Contenu du sommaire : Politiques publiques et innovation sociale

Politiques publiques et innovation sociale

• Avant-propos - Mme Marie-Christine Meininger, Rédactrice en chef p. 373
• Réflexion autour du concept d'innovation sociale - Approche historique et comparative - Mme Louise Dandurand, Présidente-directrice générale du Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture p. 377
  About the Concept of Social Innovation : a Historical and Comparative Approach. The author discusses the concept of social innovation from a chronological point of view : the notion first appeared in the early 1990s in the language of research, more precisely, in the universe of technology and in a market rationale. The idea came into the social domain in the late 1990s through managerial models of work organisation; it then expanded and was adapted to various sectors of activity. Thanks to a comparative approach, the author defends the idea that social innovation involves a plurality of actors : social actors first, then public policy makers, and finally, the protagonists in social science research.
• Politiques publiques et changement social - M. Jacques Chevallier, Professeur à l'Université de Paris II Panthéon-Assas, Directeur du CERSA-CNRS p. 383
  Public Policies and Social Change. Jacques Chevalier shows how public policies contribute to social change through a kind of apprenticeship. He begins by differentiating his point of view from two classical and opposed visions of public policies : one which overestimates the importance of state determinism and its capacity to initiate change; the other which underestimates it and claims that state action only accompanies social change. Although public policies are not the sole cause of social change, they nonetheless have an influence on social representations and behaviours, due to the fact that the conditions under which they are elaborated and put in place allow for a collective apprenticeship of change.
• Entre expérimentation et innovation - A propos d'une expérimentation en cours dans le cadre de la protection de l'enfance - M. Michel Chauvière, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, CERSA-Université de Paris II Panthéon-Assas p. 391
  Between Experimentation and Innovation About an Ongoing Experiment in the Context of Child Protection. The author's intention is to help clarify these two ideas. Innovation is concerned with how new ideas come about and spread : beginning with a single actor and an empirical action, they then enter into a second phase in which they are appropriated by society. Experimentation consists of testing a new idea by means of a scientific type of methodology, with a protocol technique of evaluation, verification and validation of results. Michel Chauvière gives the example of a five-year experiment in the field of child protection introduced by the law of August 2004 on local responsibilities. He discusses the difficulties raised by the experiment and concludes that they are linked to the relative lack of preparation, both in terms of discussion of the underlying political issues involved, which paradoxically are nothing new, and in terms of the way they are carried out, which does not sufficiently take into consideration the fact that experimentation itself is a learning process.
• Territoires et innovation sociale - L'exemple des politiques sociales et sanitaires locales - Mme Patricia Loncle, Chargée de recherche à l'Ecole nationale de la santé publique p. 399
  Territories and Social Innovation The example of Local Policies in the Areas of Social Affairs and Health. Patricia Loncle tackles the issue of social innovation in local policies, particularly in the areas of social affairs and health. Having first noted that local policies are said to be a response to a local specificity — a health or social problem particular to the territory in question — she then shows that over and beyond this appearance, they are in reality the result of highly developed networks between various social actors, to which are added certain political and administrative factors, such as a tradition of partnership intervention, the stability of political and administrative staff, and the absence of tensions between the various actors.

