Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite
460
Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France: The Administrative Elite
460Hardcover
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Overview
After identifying the place of the state in French society the author deals with the recruitment of higher civil servants, using comparative data to explain why the high social origins of French civil servants have remained constant. His investigation of the important institutional mechanisms of the central administration stresses that even a centralized and powerful bureaucracy must be seen as a complex of institutions rather than as a monolithic organization. Finally the author deals with the relations of the higher civil servants with other groups in society and with the regime of the Fifth Republic.
Originally published in 1974.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691645582 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1257 |
| Pages: | 460 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France
The Administrative Elite
By Ezra N. Suleiman
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1974 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-10022-7
CHAPTER 1
The Administrative State
Je veux consumer en France Vordre civil. Il rty a jusqu'à présent dans Ie monde que deux pouvoirs: Ie militaire et Pecclesiastique. ... Je veux surtout une corporation parce qu'une corporation ne meurt point ... [une corporation] n'a d'autre ambition que celle d'être utile et d'autre intérêt que l'intérêt public. Il faut que ce corps ait des privilèges, qu'il ne soit pas trop dépendant des ministres ni de PEmpereur. ... Je veux un corps dont l'administration et les statuts deviennent tellement nationaux qu'on ne puisse jamais se déterminer à y porter légèrement la main.
— Napoleon
The structure of the modern French State owes more to Napoleon than to any of his predecessors or successors. He intended the bureaucracy that he created to be at once at the service of the State and the representative of the State. To understand the role of the bureaucracy in French society, therefore, it is necessary to grasp the importance that has been ascribed to the State ever since Napoleon gave it its modern form. This chapter will deal with the rise of what Dwight Waldo has called the "administrative state." After ascribing the origins of this State to Napoleon rather than to the monarchs of the ancien régime, we will examine some of the arguments that have been used to justify the need for a strong state, arguments that continue to be reiterated today. That it was the State's own servants that had to be the first to submit to the exigencies of the powerful State will also be seen. Finally, it will be argued that the bases of the Napoleonic State are now questioned as they never have been before.
Trend Toward Centralization
De Tocqueville's thesis that administrative centralization in France was a creation of the ancien régime and not of the Revolution has had a profound impact on historical, sociological, and political studies of French institutions. The reverence accorded to this thesis is best evidenced by the uncritical and universal acceptance it has enjoyed ever since it was first expounded more than a century ago. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the term "centralization" should today be used as a catch-all phrase that subsumes and explains all the complex phenomena of the French political and social system. More important, however, Tocqueville's analysis of the origins and consequences of the trend toward centralization appears to have obviated the need for his followers to search for other explanations of the workings of the political system, of patterns of social behavior and interactions, and of cultural norms.
One has only to see how some of the most influential sociological studies on France have sought to document their own observations by invoking the analysis of Tocqueville. In The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, perhaps the most influential of the recent studies, Crozier's conclusions about French society probably owe more to Tocqueville than to Crozier's own remarkable empirical investigations in two administrative agencies. Greenstein and Tarrow have recently noted, with considerable justification, that most of the explanations that have been handed down to us by students of French society have been based largely on impressionistic observations rather than on serious empirical investigations. "When applied by a Tocqueville, or, more recently, a Luethy or a Wylie," they note, "unsystematic procedures for considering evidence can lead to brilliant speculations. But the speculations of such writers are too often treated as final verities, rather than being subjected to rigorous assessment."
These authors also note that the study of French institutions has tended for the most part to emphasize their uniqueness, which is precisely what Tocqueville, Crozier, Luethy, Wylie, Pitts and others have done. Thus, for example, one study of French local politics has been largely based on the observation that the pattern of consensus that obtains locally in France, as well as voter turnout, is markedly different from that which obtains nationally. Yet a recent study on British local government has shown that similar differences prevail between local and national politics in Britain.
Quite apart from the remarkable influence that Tocqueville's analysis of French society has had on students of French politics, his central thesis concerning the origins of the modern centralized State is now in need of revision. His emphasis on an ineluctable historical process underestimates the very powerful and determined role played by those who came to power in the wake of the Revolution of 1789, particularly Napoleon, without whom the structure of the French State would have turned out very different from what it is today. One need only look at the gamut of administrative institutions and the educational system to see the clear imprint of Napoleon. Indeed, it can be argued that, without the educational system that Napoleon established, the structure of French society would have taken a very different shape during the course of the nineteenth century. While it is impossible to deny an important role to the ancien régime in the shaping of the modern French State, it is now equally impossible to underestimate the decisive part played by Napoleon. As a British historian has recently noted: "The first prerequisite for fully centralized government was ... the suppression of any rival influence in the provinces. This was achieved by the abolition of privileges, territorial and corporate as well as personal, after the night of Fourth August, and by the subsequent division of France into departments, areas of more or less uniform size, uniformly administered. By eliminating the administrative anomalies of the ancien régime the Assembly made a centralized system of government possible. It was left to Napoleon to make it a reality."
