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The established fact? that of a dual paradox. The first: although we know the State is experiencing difficulties in numerous countries and that its reform is indispensable, what is observed is that State reforms which succeed are more generally those which take place in the best-equipped and the most developed countries and thus have, a priori, the least need. There is a glaring disparity with regard to reform one of the reports presented at the 7th World Forum of the United Nations on governance sheds light unequivocally on this subject2 between the rich and poor States, between the developed and less developed countries. The second paradox relates to those countries having undertaken to reform the State to cut back (lean State) or make it more modest, in keeping with Michel Croziers formula. These countries, we have observed, cannot succeed in such operations, usually carried out by such traditional means as privatization, deregulation, liberalization, etc. except if they are given the means and force3 when confronted with structural and functional upsets resulting from such reforms, notably to avoid being threatened or defeated by the emergence of corrupt practices, in the best case scenario, and by a process of disintegration, in the worst. We can summarize this idea by saying that to succeed in making a State a lean State, the first step is to ensure that it is (or remains or becomes) sufficiently strong. Thus, a twofold paradox which traditional theories are incapable of explaining. My hypothesis is that these theories, taken in the context of an approximate interpretation of a certain vulgate of the Weberian theory of the State, analyse mainly the strength of the State in terms of constraint and coercion. They see basically in the State a technical means to exercise public authority (the State as a monopoly of constraint) and then forget another important aspect of the theory of the State, on which Weber himself had nonetheless greatly insisted the necessary legitimacy of State action, the need to adhere to the authority that the State exercises (the legitimate constraint). It is this idea of legitimacy that should, it seems to me, be put at the centre of the analysis.4 And, in fact, I believe that today it is around this idea that attempts are being made to reinvent the State. I should thus like to put aside the Weberian vulgate and bring my analyses about reinventing the State to bear upon a more global theory perhaps that makes room for this idea of legitimacy: the theory of social norms a theory of rules that govern the conduct of societies societies for which inventing the State was, after all, only one of the means attempted to ensure normative management and aims to ensure the coordination of the behaviour of the members of the community as a whole. By doing this, I hope to be able to give a better account, first, of the nature of crises which have affected the functioning of contemporary societies societies for which inventing the State has been only one of the attempts to ensure its normative management (I); and then the direction of new attempts at reinventing the State tried in recent years (II) to remedy the situation.
provided a form for the functioning of contemporary societies one organizes societies on the basis of a dominant market model, the other ensures their functioning on a dominant State model. A. Obviously, these two concepts are structurally opposed. They both aim to ensure the coordination of conduct of members of the community; the two normative approaches differ fundamentally and work on the basis of models. In one, the market model, the normative approach is mainly a spontaneous one governing the functioning of the community: it results from activities directly linked to market prices. It provides a scenario in which an individual can make a rational choice between options whose consequences can be evaluated in terms of its particular utility.5 In this model, each member of the group becomes the partner of all the others and adopts spontaneously a certain kind of behaviour in virtue of a free decision of his own resulting from the rational evaluation that he gives to the mechanisms in question and the effects produced for himself/herself and each person among the group. On the contrary, the second kind of normative approach, the dominant State model, is based on an imposed normative approach. It sets the scene for a society whose members share community representation and are responsible for taking into account . . . norms of conduct in their dealings. Thus in the first model, the community phenomena are perceived as the unintentional result of individual decisions as a whole,6 whereas in the second model, the convergence of behaviour results from the existence of rules produced solely by the supreme decision-maker at the summit of the organization. The outcome is that the structures of coordination and community behaviour are very different: in one instance, that of the State, we have a centralized pyramidal and hierarchical institution, a kind of command and control a canonical expression found in Weberian bureaucracy; in the other, as individuals are left to their own destiny and have the freedom to adjust to situations in which they find themselves, a totally automatic and decentralized mechanism, characteristic of the free market, has been adopted. B. Nonetheless, these two concepts concerning a normative approach have some traits in common and attention should also be drawn to them. In fact both reflect extreme versions of the normative process. Extremes, first, by extrinsic means, the absolute exteriority of mechanisms that they provide: in the market model, the mechanism of prices; in the State model, the mechanism of rules two mechanisms over which members of the community have no direct control: in one because the mechanism of rules is imposed on all; in the other because the mechanism of prices in the market model eludes all. These two versions are also extremes by the total rationality of the institution that they envisage: for the State, the bureaucratic rationality theorized by Weber; for the market, the rationality of the decisionmaker symbolized by homo oeconomicus and conceptualized by the theory of economic competition. Lastly, these are extreme versions by the kind of optimum satisfaction that these theories assign to the institutions that they envisage the market and the State notably in their relations with and between members of the community and which are reflected in the prominent place of the concept of general interest in the theory of the State and, symmetrically, that of the concept of general balance in market theory. Thus, proceeding by an inversion of signs reversal and opposition of their structural characteristics these two versions of the
