Michel Vilain
Administrative experimentation and rural development Michel Vilain Administration is now openly giving place to « local expériments » and is exalting this practice of administrative experimentation as a veritable doctrine for progress. Rural development is one of the prime areas for this new administrative empiricism, but it has to conted with the reluctance of both civil servants and leading citizens. The failure of experimental policies to prompt apprenticeship and decentralisation processes illustrates the viscosity of the structures and the sluggishness of behaviour in the French territorial administration model.