June Burnham

Lessons from Regional Planning in France

The objective of this book was to demonstrate that political leaders have considerable control over bureaucratic institutions, with a substantial ability to modify organizational structures and reorient bureaucratic activities towards their own political goals. The predominant interpretation of the relationship between leaders and institutions in the political science literature has been that political leaders have little autonomy relative to the constraints exerted by formal and informal institutions. Exceptions to this general rule of leadership weakness are widely accepted: exceptional leaders, or leaders profiting from exceptional situations, can change institutions (Edinger 1993: 67; Thelen and Steinmo 1992: 15–16). Such instances are often used to support a classification of political executives as, on the one hand, charismatic or anomalous leaders who overcome the constraints to make a profound impact on the polity, and the rest, mere ‘managers’ or ‘jugglers’ of the obstacles in their path.

Inquiry and Analysis

The second set of functions performed by the traditional core of the Cabinet Office — undertaking different forms of inquiry and analysis — is often hard to distinguish from the first — servicing committees. Indeed these functions sometimes seem to be little more than an extension of the first and second stages of the handling of committees: information-gathering and preparation. Functions of inquiry and analysis can be identified separately from the usual run of committee work described in the previous chapter because they do not normally involve ministers on a daily basis. They are in general performed by a designated bureau, secretariat or unit with specific terms of reference. The science and technology secretariat between 1986 and 1992 was a good example of a mixture of the two sets of functions. That section of the Cabinet Office serviced Cabinet committees and advised on ways to assess scientific and technological research.

The Political Office

Although The Civil Service Yearbook did not recognize ‘the political office’ as a distinct part of the Prime Minister’s Office until 1983, political advisers had long served at No. 10. The official designation reflected growing specialization and formalization within the Prime Minister’s Office, but the political office has always been the least structured and collegiate unit at No. 10. It corrals together a set of actors whose main task is to relate the prime minister to the world of party politics. They send to the party messages from the prime minister and carry back the views of the party. They look at items the prime minister is dealing with from the point of view of the party. They link the prime minister to party members both in parliament and in the country, to win their support for the government and its programme and for the prime minister as an individual. Their assistance is especially needed in preparing and running election campaigns, when the 24-hour system of advice and support to the prime minister from permanent officials necessarily fades away.

Fragmentation and Central Control: Competing Forces in a Disunited Kingdom

The chapter first analyses the historical experiences of the four principal territories within the UK to explain why substantial powers have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—but not to England. It describes the current ‘asymmetric’ governance structures in the different parts of the UK and also the institutions and practices that aim to keep the system ‘united’. Legally and politically, the UK remains a unitary state with power concentrated at the centre, as shown by serious reductions in the autonomy of local governments. The chapter concludes that, despite the devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the UK is not a decentralised state. Even the new parliaments have little protection in a country without a Constitution.

Ensuring Responsiveness, Competence and Loyalty

The last chapter showed that DATAR’s effectiveness as a coordinating bureaucracy was related to the interest taken by political leaders in its affairs and therefore that leaders had an impact on DATAR that was linked to their interest in its work. This chapter and the next strengthen the claim by showing how that ‘highly significant’ relationship at the statistical level of principle is affected at the level of political-administrative practice. Blondel (1987: 150) thought ‘the system’ linking political leaders to the bureaucracy was ‘often — perhaps mostly … simply unresponsive or only partly responsive’ to their needs. He assumed that four factors made a difference to how well bureaucrats implemented leadership aims (1987: 168). One, links from the central bureaucracy to other organizations and the general population constitute a special case where DATAR is concerned and will be examined in the following chapter. The remaining factors could apply to all bureaucratic organizations: ‘competence’ ‘administrative organisation — not too light nor too heavy’ ‘civil servants must … be expected to be reliable … the fostering of loyalty of civil servants by a variety of means — but not at the expense of initiative taking — is a manifest requirement if bureaucracies are to provide a significant help to leaders in achieving their goals’.

Links to the Leadership: Positional or Personal?

The creators of DATAR later suggested that its power was guaranteed by the delegue’s close personal links to the prime minister and the latter’s ‘permanent, pressing intervention’ (Ortoli 1990: 131). Blondel puts this requirement in general terms when he insists (1987: 168) that ‘the links between the bureaucracy and the leader must be close and effective’. Bureaucratic institutions may hinder more than help political leaders, he argues, because they are not ‘reliable’. Leaders may be able ‘to press a button’ to the bureaucracy, but they cannot expect decisions to be implemented just because they have pressed the button: ‘All they can hope for is that some of these decisions will be partly implemented in the fairly near future’ (1987: 150).

Roads Planning and Funding

The concern of this book is with the argument that political leaders find it difficult to make their mark, such are the constraints posed by bureaucratic organizations. Previous chapters have dealt with that concern in relation to the leadership’s capacity to alter the organizational design and operation of the bureaucracy itself. However, any assessment of the political leadership’s ability to affect the workings of the bureaucracy needs to be carried through to the eventual outcome, and in particular to the role of the bureaucracy in assisting or hampering the leadership’s efforts in the policy domain. As Blondel (1980: 15) observed, ‘whether political leaders appear to “make a difference” to the type of policies which are followed … is in many ways the central question of political activity’.

Restructuring Bureaucratic Organizations

The assessment of the impact of the political leadership on the organization of French regional planning starts with the conception of the policy and the administrative arrangements to deliver it. Blondel thinks political leaders are likely to have to improve the organizational structure if they are to achieve the outcomes they desire, but he is sceptical about their chances of doing so. ‘Leaders are not powerless to move the machinery and the structures, but the extent of their power is … often overestimated’ (Blondel 1987: 172–C3). Blondel’s analysis suggests that setting up a bureaucracy for an innovative or ambitious policy — and French regional planning was both — would meet special difficulty. ‘Leaders who wish to achieve goals that are appreciably more “activist” than those of their predecessors often wish to do more; … they can try and bend the “muscles” of the bureaucracy; but their expectations will remain largely unfulfilled’ (Blondel 1987: 170).

Political Leaders and Bureaucratic Organizations

The aim of this book is to demonstrate that politicians in government make more of an impact on the bureaucratic organizations in their charge than political scientists usually acknowledge. Although the evidence for that assertion will derive from an examination of French regional planning, each chapter shows the potential for interesting findings in other policies and political systems by those stimulated to adopt equivalent research techniques; and some pointers to that effect are offered in the concluding chapter.

Steering Policy through Administrative and Financial Tools

Blondel argued that there are four characteristics of a public bureaucracy that govern its implementation of the leader’s goals — competence, organization, reliability and linkage to the population. In the case of French regional planning, the political leaders who created DATAR did not intend it to link them directly to the population in the manner of a field service with local offices, but instead to help them steer the population of actors who would deliver implementation. When setting up DATAR in 1963, Pompidou’s aides ‘surveyed the principal decision-making nodes in the administrative and financial apparatus and organized the necessary regulatory provisions’ (Gremion 1976: 124). The chief administrative instrument was the committee chaired by the prime minister, the Comite interministeriel d’amenagement du territoire (CIAT), whose decisions DATAR would prepare. The delegue was given a seat on other ministerial and bureaucratic committees relevant to regional development. The main financial instruments were a fund, the Fonds d’intervention pour l’amenagement du territoire (FIAT), and procedures to give DATAR oversight of ministries’ capital budgets.