Construire des bureaucraties wébériennes à l’ère du New Public Management ?
Philippe Bezes
Starting with a broad review of the literature devoted to
administrative reforms in a process of democratization, the article identifies
the various political uses these reforms involve: appropriation of the apparatus for exercising power, organizational streamlining to produce collective
goods, control of administrative resources according to a clientelistic
rational, concern for legitimation with respect to international funding and
development organizations. As it analyzes the conditions in which the three
competing repertoires of reform (“Weberian” bureaucratic model, decentralized state, new public management), the article examines the ambiguities of
these recipes and examines the issues, the limits and the effects of manipulating them. It especially points up the institutional entrenchment of the
reforms and their dependence on administrations inherited from authoritarian regimes that shape and constrain attempts to transform administrative
systems in a democratic context.
• La « mise en forme » des systèmes administratifs dans les processus de
démocratisation : un point aveugle des recherches et des expertises tardivement redécouvert
• L’ambiguïté des reformatages administratifs : construire des bureaucraties wébériennes avec les recettes du New Public Management ?
• Comprendre les usages de la réforme de l’administration : la force des
enjeux politiques
• Le poids des héritages administratifs (legacies) sur les réformes