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normative approach nonetheless maintain integrally the optimization function which is central to both. 2. These two extreme versions of the traditional normative approach one spontaneous and the other imposed are, of course, two ideal visions of reality. However, even if ideal visions of reality, they are also inadequate and flawed. Neither knows how to take into account fully the flagrant deficiencies of the market related to competition laws that regulate it: agreements, mergers, abuse of dominant position, etc.; nor the deficiencies of State hierarchy and its incapacity to correct the excesses or tensions arising from the market place, notably via traditional means of regulation to safeguard the general interest. Market injustices, the impotence of the State: two kinds of crises affecting our societies and their normative processes. In reality, the oppositions on which they are constructed dissimulate quite badly the fact that both of these theories, adopting the same focal point, place at the centre of their analyses the same exclusive consideration of the efficiency technique. Optimization and rationalization are the key words common to both. And indeed it is due to market deficiencies and the impossibility of a spontaneous collective response to ensure the good functioning of societies that the imposed normative approach emerged; the theory of a State, owing to the deficiencies of its hierarchal organization, has proven to be hardly more capable of ensuring the appropriate functioning of society. We would be wrong to analyse such phenomena as purely technical crises. Market deficiencies, hierarchy deficiencies, these crises are not the sign of difficulties that can simply be remedied by modernizing or renovating the State. Doubtlessly, such operations are necessary and even imperative. But a serious error would be committed to ignore what is in question, above and beyond such crises: not purely mechanical deficiencies, but in truth and more fundamentally, a deficit of political legitimacy of institutions that are incapable of perceiving and a fortiori, of handling the needs of societies that they have been entrusted to serve and manage. Indeed, today our societies are confronted with both an increase in their size (internal factor) and a globalization which affects them (external factor) a genuine stretching of the civic link that greatly perturbs the functioning of society and threatens its unity. These are phenomena that neither one traditional form of the normative approach nor the other (neither the spontaneous normative approach of the market, nor the imposed normative approach of the State) can cope with successfully when, of course, they are not making the situation worse. A twofold stretching of the civic link. In space first: whereas for a long time integration in society, like in France, depended on putting into parenthesis certain adherences other than national7 (as the citizen was then considered an abstract being); today it is becoming increasingly clear, and increasingly more often, that we are a society of individuals having multiple and selective adherences for which we seek integration a society in which we come up against a growing willingness of individuals to be acknowledged in all of their facets and to deny none.8 For this reason, and because these populations whose multiple origins and characteristics are under constraint from globalization pressures to regroup in heterogeneous systems, the basis of solidarity is compromised.9 All the more seriously compromised as this social solidarity is neither necessary in space between members of the same community at the same time; nor in time between generaDownloaded from ras.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on May 5, 2013
tions who succeed one another and should perpetuate this solidarity from one era to the next. This latter exigency has a name: that of sustainable development. Thus the need to confront the stretching of the civic link, to conceive a new normative approach the need to reinvent a State that concerned with its legitimacy, and above and beyond simple technical adjustments is seeking a new kind of functioning in society. It is about this State and this normative approach of which I now wish to speak.
need to draw attention to this phenomenon quite common to many countries western, in particular. One of its objectives should simply be noted here one that in fact contributes to the emergence and affirmation of a normative approach based on dialogue. The more or less genuine independence of these agencies meant that their outstanding function was to provide autonomous partners to work alongside the State; this implied that the State alone could no longer dictate its law in sectors concerned by public action. Thus, these agencies or authorities guarantee thanks to their own regulation and control that markets remain protected from abusive interventions of public authorities who might exercise a dominant if not exclusive influence, as they have often been majority stockholders or powerful players within historical State monopolies. B. It is not enough of course that the State be remodelled to establish a dialogue. The State also needs partners genuine partners. The organization of the normative approach based on dialogue may be analysed as an effort to promote civil society as a counterweight to the State. This means no longer leaving the monopoly of the representation of society to the State and its institutions, even those on the periphery or independent ones. It has doubtlessly been a long while since civil partners of public authorities have been associated in the process of formulating norms, at least via participatory procedures. But now and systematically, NGOs, citizens associations, consumers or producers, private enterprises as such and also because of the essential role they play in the economic sector where they operate,11 are integrated not simply as before in the process of formulating norms, but also which is more recent in the process of enacting and implementing such norms. Thus they are either in a form that we are beginning to get used to, from co-regulation public authority with civil society partners associated in variable proportions in the normative process or in a form radically new concerning traditional standards of normative production, from auto-regulation notably for actors of the private sector (enterprises, associations . . .) with a view to their commitment to respect the provisions that