If the origins of the trend toward State centralization are open to debate, so must the evolution of the trend also be debated. It should, of course, first be recognized that at stake are two separate questions: the origins of the process and the process itself as it evolved. Historians must address themselves not only to the first question, which concerns the genesis of the centralized State, but they must also explain how and why the process of centralization continued unabated throughout the nineteenth century; in other words, why no forces sprang up to counter the centralizing trend. Was this merely because the authoritarian nature of governments prohibited the formation of associations? Is it not possible that the State was gradually undertaking to fill social needs that were shunned by the private sector? If France is a country of shopkeepers, and if Malthusianism is the characteristic French attitude toward commerce, is this the result of an inexorable process of State centralization that stifled private initiative? Or, on the contrary, did the Malthusianism of the French bourgeoisie encourage or oblige the State to fulfill tasks that it might have preferred to leave to others? Did not the bourgeoisie in the early nineteenth century, as many historians have noted, adopt the values of the waning aristocracy and "put money gained in commerce, manufacturing, finance and state service into land"?
It has been variously argued that France is basically a country in which peasant or bourgeois or aristocratic values predominate, but which set of values have made the greatest imprint on French society is not at all clear. What is clear is that all those who have argued for one or another of these values have arrived at the same conclusion: that there is among Frenchmen a fear of and resistance to change. This conclusion becomes highly significant when it is applied to the elites of French society and compared to the responsiveness of the elites in other societies. Consider, for example, the reaction of the British aristocracy to the demands for universal suffrage in the early nineteenth century. As W. L. Guttsman has shown, the British cabinet that was responsible for the Reform Act of 1832 was the most artistocratic in British history. The British aristocracy, like that of Germany, shifted to politics and to industry and did not retire to its castles as did the French aristocracy. All this suggests that a centralized state depends on a complex of historical factors, foremost among which is the responsiveness of elites to the increasing demands of society.
The important point is that the State did not, over a period of two hundred and fifty years, purely and simply seize power from the society. Rather, a dialectical process was unfolding, a process in which the State and the society were responding to one another. Today, for example, we find instances of institutions having a good deal more power than they choose to use. This is particularly evident at the local level where institutions are not only deprived of power but essentially deprive themselves of what power they possess. A good example of this is given in Worms' description of the cooperation between the prefect and the mayor, which more often than not depends on the abdication of responsibility on both their parts in favor of the central authorities. The verticalization of decision-making is thus not merely the result of an imperialist and usurpationist predisposition on the part of the central authorities, but is encouraged by the peculiar need for cooperation and the maintenance of peace among institutions. In other words, while Napoleon may have fashioned the institutions upon which the centralized State is predicated, the reasons for the acceptance and continuance of this State must be sought in the behavior and particular political disposition of local and other elites in French society.
If local and national elites have been reluctant to entertain changes that entail decentralization, it is also necessary to note that champions of a strong State, like de Gaulle and Pompidou, have sought to impose reforms from above rather than encourage local participation in the formulation of reforms. In Les Institutions régionales et la société locale, Worms and Grémion show how, after having opposed the decreed administrative reform of 1964, the local elites directly affected by it were able to re-create the same institutional patterns and relationships that had existed prior to the reform and thus render the reform nugatory. As Crozier has shown, the French bureaucratic mode of authority is resistant to change because decisions are made by men too far removed from those who are affected by these decisions. But, according to Crozier and others, just as the State does not encourage participation, neither do the citizens seek a greater voice in their own affairs. This can only aggravate the problems involved in decentralization. It also suggests that a very complex relationship exists between State and society, a relationship in which it is neither the one nor the other that continually has the upper hand, but in which they interact to form an elaborate system of reinforcements which are, ultimately, conducive to preserving the structure of the existing State. In effect, Pompidou is not far wrong when he says that it is false to think of French life as being a permanent battle between the French people and the "monster" [the State].
If I have raised some questions about the genesis of the centralized State and about the evolution of the trend toward centralization, I have not questioned the fact that there exists in France a centralized State administration that is wholly or partly responsible for conducting almost every activity in the nation. That this administration is located almost entirely in Paris is not without importance, for it symbolizes the capital's monopoly of the nation's intellectual, scientific, financial, and political activities, a monopoly that has been admirably documented in J.-F. Gravier's Paris et le désert Français. So evident is the tremendous gap between Paris and province that it has not been unusual to liken the provinces to France's former colonies and to demand the "decolonization of France."
