WS43 – Civil service managers

Workshop presentation

In China and in Europe, above and beyond political and administrative traditions very different from one continent to another and from one country to another, public administration, as much at the national as local level, has taken on increasing and considerable importance. This has resulted for example, within the European Union, in regular growth in the share of national wealth devoted to the functioning of the public authorities. The concrete functioning of administrations, above and beyond the political choices they have to implement, has a considerable impact on the life of societies. Yet it seems that not all the efforts have been made to think out the ability of the administration to manage societies and complex problems. Administrative machinery often suffers from great lethargy, as does the method of training the administrative elite. Yet, administrative functioning is decisive for the quality of governance. The administration has often been defined as a simple cogwheel in implementing political choices defined outside of it and, for this reason, is deprived of the power and duty of thinking out its own reform by itself. Despite the repeated criticisms of bureaucracies – corruption, authoritarianism, compartmentalised vision of problems, ignorance of the complexity of realities, weak productivity, etc. – rare are the countries that have undertaken a thorough reform of how administrative machinery operates. But this reform cannot be purely conceived and set in motion from the outside; it implies in-depth reflection and in-depth involvement by the administrative machinery itself.

This workshop will be the occasion to provide an opportunity of reflection for administration officials on these essential subjects.