7 - L’administration du développement: de la théorie aux conditions objectives des systèmes africains d'administration publique *

Abstract

* Original en Anglais

Theoretical writings on development administration are premised on conceptions of development derived from modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s, with their shortcomings rarely challenged. A preocupation pation with the instrumental role of administration meant that certain features of public administration in Western societies were to be converted into «development administration» and exported to Third World countries. These, when taken together , guaranted that the effort would  be stillborn in that development administration , thus oriented , would seek to induce development by use of concepts and techniques designed for system-maintenance rather than system-transformation. Nevertheless the development administration movement resolutely pursued this ob ive, furthered through technical cooperation programmes and other means. The objective conditions in public administration system in Africa have to a great extent , been shaped by these pressures. They are dominate the rise of a bureaucratic class , a development that has been support localization policies and programmes , the expanded role of the state dramatic growth in the parastatal sector, and the explosion in the size of public bureaucracies. The end result is that public administration sys in Africa suffer from a range of pathologies which have prevented them from realizing their mandate to remould society and spearhead national development. Presumed and benevolent modernizers in bureaucracies are increasingly self-interested ; puffed up bureaucracies foster auhoritarian rather than democratic states; they have not promoted a particularly rapid advance of scientific knowledge ; and they have been reluctant to transfer skills beyond themselves to society at large preferring to hoard knowledge as a social and political weapon of the state vis-a-vis society.