Page 94 - RIMD_2012_3
P. 94
94 | Challenges and Obstacles of Local Public Management
concerning the same types of public service, such as the collection and recy-
cling of household waste and/or education or health...
As a result, it is often a false problem to draw up the inherent differences in
administrative and/or national legal systems in order to justify the impossi-
bility of a common control and assessment, since the managerial assessment,
just like the methodology in management sciences, speaks a quite universal
language. Everything is then a matter of political will and priority, but surely
not of scientific obstacles...
3) Finally, it is necessary, within the same State or within different European
union member States, to implement comparison tools of local authorities of a
comparable level, in order to understand why some of them do not reach the
expected results and thus to seek the causes of, and the solutions for, these
“bad” results, and to extract examples of good and bad practices of local
public management.
With the risk of repeating ourselves, it is very important not to shirk the
specificity of a national system, both in connection with its administrative
organization or with its legal system. The organization as the Law are inher-
ent management constraints but, in any case, they are not insurmountable
obstacles.
It remains, however, that the States simplify the administrative procedures,
especially when they involve constraints which do not provide any guarantee
to citizens and which, more importantly, unnecessarily spend the time of
public servants and thus the money of the public authorities concerned.
Failing to systematically standardize the national and local governments of
the European Union, it may be possible to improve their functioning by stud-
ying, and possibly by generalizing some “best practices”; moreover, it may
be equally helpful to prohibit certain bad behaviours (such as corruption)
and, thus, some managerial “bad practices”...
“If we are able to govern well only at distance, we are able to better adminis-
trate only at close quarters”. This formula, dating since 1852, is particularly
true today especially since, on economic grounds and due to the need for
local democracy, policies, such as population, demand a mainly local gov-
ernance for many essential public activities.
Perhaps that we tried to describe a utopian picture of local public manage-
ment… Therefore, renovating and rendering more effective the local gov-
ernment is one of the essential keys to a qualitative public action.
However, it is clear that everything depends on the will of States in the Eu-
ropean Union to change their administrative organization and to accept the
risk to lose not only a part of their power but perhaps a new part of their
RIMD – n o 3 – 2012
concerning the same types of public service, such as the collection and recy-
cling of household waste and/or education or health...
As a result, it is often a false problem to draw up the inherent differences in
administrative and/or national legal systems in order to justify the impossi-
bility of a common control and assessment, since the managerial assessment,
just like the methodology in management sciences, speaks a quite universal
language. Everything is then a matter of political will and priority, but surely
not of scientific obstacles...
3) Finally, it is necessary, within the same State or within different European
union member States, to implement comparison tools of local authorities of a
comparable level, in order to understand why some of them do not reach the
expected results and thus to seek the causes of, and the solutions for, these
“bad” results, and to extract examples of good and bad practices of local
public management.
With the risk of repeating ourselves, it is very important not to shirk the
specificity of a national system, both in connection with its administrative
organization or with its legal system. The organization as the Law are inher-
ent management constraints but, in any case, they are not insurmountable
obstacles.
It remains, however, that the States simplify the administrative procedures,
especially when they involve constraints which do not provide any guarantee
to citizens and which, more importantly, unnecessarily spend the time of
public servants and thus the money of the public authorities concerned.
Failing to systematically standardize the national and local governments of
the European Union, it may be possible to improve their functioning by stud-
ying, and possibly by generalizing some “best practices”; moreover, it may
be equally helpful to prohibit certain bad behaviours (such as corruption)
and, thus, some managerial “bad practices”...
“If we are able to govern well only at distance, we are able to better adminis-
trate only at close quarters”. This formula, dating since 1852, is particularly
true today especially since, on economic grounds and due to the need for
local democracy, policies, such as population, demand a mainly local gov-
ernance for many essential public activities.
Perhaps that we tried to describe a utopian picture of local public manage-
ment… Therefore, renovating and rendering more effective the local gov-
ernment is one of the essential keys to a qualitative public action.
However, it is clear that everything depends on the will of States in the Eu-
ropean Union to change their administrative organization and to accept the
risk to lose not only a part of their power but perhaps a new part of their
RIMD – n o 3 – 2012
