About `Responsive, responsible and respected government
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852307075687 |
| Published date | 01 March 2007 |
| Author | Marcel Pochard |
| Date | 01 March 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
About ‘Responsive, responsible and respected government:
towards a New Public Administration theory’ by Jocelyne
Bourgon
Marcel Pochard
The exercise proposed by Jocelyne Bourgon is most stimulating as it amounts to
nothing less than developing a ‘new’ theory of public administration.
Let us begin by saying that we very largely agree with her analysis: the classical
theory of public administration, although it has not completely lost its relevance, far
from it, is due for a thorough renewal for which the theory of ‘new public manage-
ment’ of the 1980s, modelled on private management, is no substitute; this renewal
is supposed to introduce a new basis for public action, and in particular a fuller
acknowledgement of the notion of citizenship and a more ambitious concept of that
notion.
What we would like to insist upon in this debate opened by Jocelyne Bourgon is
an additional element which, in our opinion, should enter into consideration in order
to fully extend the scope of the ideas being discussed. This additional element
depends on the actual missions of public authority (the state and public administra-
tion) being performed in the world of today and the world to come, since the nature
of these missions largely determines the conditions desirable for their fulfilment.
Mme Bourgon’s thinking clearly starts from a public authority mission limited to a
direct or indirect service to the citizen in response to his quasi-daily needs. The state
certainly does have that mission in our world, not least because of citizens’ growing
needs in the areas of security, solidarity, assistance and services of all kinds.
But the role of the state today as well as tomorrow, and probably even more so
tomorrow, goes beyond that. The state has missions even more demanding and
compelling which consist in ensuring the control of all the forces and threats that
weigh upon the world and are very varied and formidable: — the power of ideologies
or extremisms of all kinds, especially religious, whose strength and depravity we
Marcel Pochard is Councillor of State, Conseil d’Etat, Paris. Translated from the French version
entitled ‘A propos de “Un Gouvernement flexible, responsable et respecté. Vers une ‘nouvelle’ théorie
de l’administration publique” de Jocelyne Bourgon’.
Copyright © 2007 IIAS, SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
Vol 73(1):27–29 [DOI:10.1177/0020852307075687]
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
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