• Etudes

  • Au coeur du renouveau administratif : l'engagement institutionnel - Quelques enseignements empiriques tirés de l'expérience québecoise - MM. Bachir Mazouz, Professeur agrégé à l'Ecole nationale d'administration publique, Université du Québec, Benoit Tremblay, Professeur titulaire, HEC Montréal et Joseph Facal, Professeur invité, HEC Montréal p. 403
    At the Heart of Administrative Renewal : Institutional Commitment. A few Empirical Lessons Drawn from the Quebec Experience. The authors set out the main lines of the administrative reform introduced over a decade ago in Quebec. They begin by situating it in relation to important reforms brought in at the same time in other Canadian provinces, Alberta and Ontario. They then present the main transformation in the Quebec public sector, the contracting of public management. Since 1995, state institutions have had the possibility of taking engagements, in the form of “declarations of services to citizens”, of “strategic and operational management plans”, “performance and imputability agreements”, and “management agreements”. The authors begin by detailing the advantages and disadvantages of this new rationale based on results. On the positive side, there has been improvement in terms of strategic efficiency, sensitivity to performance, articulation between objectives and means, and collaboration or dialogue between the various managers. On the negative side, the authors say the reform has brought about an increase in administrative formalities and that as a general rule, some actors complain that the process of understanding and appropriating all that is involved is difficult and time-consuming, as is putting into practice the various management methods and tools.
  • La réforme de l'administration fédérale en Russie - Simple réaménagement ou transformation en profondeur ? - Mme Anne Gazier, Maître de conférences à l'Université Paris X Nanterre p. 421
    Reform of the Federal Administration in Russia : Simply a Rearrangement or a Radical Transformation ? In 2002, Russia launched an extensive federal administration reform policy. It was the first to make a deliberate break with the administrative system in place since the soviet era and was organised around sectorial ministries on one hand and intersectorial state committees on the other. State authorities first undertook a vast inventory of the functions entrusted to the federal organs of the executive power. Functions considered superfluous or redundant were suppressed, and those classified as indispensable — the only ones to be maintained — were divided into three categories : regulatory activity, management, and control. Each category was given to a category of organ. The first category went to the federal ministries, the second to the federal agencies, and the third to the federal services. The implementation of this new scheme ran into a number of limitations, the three main ones being : the fact that it was too rushed and gave rise to numerous disfunctions, that it offered no solution to old problems (in particular the maintenance of two off-category administrations : those of the president and of the government apparatus), and that it lacked a clear distribution of competencies between the three organ categories.
  • Peut-on mesurer la qualité des administrations publiques grâce aux indicateurs de gouvernance ? - M. Steven Van de Walle, Chercheur, Instituut voor de Overheid, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique p. 435
    Measuring Bureaucratic Quality in Governance Indicators. “Indicators of governance” designed for qualitative and comparative approaches of institutions in various countries are being increasingly used both in research and in political decision-making. These data, originally used mainly in academic analyses of economic growth, now has an influence on the conditions governing aid to development. Some groups of indicators contain measurements of the quality of public administrations, and could thus make it possible to compare table of administrative performance on an international level. However, the use of such data for this type of study remains rather limited, first of all because its validity is often contested, but also because of the difference between general research on public administration and research on development and/or economic growth (the latter two having been pioneers in the empirical use of these indicators). In addition, the fact that most of these indicators come from data collections for economists has been another obstacle to its use for public administration. However, the debate has been launched again thanks to recent publications featuring a comparative international study of public administrations. This article reviews the sources of the most frequently used data and discusses how the latter make it possible to measure the quality of public administration. It brings to light the strengths and weaknesses of these indicators and verifies their validity by comparing different international rankings. Finally, it gives a first preliminary ranking of OECD countries.
  • Valeurs et motivations dans le service public - Perspective comparative - Mme Annie Hondeghem, Professeur, Instituut voor de Overheid, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgique, et M. Wouter Vandenabeele, Chercheur, Instituut voor de Overheid, Katholieke Unviersiteit Leuven, Belgique p. 463
    Values and Motivation in Public Administration : Public Service Motivation in an International Comparative Perspective. Public service motivation (PSM) is an important variable within contemporary public administration, as it has been linked to various human resources processes in a public environment (eg. recruitment, performance, preference for incentives). It refers to motivational factors that are specific for government. It has been originally conceived as an American concept and therefore there are some difficulties in applying it to other (national) contexts. This article compares the original model of PSM by Perry to two other cases : France and the Netherlands. Next to the original dimensions of PSM (attraction to politics and policy-making, public interest, compassion and self-sacrifice), the authors distinguish five other dimensions (religion, equality, tradition in service delivery, technical competences and bureaucracy). These dimensions are presented in an extensive and comparative way. Although PSM proves to be a universal concept, both the French and the Dutch case display different elements. These observations provide support for a new institutionalist approach to public service motivation and to motivation in general. As such, they refute the narrow self-interested motivational bases of rational and public choice theories applied within new public management.
  • Les agents contractuels de la fonction publique territoriale française : de la précarité juridique à l'atout managérial ? - Mmes Isabelle Desbarats, Maître de conférences HDR à l'Université de Toulouse I et Sandrine Kopel, Maître de conférences HDR à l'Université de toulouse III p. 481
    Agents under Contract in the Territorial Public Service : Can a Precarious Legal Status Become a Managerial Asset ? The authors try to find the reasons underlying the following paradox : on one hand, by passing a series of measures, public authorities attempt to reduce the number of non-tenured agents, mainly because of their insecure legal status. They describe the precariousness of agents under contract in the territorial civil service, both in terms of their recruitment and career, and of their status, which is vague and incomplete. On the other hand however, the state employer does nothing to modify existing rules and regulations that allow for increased use of these agents, and thus does not seem to wish to relinquish the controlled use of labour that serves the purpose of being an adjustment variable. On the basis of a study of human resource management in a medium-sized commune, the authors show that the selfish interests which, due to their status, dominate the individual strategies of employees on short-term contracts, can serve the collective interest of greater efficiency in the human resource management of territorial staff. From the point of view of public managers, despite its present imperfections, the legal regime of agents under contract in fact allows for a flexibility of management advantageous to administrative reform, in the sense that agents are given more responsibility, competencies are more easily and quickly detected, and salaries better managed. From the agents'point of view, those on an administrative level at least, a certain number of advantages to some extent make up for the precariousness of their status, in particular the negotiation of their salary in terms of their competencies.

• Chroniques

  • Chronique de l'administration - Bénédicte Delaunay, Michel Le Clainche, Hervé Rihal et Luc Rouban p. 495
  • Chronique du secteur public économique - André G. Delon et Michel Durupty p. 515
  • Informations bibliographiques - Coordonnées par Frédéric Edel et François Lafarge p. 527