At the beginning of this chapter I quoted Napoleon's desire to create "a corporate body that does not die" and that "must have privileges," a desire that has been fully realized and that has shaped the structure of the French State throughout the past century and a half. But the creation of the corporate body entailed, first of all, the total subservience and subordination of its employees to the higher aims of this body. The tyranny of the official is often invoked; what has been less frequently invoked has been the tyranny over the official. The power of the State had, therefore, to manifest itself first over its agents and then over those whom it was intended to serve.
The Superiority of the State
In his study of administrative syndicalism in France, Harold Laski wrote that "the civil servant is not an actor in the events of which he is the administrator." The French civil servant has always been placed in a "situation réglementaire," which has meant that the rules governing his employment were in no way analogous to those affecting the employee of a private institution, but were to be determined unilaterally by the State. Prior to the Revolution of 1789, public employees were regarded as servants of the Monarch whose commands were their duties. The State and the Monarch, as Louis XIV proclaimed, were one. To be in the employ of the Monarch was to be serving the State, just as to be serving the State was to be in the employ of the Monarch.
The Revolution, it has been argued, altered the hitherto prevailing monism very little, for it merely substituted the abstraction of the State for the Monarch. As Laski has observed, "The ancien régime implied a monistic state; and when for the crown was substituted the nation, the worship of a unified indivisibility underwent no change." The new element that was born with the Revolution was that of the "national will." Although this concept was wholly incompatible with the absolutist age, its democratic implications were obscured after the Revolution; for, as Barker has noted, "If Louis XIV had simply said 'I am the State,' Napoleon could say, more subtly but with greater force, 'I am the nation, and therefore the State.'" More significantly, there was henceforth to be a distinction between the State and the Nation, sanctioned by law and having serious ramifications for the development of public power in France.
The concept of the State forming a separate entity, at once within and outside the Nation, was born with the Revolution, and the particular meanings attached to this concept from the beginning of the nineteenth century have constituted the cardinal elements in the State's relations to its agents. The State could justify the possession of arbitrary power on the grounds that public and private employment are wholly different. The State cannot be compared to a private employer, since it is entrusted with responsibilities that cannot be transferred to any other institution. Its unique role therefore justifies its unique power.
What set the State apart from other institutions was not only the uniqueness of the functions it performed but also the indispensability of these functions. Consequently, being in the service of the State was not analogous to being in the service of a private institution. Even in the France of today, one hears of the unique role of the State and of the honor of being its employee. "The State is not an employer like others. It is an honor and a vocation to serve the Nation." Like Debré, many jurists and other champions of the integrity of the State have claimed not only superiority for the State over all other institutions, but also legitimacy, based on the indispensable functions it performs. "The considerable extension," we read in a modern text, "of the power of the State is accepted by the citizens because it appears, on the whole, as the necessary condition for the rendering of services needed by society. In other words, public service is the contemporary legitimacy of power. Is it also the raison d'être of the State?" This assumption is peculiarly French, and to some extent continental, in that it sees the State's role of providing services as an indispensable element of its raison d'être. Brian Chapman has noted that, although in Britain the State may provide as many services as do any of the European states, there is nonetheless a general feeling that these services should not be provided by the State. The difference is basically one of attitude and carries with it wide ramifications as far as those responsible for the conduct of the State's affairs are concerned.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Politics, Power, and Bureaucracy in France by Ezra N. Suleiman. Copyright © 1974 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Contents, pg. vii
- Tables, pg. xi
- List of Graphs and Diagrams, pg. xv
- Acknowledgments, pg. xvii
- Introduction, pg. 1
- I. The Administrative State, pg. 13
- II. Background and Recruitment of the Administrative Elite, pg. 41
- III. Education and Social Structure, pg. 72
- IV. Social Class and Administrative Behavior, pg. 100
- V. Administration As a Vocation, pg. 113
- VI. The Minister and His Administration: Choice, pg. 137
- VII. The Minister and His Administration: Relationship, pg. 155
- VIII. The Ministerial Cabinet, pg. 181
- IX. The Cabinet and the Administration: Political and Administrative Roles in the Higher Civil Service, pg. 201
- X. The Administrative Super-Elite: Les Grands Corps de l'Etat, pg. 239
- XI. The Administration and the Deputy, pg. 285
- XII. The Administration and Interest Groups, pg. 316
- XIII. The Bureaucracy and the Fifth Republic, pg. 352
- XIV. Bureaucracy, Technocracy, and the Stalemate Society, pg. 372
- APPENDIX: Questionnaire, pg. 391
- BIBLIOGRAPHY, pg. 417
- INDEX, pg. 433