Luc Rouban

Reform without doctrine: public management in France

Purpose – This paper aims to give an overview of the public management process in France and tries to explain why it is specific as compared to other countries.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based upon a sociological and comparative methodology. It reports the empirical findings of a European survey.Findings – Management reforms in France are fragmented and do not fit in a general doctrine or a new philosophy of the state. The French managerial reform style is due to the domestication of management tools by Napoleonic structures. Nevertheless, management innovations are used in order to draw new frontiers within public administration between what is the centre and what is the periphery.Research limitations/implications – The methodology as well as the findings of the paper could be used for a more systematic comparative work in order to understand why and how public management tools fit in national political as well as professional traditions. There is scope for connecting public management re...

Back to the nineteenth century: the managerial reform of the French civil service

The French civil service managerial reform initiated in 2007 was supposed to establish a brand new professional world where civil servants would be called to use new public management (NPM) methodology and tools in order to be more efficient and accountable. The final goal was to ‘privatize’ civil servants at least partially. Beyond the economic argument in a time of deep fiscal crisis, the rationale of the reform was political and philosophical, to eliminate the specificity of the civil service. The implementation of the reform and a massive reduction in force have produced systematic conflicts with unions, and most managers have rejected measures that had been designed to foster their individual motivation. A central argument of this article is to show that the values of this NPM reform run counter to those of a majority of civil servants and that public management is not politically neutral. Another argument, based on empirical surveys, is to demonstrate that this reform is of a conservative nature, designed to reinforce traditional hierarchies within the State bureaucracy. Finally, the so-called modernity of public management has produced an involution regression toward the social and professional structures of the nineteenth century.

Public Administration and Political Change— Introduction

This issue of International Political Science Review is devoted to the analysis of recent trends and reforms in Western countries’ public administrations. For most laymen, and unfortunately for some political scientists, public administration studies generally mean subtle technical studies of boring people doing boring things. Political life seems to prosper outside the bureaucratic world, in the streets and TV shows where ideological debates and fights for electoral success become objects of anguish

Political-Administrative Relations

In the past two decades political-administrative relations have been at the heart of civil service reform in most industrialized countries. Many civil service reforms are dedicated to improve responsiveness to citizens and to enhance sensitivity to budget savings and national economic constraints in a time of globalization, market pressure and competitiveness. Often referred to as new public management (NPM), these NPM (personnel) reforms are essentially political, aiming at changing the balance of power between politics and public administration (Peters and Piene, 2001).

Politics in France and Europe

Political Representation in Crisis P.Perrineau Political Values and Attitudes in Europe E.Schweisguth Religion and Politics J.Donegani Gender and Politics J.Mossuz-Lavau Young People and Politics A.Muxel Interest Groups in France and in Europe E.Grossman Unions and Politics G.Groux Political and Administrative Elites L.Rouban The Media and the Search for Political Information A.Mercier What Remains of the Class Vote? N.Mayer The Green Movement D.Boy Socialism in Europe H.Rey The Political Right in France and Europe F.Haegel National-Populism P.Perrineau France and Europe L.Rouban

The road to anomie: the rise and decline of public service unions in France

Abstract This article attempts to demonstrate that public service industrial relations in France are closely linked to a historical model that has its roots in the construction of the Republican system as early as 1880. The historical resilience of this model distinguishes it sharply from the one developed in the private sector which is much more related to the defence of the industrial working class. Public service unions emerged as a Left political force in the 1920s and still retain this function in the twenty-first century. Since 1946, civil service unions have developed a representation role of a political nature that challenges the political class. This article argues that the specificity of public service industrial relations is connected in France with a political conception of the employment relationship in the civil service. Therefore, new public management has failed to take root. However, unions are facing a serious crisis because they cannot curb the austerity policies pursued by both Right and Left governments. They have been forced to adopt a defensive strategy while civil servants are turning increasingly to the Far Right.

Political-Administrative Relations: Evolving Models of Politicization

Since the late 1990s, political-administrative relations have suffered from contradictory trends in most industrialized countries. On the one hand, the New Public Management (NPM) reform wave has produced an ambiguous situation made of both politicization and managerial ‘neutralization’ of the traditional civil service. On the other hand, one may wonder whether the fiscal crisis, which hit most European countries especially on the shores of the Mediterranean after 2008, has not created a new situation where bureaucrats could regain some of their influence on the policy-making process owing to their ability to handle economic and budget questions. Two factors make the assessment of these two interrelated variables even more difficult. The first one is that the fiscal crisis is more recent than the NPM reforms, whose first effects have been observed since the mid-1990s. The second one is that the fiscal crisis is an additional problem which can either feed the NPM reform, in order to save money, or amplify role conflicts between bureaucrats and politicians in a period of scarcity and low public trust. We consider here that NPM has more to do with the political-administration relations than the fiscal crisis itself since it supports a new theory of bureaucracy which is partially at the starting point of the fiscal crisis.