Abstract EN:

The increasing state involvement in cultural activities has led to large areas of action coming under the responsibility of public institutions or associations whose independence with respect to the public sector may be limited. As a result, the structure of leading cultural administrative bodies is determined by the interdependence between the different public and private administration styles, a structure pluralistic in its conception decentralised and contractual in its operation. Thus they are conceived through public or combined initiatives, their structure is mixed, they contribute wholly or partially to the development of cultural activities, they are financed partially or totally by public funds. Their specific nature when compared with traditional associations has led to them being called "administrative associations". Even if constituted by legally private corporate bodies, their predominant public service role attenuates their corporate character giving them a new element of dependency similar to that of a public institution. Reducing them to offshoots of the public service, useful to outlets for public servants bridled by the restrictions associated with public service administration methods, negates their original role of facilitation joint participation between civil servants and private individuals in cultural development within a mixed legal framework at the same time unilateral and contractual. Attribution of individual roles are negociated between the "administrative associations" and public podies, the latter laying down the joint objectives and evaluating the results in terms of the methods adopted.