Contenu du sommaire : L'administration du développement.

The main tendancies of public administration evolution in the developing countries. Public administration in the developing countries must meet a double challenge which is an unstable international environment and a swift moving society. Throughout the recent years, some improvements have been reached in the field of planning, financial institutions, and economic and social actions performed by the means of public enterprises. Nevertheless, the increasing in State undertaking makes necessary deep changes. A new distribution of powers is essential between, on the one hand the central level, bound to forecasting, planning and inspection and, on the other hand, the various decision centers, close to the citizens. The main effort is still to be done in the field of civil servants training.

Public administration of developing countries and socio-cultural environment. The administrations of developing countries have evolved out of an administrative kernel they had inherited from the colonial times. The transformations which are meant to adjust this inheritance to the new missions of the State bring about a differentiation and over-burdening of structures. The major characteristics are an over concentration of powers and the development of actual administrative fiefs deriving from the coincidence of ethnic variations with disarticulated structures. On the other hand, administration is reduced to a mediatory role, while its dominating function is challenged and rejected by the population. Such a weakened administration can hardly get out of this predicament but by a stronger image of the State. It is only through the restructuring of the State as a whole that the three crisis with which it is confronted can be overcome : those of identity, legitimacy, and distribution.

Administrative reform for economic and social development (1976-1982). Structural and functional reorganisation of the Mexican public Administration, put underway by the present Government, has given rise to a critical analysis of present structures. It has been sparked off essentially through the explicit political push and power of the Republic's President. One of the main tasks is to overcome resistance to change that persists at various levels so as to continue the decentralization process of decisions which is still overcentralised and to arrive at real coordination of public actions both vertically and horizontally or territorially. Similarly, a more significant impulse has to be given to institutional reforms, which officers at ail levels are in charge of, so as to be able to rely on efficient programming, control, evaluation, communication and decision-making procedures. In order to render such a transformation of the administrative machinery successful over the short and medium term, it is quite important to have this effort shared by the people who matter in the administration.

Governmental and administrative organization directed towards the national development process — the case of Brazil. Over the past years, the Brazilian governmental and administrative organization has been exposed to a series of substantial changes which have contributed to accelerating the national developmental process. The author analizes three of them : the significant strengthening of the Union in the Brazilian federation, the steadily increasing leverage force of the Executive over the Legislative, and the rapid and significant growth of indirect or decentralized federal administration vis-à-vis direct or centralized administration.

Development, territorial administration and people's participation — The Senegalese case (1966-1977). The Senegalese example is quite remarkable, yet it has no model value. Its remarkable nature results from the fact that for the last eighteen years the rules of the country have consistently looked for formulae and Systems which are meant both to bring innovation and to stay within the ambit of African traditions. Maybe public administration's major defect is to cling to traditional structures and attitudes, however this is not the case with Senegal which gives also an example through its capacity to build up a System on the basis of collective effort within the framework of a liberal regime. But it has no model value, since a model has no value. Senegal has practically no problems of division or ethnic rivalry which upset so many African countries. It is precisely this feature which has made the achievement of decentralized structures possible without jeopardizing the country's unity. When looking at the future of Senegalese rural communities, one in fact is led to take them as the basis, both in a political and architectural sense of the term, for the whole of developmental policy ; they are, indeed, the prime factor of democratic and liberal construction, and yet they are also the closest to the socio-cultural tradition of Senegal and the "négritude" so dear to Léopold Senghor.

Administration and development : the case of South Korea. Developmental objectives have to follow two stages : in the first place, development of administration itself, in the second place, developmental administration as stage of action. The study of the socio-cultural environment and the political System of Southern Korea shows various factors which affect more or less directly the developmental process : authoritarianism, sectarism, coexistence of several value Systems... The evolution of structures is characterized by the development of planning bodies and higher centralization. Despite efforts undertaken, reform endeavors have not sufficiently adhered to developmental objectives, nor taken into account the weaknesses of the administrative machinery.

The public service problem in rural areas. In order to keep abreast of the evolutionary process, our administrative System has to face the fundamental and urgent problem of conceiving a new organization of public services and adapting their conditions of establishment and functioning to the constraints of under-populated rural areas. The problem's link with the forthcoming development of local government tasks sets it in the context of current events, for indeed the growing tasks of Communes and Departments, the decrease of technical standards and the globalization of the financial assistance of the State prompt the need for a redefinition of the roe of administrations, in particular on the local level. For such a redefinition the service organization is one of the major but not exclusive aspects, since there is also, just as important, the necessary improvement of the welcome service and even more so the information of the public, and the better relations policy between administration and users, for which the need is being felt every day more strongly.