The author delineates a model of western administration through the concept of relative integration (regarding the European countries and the United States) by analyzing the modalities thereof by different countries. Relative integration designates a certain type of relations between the factors composing the model under a double aspect: political and administrative agencies on one part and administrative and economic agencies on the other. The relations of subordination/separation, while bringing about subordination of agencies, and the cohesion and unity of the system, prevent by maintaining the separation of agencies a total subordination of administrative agencies to political bodies, as well as of administrative agencies among themselves. In this sense, relative integration shows a clear distinction with absolute integration (cf. socialist countries) and with disintegration (cf. developing countries). From the general characteristics of the western model of administration, two variants may be distinguished:

-restricted relative integration designating a strongly centralized and hierarchicized type of administration, as exemplified by the case of France;

-generalized relative integration liking up with administrations characterized on the contrary by decentralizarion, dispersion, and a pronouced autonomy of their administrative structures