Abstract
Globalization, decentralization, economic uncertainties, and other contemporary challenges ask for a new kind of governance and a new role for public agents in every country. Governments have to reshape the public sector to cope with this environment that requires civil servants to assume new missions. With this aim in view, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development proposed in 2001, to create and re-inforce a model of public sector leadership. Nevertheless, what a model of public sector leadership could be, remains unclear. If leadership can characterize political leaders, speaking about leadership in the public administration means dealing with high-ranking civil servants, often regarded as reserved and discrete. The following work is about what an effective leader in the public administration is. First, after a review of some definitions of leadership and the problem they pose for the public administration, the main characteristics of a specific leadership model in the public sector will be evoked. In the second part, this model will be more concretely linked with the new needs of administration as a very specific organization, and with the needs of society. It will be the occasion to stress some of the limits and conditions attached to leadership in public administrations.