they alone have formulated and include in codes of conduct or good practices or a compendium of certification of standards, without the interference of the public authority. In addition, new technologies of communication must be noted and the importance of this movement should not be underestimated,12 as it fills a natural place for facilitating dialogue, including what is now known as e-government. We can see the new aspects of such reforms. And we can perhaps better understand the difficulties that they come up against, as well as the resistance or obstacles that efforts to promote civil society produce or encounter. These difficulties have been listed in excellent research recently carried out;13 the factors are extremely diverse: the authoritarianism of States that have for many years invested in prerogatives and have had difficulty in ridding themselves of them to benefit their citizens; religious traditions and orientations that, in some countries, have contributed either to strengthening the secular authority of public authority or minimizing the role of civil organizations when they claim to be concerned with social welfare; economics of the colonial type that prevailed during certain periods of history and that in many cases weakened, if not obliterated, the middle classes in the colonized countries, whereas they could have contributed to the development of an active and enterprising civil society; the legislative framework that once again in other countries had been conDownloaded from ras.sagepub.com at CIDADE UNIVERSITARIA on May 5, 2013
ducive to the formation of civil society organizations; lastly, the paradigm of development itself that, having decided against making the State the motor for economic development, believed that it could be purely and simply replaced by the private sector role. We thus see the difficulties involved in bringing to life a normative approach based on dialogue a dialogue needed simultaneously to lessen the States hold over society and to grant the State, by means other than those of constraint and public power, the authority and force that it needs to ensure the management of the society for which it is responsible. 2. A. This leads to the second question: What kind of characteristics must this normative approach based on dialogue have to acquire its authority an authority not of constraint alone but allowing society to function effectively? Characteristics which can, of course, trouble legal experts as the former are so far removed from the traditional normative approach of the State: there where there only existed a binding State law perceived as coercive, general and impersonal with the imperiousness, rigidity and uniformity of an imposed normativity now this State is also setting up a normative approach in which new forms of public action are being privileged: participatory procedures, recommendations, incentives, persuasion. . . . Non-imperativeness (instead of constraint), singularity (instead of generality), adaptability (instead of rigidity) these are the dominant characteristics.14 This is quite surprising, for this is a normative approach based on dialogue. The legal experts, however, are both realistic and inventive and will know how to manage and react to the place made for dialogue in the construction of this new normative approach: it has a significance and scope other than simply technical or mechanical. B. It is true that, on the basis of this established observation the democratic deficit the inability of traditional institutions in liberal/representative democracies to assure an adequate and constant representation of their populations two kinds of theses about re-inventing the State and its normative approach have, in a preliminary stage, been developed marked by a certain prudence, if not great reservation. Some, analysing the democratic deficit in accordance with a minimalist logic, have fought against this kind of deficit as simply one of many ways among others and rather less than many others to contribute to restoring the technical effectiveness of the State and its administration. It seems that it was indeed this theme that was set out in the famous work of Osborne and Gaebler.15 The empowerment of citizens has only a minor place in the list of recommendations set out by the authors with a view to reinventing the State (of 11 chapters that comprise their work and set out these recommendations, only chapters 2 and 9 are genuinely concerned with countering the democratic deficit). The other kind of analysis, although drawing greater attention to the question of legitimacy, broached this problem from a rather strictly mechanistic perspective as though the partisans of these theses, fearful of pronouncing the lofty word of legitimacy, were simply seeking ways and means to make up for it as lacking the power to establish it; or again, to use an image, as if these partisans believed that it would suffice to have a tool box to start or repair a motor lacking petrol . . . This is indeed a question of shared governance of which we are speaking,16 or of building trust17 or yet again, in a curiously negative formula, of counter-powers and institutions meant to compensate for eroding trust by organizing mistrust.18 . . . Perhaps it is also by the under-evaluation and inversion of the
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concept of legitimacy in this last formula (first, legitimacy is reduced to trust, then disguised: the absence of mistrust . . .) that finally shows quite clearly the rather reductive image of societies made by supporters of these analyses and the degree of disintegration of the civic link which has been reached in society.19 We cannot, however, be satisfied with such a reductive image and build societies, and their State, on negations, refusals, mistrust and deceptions.20 First, legitimacy must once again be given its place in the organization and functioning of societies, and not its sub-products (or its ersatz). However, in addition, above and beyond the only procedural and formal legitimacy (the procedure and forms of dialogue and communication21) to which some have been tempted to reduce it, the whole idea of the normative approach based on dialogue is to promote, restore and consolidate by way of dialogue the substantial values apt to remodel a genuine social and civic pact amongst all those who are brought together by community/society. It is on this condition that the State can find its authority and efficiency once again.22 What values are thus apt to play this dual role? First, a primary value: that of accountability,23 a central notion that reorients the discussion on the process of reforming the State and sets out