Summary

In all countries the concepts of human rights, individual dignity and the role of governments and public administrations that serve the public without exerting any influence of pressure, have developed. This development and the understanding of the afore-mentioned concepts have been possible through the widespread of international human rights charters and through the widespread of the media that managed to reach the people despite obstacles in some authoritarian regimes.

The Lebanese people who live abroad for a short while, notice that their rights and duties as regards the administration are protected as they're governed by a series of rules.

The study of administrative corruption in Lebanon is influenced by two ineffective approaches: one formal and legal, and the other "communitarian".

Legal experts often study the state of the Lebanese administration and conclude with the amendment of laws, administrative statuses, as if the major obstacles were laws; in fact, administrative corruption often occurs as a result of the existence of too many conflicting legal texts, and by legal fraud or formal respect of laws. All ways of frauds must be studied in order to stop administrative corruption; new laws shouldn't be written out so as to avoid additional entanglement of texts.

There's nothing called administrative routine, but complicated ways used to stall for time under the cover of public interest and observance, in order to hide briberies and to make any attempt to unveil corruption, impossible amid accumulated paper files and legal formal procedures. The number of signatures on a formality aims at evading the responsibility and sharing in the profit and making the unveiling of the sources of corruption more difficult.

The "communitarian" approach has it that confessional system is one of the reasons of corruption. In fact, the allotment basis has nothing to do with corruption because the power-sharing system is submitted to limits clearly stated in legal and administrative texts. Not anyone can be appointed ambassador or general director or dean of the Lebanese University.

The distribution of offices on account of someone under the cover of communitarian equilibrium is contrary to the substance of the allotment basis which aims at democratic participation for the public interest. This is possible in Lebanon today as all Lebanese communities have qualifications with the proper legal, practical and administrative conditions. The appointment of the worst elements to administrative positions under the cover of communitarian equilibrium is a violation of limits set by the legal and administrative texts in this regard and of public interest.

Political and administrative corruption is related to three factors:

• The mechanism of political authority, how to reach it, and to get out of it.
• The protection that citizens have as regard political authority and public administration within the State of low.
• The set of rules in the society that result from historical and cultural elements.

Through a preliminary survey and interviews in basic administrations that group at least two hundred employees, we were able to find out how certain procedures are carried out and how certain briberies occur with employees or citizens who also to be blamed. The fields included in the survey concern important sectors of the administration and happen between citizens and employees very smoothly and quietly. Since bribes are sometimes paid in connivance with citizens, studying them does not mean slandering the administration.

The role of civil society is to prepare cultural and pedagogic projects and programs on the following levels:

1. The values of civil society: The values that exist generally in Arab societies are based on considering politics as power and an exploitation of this power, not the management of public interest. Social relations within families, schools and the society as a whole are based on the balance of powers and on a net of relations not on behavioral norms, rights and duties.

2. A small country: Lebanon being a small country makes the development of personal relations at the expense of the basis very likely. This type of societies requires the full development of ethics on all levels.

3. The role of unions and professional organisations: Unions and professional organisations haven't dealt until now with issues that are related to professional ethics; they have concerned themselves within professional organisation and the defense of the members' interests.

4. Education in terms of taxes: Arab mentality isn't aware of the utility of taxes that are in fact the gateway to demanding, participating, surveying and calling to account.

5. Contribution of the NGO's for the defense of citizens againts administration's abusiveness.

The vitality of civil society with the administration shows through the amount of complaints and pleas that are submitted to state Council and to organisations of administrative surveying.

These plans aim at implementing additional democratic practices in Lebanon that include namely citizens' rights to administrative services, effectively and at a minimum cost for the sake of public and individual funds. What are the practical guarantees that are ensured today to protect citizens against the administration's abusiveness? The current guarantees are defective as regards the employee's interest in the law and the state's protection of public funds.