The Evolving Physiology of Government: Canadian Public Administration in Transition

Chapter Seven: From Administration to Management: Forty Years of Public Sector Education in Quebec

189 In 1961 René Lévesque, a minister of the Government of Quebec, asked Roland Parenteau, professor at the École des hautes études commerciales de Montréal (HÉC), to help develop a program to train the administrators of the provincial public service. The departments of political science in the province, where Public Administration was starting to flourish, also wanted to be part of such a project. Yet, they lacked the educational resources to be involved. This is how the history of public sector education in Quebec started. The context of these beginnings is not that different from that of the following decades. The development of public sector programs in Quebec has involved the confluence of two fields: the politicoadministrative on one hand, and the university on the other. Both fields areanimatedbyadynamicofcompetitionbetweenitsagentsfordifferent forms of capital, and sharing a more or less variable degree of autonomy vis-à-vis other fields, as their agents do.1 The autonomy is the power one field has over keeping its own values and means of functioning, which depends, among other things, on its agents’ characteristics. The principal agents that evolve in these fields are ministers, public servants, universities, professional schools, and departments of political science, along with their faculty. The development of public sector education is a stake over which political imperatives and university values meet and for which agents of the university field compete. These actors and their competitive relationship represent the stable dimension of this FROM ADMINISTRATION TO MANAGEMENT: Forty Years of Public Sector Education in Quebec Caroline Dufour 7 190 Contemporary Issues and Challenges field as changes have taken place in public sector education programs in Quebec. These changes are attributable to the varying relative influence of the political and university fields and the changing relationships between the agents, both products of socio-historical conjunctures. The objective of this chapter is to explain the fields of influence and the context behind the development of undergraduate and graduate programs of study dedicated to the public sector in francophone Quebec universities between 1960 and 2000. In order to understand these complex structures and relationships, it is necessary to reconstruct the history of public sector education in the province. This has been done through a content analysis of the numerous archives of the province’s university institutions, as well as the minutes of department and committee meetings in addition to interviews.2 THE 1960S: TRAINING PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS TO MODERNIZE QUEBEC InQuebectheinterestandconcernforeducationinpublicadministration appeared during the 1960s, when the province was entering its “Quiet Revolution.” At the time, the Liberal government elected in November 1960 intended to transform both the role the state has played in Quebec society and its structures. In order to let go of its long-time position of substitute for religious groups and private organizations and become a driving force of provincial development, the state needed the means to achieve its ambitions. In other words, Quebec needed a modern and effective public administration. Right at the beginning of his term, Premier Jean Lesage undertook a major review of the province’s administrative structures. Quickly, central planning, coordination, and control, which were lacking in the administration left by the Duplessis government, were implemented. Also, an important growth in terms of budget and number of ministries and employees took place, in addition to a revision of financial management and public service functioning. All these elements of reform were aimed at the same objective: the introduction of impersonal rules as the basis of administrative activity, so Quebec’s public administration could become a model of efficiency From Administration to Management 191 and equity. Yet, this modernization could not be completed without the presence of public administrators, a category of employees barely present among the ranks of the Quebec public service. In 1959 there were 260 of them (Bolduc, 1978: 619). Beyond their small number, administrators fulfilled the role of “technical advisor,” which translated into being simply an executant of government will, rather than a modern manager. Management was in fact a restricted part of their daily activities. This was paralleled by the fact that only a tenth of these public administrators possessed any management training. This gap led Minister René Lévesque to ask Professor Roland Parenteau of the HÉC to help find a solution to the formation of these public administrators. Founded in 1907 and an integral part of Université de Montréal (UDM...