approximative balances on which reform has been constructed up to now. Accountable before society (and it is via the dialogue that the State enters into with society that can put into play such accountability), the State is also responsible for the management of society.24 This accountability, which makes the State responsible for society and the guarantor of the general interest, does not for as much make the State societys manager. It is certainly not up to the State to be an operator just in exceptional cases. The problem of the States functions must thus be treated in a way that resembles subsidiarity25 thereby resulting in the redefinition and reduction of the States size (perimeter), so heartily supported by neo-liberal fans, a redefinition and reduction that takes on a particular nuance in the context of accountability. If this is a question of accountability, it must not be solely the responsibility of, but also the responsibility, to the community. If this accountability does not include the management the administratorship of society, then the State cannot transform itself wall itself off remain indifferent to society. Thus, non-management and also: interference the States meddling in societys life. In societies of this new century, threatened with globalization and whose cohesion is seriously compromised, the State should be acknowledged for an essential function, namely being a producer of unity among those who established it. Ethical vision has substituted for a strictly economic approach. To privilege that which is dear to us rather than what is dear, said a visionary.26 And indeed, it is this that makes it possible to transform the State into a strategist State a State whose broad lines of reform (re-focussing on knowledge and conceptualization with a view to preparing strategic decisions: decentralization, delegation of authority and other arrangements meant to disencumber the strategist from carrying out tasks that are not its own . . .) take on a significance other than strictly managerial. Indeed, the strategist State is not simply a State responsible for a rational management function, as so readily believed, or the definition of a governmental programme that must then be implemented thanks to instruments like frame budgeting the definition of expenditure ceilings and other similar kinds of techniques27 . . . The strategist State is a State that, because it must give an
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account to the community to which it is responsible, must also take the responsibility of assuring strategic missions that imply that it is responsible for this society. The significance that reinventing the State acquires is also enlightened by reference to another basic value on behalf of which reform is being advanced: solidarity the necessary solidarity imposed by the stretching of the civic link and the unravelling of the social fabric characteristic of our societies. The historic failure at the end of the last century of revolutions that took place in the countries of central and eastern Europe (where a form of extreme State control had been perpetuated) contributed greatly to the disaffection of the State. For these countries and many others, the result was a discrediting of and distancing from the State concerning its missions in the social field, in particular, and for which the State had been responsible since their inception. The dramatic phenomena of social exclusion that contemporary societies are experiencing today could only worsen. Add to that: the de-territorialization of the religious phenomenon that migratory fluctuations, indeed accentuated by globalization, are producing in western countries. The consequence of these factors has been to accelerate the disintegration process of societies. The old administrative State, even in its softer Welfare State version, could no longer assure the management or unity of society. It is in reaction to this much too disastrous evolution that began the process of reinventing the State a State whose primary action must go beyond obvious State functions, to be focused on sectors essential to group cohesion: employment, health, education, culture, for example all sectors without development for which it would be impossible, unthinkable, to rework the social link. In this way we can better appreciate the characteristics and values of the normative approach based on dialogue. The machinery used in this approach, linking up mechanisms of traditional democracy in some countries, almost dilapidated for not having served enough; in others, these mechanisms have been worn thin from having served too much puts the notion of legitimacy at the centre of the State process an idea which, far from drawing attention to intangible and immaterial phenomena, on the contrary brings to the reform process direct, specific and immediate results.28 I have just attempted to sketch the analysis. At the end of this conference I can obviously see how imprudent I have been to do so. In truth, I am certain of only one thing: if reinventing the State is to be continued, it will in any event be without end.
Notes
1 One could refer to, for example, the excellent 2006 Braibant Lecture given by Jocelyne Bourgon and published in the IRAS: Bourgon, Jocelyne (2007) Responsive, Responsible and Respected Government: Towards a New Public Administration Theory, International Review of Administrative Sciences 73(1): 726. 2 Cassese and Savino (2007). 3 Fukuyama (2005). In the same sense, but in a more balanced fashion, cf. Pochard (2007). 4 Concerning the need to reread Weber and the changes that this has brought to traditional analysis, please refer to the Preface written by Catherine Colliot-Thlne to the recent republication of the work of Max Weber, Le savant et le politique, une nouvelle traduction, La Dcouverte-Poche, 2003, in particular pp. 34ff. 5 Favereau (2000: 158). 6 Favereau (2000: 158).
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References
7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government (2007) Building Trust in Government, Public Administration and Democratic Governance: Governments serving Citizens, 2629 June, Vienna ST/ESA/PAD/SER.E/98, pp. 20224. Bourgon, Jocelyne (2007) Responsive, Responsible and Respected Government. Towards a New Public Administration Theory, International Review of Administrative Sciences 73(1) : 726. Cassese, Sabino and Savino, Mario (2007) Accountable Governance and Administrative Reform, in 7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government, Building Trust in Government, Public Administration and Democratic Governance: Governments Serving Citizens, 2629 June 2007, Vienna ST/ESA/PAD/SER.E/98.