Jean-Pierre Beaud

La forme est le fond la structuration des appareils statistiques nationaux (1800–1945)

RésuméLe présent article porte sur les débats relatifs à laforme que doit prendre l’appareil de collecte de données statistiques pour faire face aux transformations que connaissent les sociétés occidentales depuis le début duxixe siècle. C’est au moment de la mise sur pied, en 1832, du Bureau statistique du Board of Trade britannique que sont avancés pour la première fois les arguments en faveur de la coordination, de la centralisation ou de la décentralisation en matière statistique. Jusqu’en 1945, ce débat sera un des mieux alimentés, le décollage des économies, les guerres mondiales, la crise des années trente offrant aux protagonistes l’occasion de s’interroger sur la forme que doit prendre le système de collecte et d’analyse des données statistiques. La perspective que nous adopterons ici se distingque par sadouble amplitude: ainsi, ne nous limitant pas aux grands systèmes statistiques, ceux de Grande-Bretagne, de France et des États-Unis, nous croiserons les fils des histoires nationales de la plupart des pays occidentaux; de plus, ne nous en tenant pas à la période où naissent la plupart des bureaux statistiques, soit lexixe siècle, nous embrasserons l’ensemble de la période s’étendant de 1800 à 1945.AbstractThe present paper surveys the discussions conducted by official statisticians regarding the ideal structure according to which a national data collection system should have been designed if it was to meet the challenges put up by the various transformations Western countries have undergone since the beginning of the 19th century. Arguments in favour of coordination, centralization, or decentralization have emerged for the first time in 1832 Britain, when the Statistical Bureau of the Board of Trade was created. Up to 1945, this debate went on, the industrial take-off, the economic crises, and the world wars all being occasions for its protagonists to put forward their preferred view. The perspective we take here is original in two respects: on the one hand, instead of confining ourselves to the major statistical systems (those of France, Britain, and the USA), we intend to evoke a large number of cases and, from this comparative standpoint, propose a general account of the drive towards centralization; on the other hand, instead of restraining ourselves to the 19th century, we cover the entire time-frame extending from 1800 to 1945.ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel geht es um die Diskussionen über die Art und Weise, wie die statistischen Daten zu sammeln sind, die man benötigt, um die gesellschaftlichen Umwälzungen zu bewältigen, die in den westlichen Ländern seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts stattgefunden haben. Als 1832 in Großbritannien das statistische Amt des Board of Trade eingerichtet wurde, wurden zum erstenmal Argumente für eine Koordinierung und Zentralisierung bzw. Dezentralisierung von statistischem Material vorgebracht. Diese Debatte dauerte bis 1945, wobei der wirtschaftliche Aufschwung, die beiden Weltkriege und die Wirtschaftskrise der dreißiger Jahre den daran beteiligten Protagonisten die Gelegenheit bot, darüber nachzudenken, wie statistische Daten gesammelt und analysiert werden sollten. Hier wird eine doppelte Perspektive angewandt: statt nur die großen statistischen Systeme Großbritanniens, Frankreichs und der USA zu betrachten, werden wir eine große Zahl von Einzelfällen aus zahlreichen westlichen Ländern heranziehen, und wir werden uns nicht auf das 19. Jahrhundert beschränken, in dem die meisten statistischen Ämter entstanden sind, sondern die gesamte Zeitspanne zwischen 1800 und 1945 betrachten.

Statistics as the science of government: The stillborn British Empire statistical bureau, 1918–20

The 1920 British Empire Statistical Conference was the direct outcome of the Dominions Royal Commissions Final Report, which had spelt out the need to increase the uniformity and comparability of statistics originating from various parts of the Empire and had proposed setting up an imperial central statistical office. Over 24 days, delegates debated a large number of topics, ranging from the practical and empirical subject matters of statistical inquiry to more abstract issues such as the nature and object of statistical data collection and analysis, and to the problems raised by the establishment of a statistical bureau that would operate on an unprecedented scale. This article seeks to understand why, despite apparently favourable conditions, this project soon ended in complete failure. The reasons must be sought in the neatly distinctive outlooks held by the British government and Dominion representatives as regards the function of statistics for the purpose of government, in the quite different bureaucratic settings that embodied and sustained these views, as well as in the tensions and centrifugal pressures that acted upon inter-imperial relations following the Great War.

The Politics of Measurable Precision: The Emergence of Sampling Techniques in Canada's Dominion Bureau of Statistics

Understanding the adoption of sampling methods by government statistical agencies requires that we take into account the institutional background against which this spectacular breakthrough in the knowledge-gathering capacities of modern states has occurred. In the case of Canada, the advent of a scientific innovation that met with scepticism and disrupted well-established traditions is closely related to the requirements of the war effort, but mostly to the government’s commitment to postwar employment.

La classification canadienne des occupations pendant l'entre-deux-guerres: réflexion sur un cas d'indépendance statistique

During the first decades of this century, British and United States census officials constructed social classifications based upon the opposition between intellectual and manual occupations, the former being ordered according to their more or less professional character and the latter according to skills. Logically, one would have expected Canadian statisticians to follow the same path: but the “professional” model never took root in Canada. When census officials here developed a classification of occupations, they did not attempt to create a unilinear scheme of large homogeneous classes using occupation as privileged criterion; following the definitions of classical political economy, they rather set upon themselves to measure the extent of the division of labour. This article seeks to explain the peculiarity of the Canadian case by relating it to three conjoined factors: first, the highly centralized character of Canadas statistical system; second, the important role played by nascent Canadian political economy as the intellectual milieu of statisticians; finally, the fact that the Canadian economy was characterized at that time by the persistence of an important correlation between industry and occupation.