William Genieys

The sociology of political elites in France : The end of an exception?

This article presents the position of, and debates within, French elite sociology today. The analysis stresses the reasons for the field’s weak development, and discusses current debates about politicians (politics as profession versus political savoir-faire) and about the relationship between elites and the state (their role as custodians of the state). The author underlines the dilemmas stemming from these debates, points out the three directions (the comparative approach, the historical approach, and the policy-making approach) that French neoelitism has taken, and suggests the need for a cognitive framework permitting the study of elite action within the decision-making process in order to improve empirical observation of how new power elites are formed.

The Problem of Policy Change

The citizen observing democratic governments at the beginning of the twenty-first century, hearing of their doings as reported by the media, or simply considering their impact on her own life, sees an image of constant flux. New laws are passed and regulations enforced; individuals seeking to gain or retain elected office promise “reform”; specialists, inside government and out, engage in passionate public debate about the relative merits of various policy options. It may come as a surprise to the citizen in question, accordingly, should she be inspired to undertake the academic study of political science or public policy, to learn that the most prestigious and commonly employed scientific models and theories in the field, while they differ among themselves on many points, have in common the prediction, if one takes their reasoning to its logical conclusions, that political life will be characterized not by change at all, but rather by continuity and even stasis.

The Custodians of State Policies Dealing With the Financial Crisis: A Comparison Between France and the US

Following the 2008 global economic crisis and rolling out of austerity measures, elites of the state seem to have become a “political species” of their own, now under threat of extinction. The study of the health and defense policy reforms in France and the US during the 1990s and 2000s shows that far from disappearing, the influence of state elites is being strategically reconfigured to defend some sector-specific policies. Similarly to those “custodians of policy” dear to P. Selznick, small groups of elites are gaining expertise within strategic sectors of public policy; they are also making the need to control the cost of public spending their royal battle, in order to safeguard what they see as the crucial role of the public good. In the American cases study, the image of the “revolving door”, which encapsulates the idea of professional mobility back and forth from the private to the public sector, implies a fragmented state, open to external pressures of social groups. We document career and professional trajectories marked by a strong commitment to a given policy area. Circulation, we note, is frequent between these positions in the public sector. While these findings do not in and of themselves allow us to fully assess the influence wielded by these elites, this study identifies the social and political resources and forms of specialization which predispose them to play important roles in shaping public policy. For the past 30 years, the question of varieties of liberalisation has been put forward as an explanatory factor for a wide range of public policies (Schmidt & Thatcher, 2013; Thelen, 2014). In this perspective, numerous authors have theorised the dismantling of democratic states and the weakening of public authority that would follow (Suleiman, 2003; Fukuyama, 2004; Bezès, 2009; Bonneli & Pelletier, 2010; Lodge, 2013). Research on public policy has focused on the success of neoliberal ideas among European and North American political elites (Pierson, 1994; Prasad, 2006; Fourcade, 2009) on the calling into question of the neo-Keynesian paradigm (Hall, 1986; Crouch, 2011) and on the development of budgetary constraints (Bezès & Siné, 2011; Streeck & Schäfer, 2013; Blyth, 2013). Other work emphasises the idea that the effects of economic globalization—reinforced by those of the financial crisis of 2008—have accelerated the weakening of state capacity in western democracies by accelerating the expansion of market relations within national political systems (Streeck & Thelen, 2005; Jabko, 2012). At the same time, this period has seen renewed interest in national regulation (Lodge, 2011). Even so, if analysis is limited to the evolution of public policies as a simple functional response to the evolution of the international, financial, or ideological contexts in which they are found, research tends to underestimate the role played by competition among the elite groups involved with their elaboration and their capacity for resilient attachment to the power of public authority. For this reason, the hypothesis of the dismantling of the state, allegedly accelerated by the crisis of 2008, should be revisited.

Accounting for Change: The Role of Programmatic Elites

The case studies that make up the heart of this volume take us a considerable distance toward answers to the general questions concerning the sources and dynamics of policy change with which we began. In addition, a number of the studies suggest the outline of a further research program, one focused on a particular mechanism of change: the role of programmatic elites. This last, we must stress, is not intended as a universal answer to the question of change; it is one mechanism among a number of others. It is, however, one that we feel to be at once important and hitherto understudied. As such it is well worth considering both what we have learned so far and where we might go to find out more. Before proceeding with this necessarily speculative conclusion, we begin by revisiting the questions and proposals with which we began.

Elite Actors and Policy Innovation

The case studies collected in chapter 3 illustrated the contingent and at least partly endogenous nature of interests. The studies in the present chapter address the other pillar of new institutionalist analysis, the central role given to the structural preconditions of policy, both in times of stability and change. To use the vocabulary of John Kingdon, adopted by a number of the case study authors in this volume, we suggest that canonical models put too much emphasis on the nature and causes of policy windows and not enough on the programmatic proposals that come through them. To put the case more strongly, indeed, both the cases in this chapter, along with several others in the volume, illustrate what Carolyn Tuohy has labeled “accidental logics” of innovation, in that there is no necessary relationship between the policy window and the program that comes through it.

Competing Elites, Legitimate Authority, Structured Ideas

Every generation or so, political science rediscovers politics. When we say politics, moreover, we mean this in the everyday lay person’s sense of the word, the meaning we have in mind when we scornfully say, “oh, that’s just politics” in order to explain why a dubious measure made its way into the federal budget or why a colleague less deserving than ourselves got the coveted office closest to the coffeemaker. Why did a senior senator insert a bit of budgetary “pork” (from which, being personally honest, he will derive no direct financial benefit) into the budget? Why did the department chair make office assignments as she did (without taking the best office for herself)? Theories that understand politics as economics by other means would suggest bribery (or a mutually beneficial exchange, to use a more polite phrase to say the same thing). Sociological theories that see politics as one form among others of organizational behavior would have us look for shared norms of appropriate interaction. We think that there may be more than that going on. Politics, we suggest, is also—and sometimes first of all—about wielding power for its own sake, an unending quest for what Weber called “the prestige-feeling that power gives” (Gerth and Mills, 1946/1958: 78), and most especially for the sake of being seen as succeeding, of being recognized by others as powerful.

Interests in Question

Before addressing the problem of change directly, we must consider the prior questions of interests and preferences. Simply assuming the objective reality of stable interests, of which the revealed preferences of actors are but imperfect reflections, may be intellectually satisfying and, in some cases, theoretically useful but provides little guidance for the questions that concern us here. Open-minded empirical observation, instead, provides us with a useful starting point. The two case studies presented in this chapter illustrate key aspects of this debate, and provide an element of empirical grounding for the hypotheses that inform our larger project, as discussed in chapter 2.