new managerial techniques upsets considerably the traditional framework. Based on the existence of strict legal principles governing structures and means, our administration attempts to innovate by transposing the modem management techniques of the private sector to meet its own ends. This results in questioning the further applicability of the principle of legality of yore and requires not only a growing awareness of the dangers such an adoption is bound to entail, but also the retrieval of the value principles of modem management.

The countervailing forces in French administration French administration is shaken by opposing forces which have to be articulated rather than distinguished, since a distinction would contribute to shaping them into two separate realities put side by side, but one incapable of explaining the other. With this in view, the author researches an explaining principle and the components for a theoretical model showing the reasons why French administration is committed to play an active political part on account of the more or less obvious functions it has to assume in the French political System and also by reason of its relations with the social body, the economic System, and what the author calls the ‘French cultures' (meaning the cultural System).

The bureaucratical crisis We are living in a growingly uncertain context. The quick change imposed on societies has entailed an imbalance of traditional arrangements and has rendered, to say the least, inoperative the established rules for resolving conflicts. Our democratic industrial societies are experiencing a bureaucratical crisis. To overcome this, the author, after discussing its various aspects, proposes a strategy of change. According to him, the problem is not so much passiveness and inertia in our present societies than the lack of an organizing principle of these reactions. The problem is not so much a lack of resources than a lack of leverage and the impossibility, resulting there from, of branching these resources to the regulatory Systems. Yet in order to overcome this difficulty, trust ought to be put onto Man, the only true innovator ; there is no point in attempting to regulate for him everything down to the minutest detail.

The prevalence of public management principles in the American administration : e.g. the civil service reform act of 1978 After a short description of the development and present situation of the US public administration, the author discusses the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act which explicitly purports to change in-depth the behaviour of the US Civil Service, to transform a bureaucracy into an efficient body likely to meet satisfactorily the requirements of the political power and the administered. This analysis of the recent reform of the American Civil Service shows the ways along which moves the new public management which operates unquestionably under the key-words “targets” and “participation”.

The impact of French planning on Third World countries since 1960 Since the early 60's, the impact of French planning on the Third World has passed through several stages, the first of which lasted for some ten years and was marked by the recognition of French thinking and experience in this field. A second stage of disillusionment followed with the growing awareness of both the importance of under-developmental problems and the specificity of developmental issues. After discussing these two stages, the author attempts to show that a third stage is shaping up which, in France, is intimately linked up with a new approach to planning. The third stage could be characterized by a convergent interest in planning taking a greater account of long term issues of a society whose needed changes have to be brought about under immediate exterior constraints