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International Political Science Review
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512105055808
2005 26: 413 International Political Science Review
William Genieys
The Sociology of Political Elites in France: The End of an Exception?
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The Sociology of Political Elites in France:
The End of an Exception?
WILLIAM GENIEYS
ABSTRACT. This article presents the position of, and debates within,
French elite sociology today. The analysis stresses the reasons for the
fields 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 neo-
elitism 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.
Keywords: Elite theory France Civil service State Regime change
Introduction
Since the beginning of the classic controversy between the partisans of monism
and partisan pluralism, elite theory has facilitated the understanding of political
regimes real nature (totalitarian versus authoritarian versus pluralistic). Indeed,
an ongoing controversy regarding elite sociology stems from the contradiction
between the theoretical debate, strongly linked to the expansion of modern social
sciences, and the refinement of methodological tools (social classes versus elites).
1
For some time now elite theory has been a field of research within political
science, a discipline in which the study of the opposition between structure and
agency is omnipresent and in which empirical research is mobilized in order to
provide a comparative vision of the reality of political regimes. However, since the
1980s, certain Anglo-Saxon sociologists have suggested that the approach used by
elite theorists be reconsidered and that greater emphasis be placed on how the
International Political Science Review (2005), Vol 26, No. 4, 413430
DOI: 10.1177/0192512105055808 2005 International Political Science Association
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
arrangements and agreements between elites help one to assess the coherence of
democratic configurations across the world (Field and Higley, 1980; Higley and
Burton, 1987). The problem of democratic transitions has reinforced this trend
toward international research (Dogan and Higley, 1998; Linz and Stepan, 1996).
This article looks at how this debate has been viewed in French political science,
showing how it was initially bypassed and then led to a greater focus on the
structure of the states political elites. More generally, we attempt to show in what
ways this response has contributed to the weak development of comparative elite
sociology in France (Aberbach et al., 1981; Putnam, 1976).
From a slightly naive culturalist approach, one might suggest that the ideology
dominant in France is one of mritocratie rpublicaine, an ideology which is incom-
patible with an elitist conceptualization of power. Up until now, the ideas of the
founding fathers of elitist theory, notably Pareto and Mosca, have been reduced in
France to a simple perpetuation of French counter-revolutionary political philosophy
(from Maistre, Bonald, and so on) and have not prompted careful thought about
the relationship between elites and democracy. As a discursive category, elites are
conceptualized negatively (Its the fault of the elites). After two important
military political defeats in France in 1870 and 1940, two great intellectual figures,
Ernest Renan in La rforme intellectuelle et morale and Marc Bloch in Ltrange dfaite,
despite a 60-year gap, evoked the same cause: the weakness of French elite leader-
ship, which they blamed for the collapse of the countrys political system. Similarly,
in a book tracing the imaginary foundations present at the birth of modern
France, Pierre Birnbaum (1998: 19) shows how there arose, after the events of
1789, a division between two Frances due to differences between two sets of elites.
Partly because of these sociohistorical reasons, the notion of elites has never
been considered in France as an analytical variable or even as a useful concept
with which to understand changes in political power. There have been remarkably
few articles on elites published in either the Revue franaise de sociologie or the Revue
franaise de science politique since the 1950s. A synthetic overview written by
researchers from the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (FNSP) put the
word elite in quotes, clearly indicating the problems faced by political scientists
in using this term or concept (Cayrol et al., 1970). In analyzing the social
mechanisms at work in the French social reproduction process, Pierre Bourdieu
argued that the elite concept was irrelevant for a sociology of domination.
According to Bourdieu, whose influence on the development of French political
science has been notable since the 1970s, one should refuse to give any scientific
value to the theories or traditional methods of the sociology of elites, and use
instead the theory of a dominant class (Busino, 1992; Genieys, 2000).
There has, however, been a recent change in the literature, as some authors
have begun to discuss the study of elites as a way of understanding changing
regimes (Genieys, 1996; Higley and Pakulski, 2000). In this new approach to a
comparative sociology of elites, the old modes of study, as exemplified in the elite
theorists approach to the study of French politicians, are rejected and the
problem of the comparability of elites or the French politico-administrative elite
(or elites) and the general weakness of comparative analysis are emphasized. A
sociology of elites as prisoners of the state is emerging. Understanding these
differences allows us to discern the hidden reasons for French tardiness with
regard to the comparative sociology of political elites. Consequently, it is necessary
to take a closer look at the path French researchers have been following as they
change their methods for studying political elites.
414 International Political Science Review 26(4)
A Sociology of Elites Very Different from the Anglo-Saxon Tradition
In a synthesis of the indicators used to study social positions and understand the
professionalization of parliamentary representatives, Frdric Sawicki (1999) has
pointed out a key difference between the French and US approaches to the study
of political elites: when studying politicians, French researchers tend to give
excessive weight to the question of political representations of social classes,
whereas in the USA, the politicians profession receives greater attention.
2
To understand the reasons for this difference and the impact it has had on the
French study of political elites, it is useful to begin by considering the heritage of
Raymond Aron. In two texts, printed 10 years apart (Aron, 1950a, 1950b, 1960),
Aron began the debate in France. In a first discussion on the articulation between
the elite structure and the social structure, he considered key factors determining
whether a political regime is oppressive or liberal, the homogeneity or diversity of
its elites, plus their dispersal or concentration. In a second contribution, he
returned to elites and the ideological implication that drives the theory of elites, at
the same time denouncing the Marxist approach to political domination in terms of
social class, political class, and ruling classes. To get out of this impasse, he criticizes
excessively global approaches and suggests the analytical concept of catgories
dirigeantes as a tool allowing us to understand political developments in their
context rather than as a whole (Aron, 1960). For Aron, this analytical concept
designates more a function than a social group and ... it allows us, at the same
time, to analyze the organization of power, the relationship between power and
society in a certain country, and to outline comparisons between countries and
regimes. In short, if Arons leading categories are the same as Paretos elites, his
skepticism as regards elite theory has nevertheless left its traces on French political
scientists. Since Aron, the notion of elites and especially political elites (elected
officials, civil servants, and so on) has been regularly denigrated as unoperational.
An illustration of this evolution can be seen as early as 1963. La classe dirigeante:
mythe ou ralit? was the question asked by Aron in the context of a roundtable of
the Association Franaise de Science Politique (November 1516, 1963), the
contributions to which were published in the Revue franaise de science politique.
3
In
the context of the cold war and the confrontation between Marxists and liberals,
Aron carried on a debate with Jean Meynaud around the concept of the ruling
class, a notion for which he sought to substitute that of catgories dirigeantes. The
discussion that followed was a rich one, and underscored the importance of
vocabulary in both scientific and ideological debate.
4
Despite the small number of scholarly publications devoted to it, the question
of whether a ruling class does indeed exist in contemporary France remains
relevant (Dogan, 2003). In fact, in the 1970s only one French empirical study was
carried out. Distancing itself from the Aron approach, it dealt with the question
of the French ruling class in order to discover to what extent the cohesion of
these ruling classes depends on both objective and structural links between them
and on the circulation between the personnel who ... occupy places within this
space of rulership (Birnbaum et al., 1978: 18). (It should be mentioned here that
Pierre Birnbaum, in his individual research, simultaneously aligned himself with
Raymond Arons way of thinking and the re-examination of elitist theory in the
USA.
5
As will be discussed further below, he has been one of the rare French
comparatists to deal explicitly with the problems of elites in his research on the
logic of the French state, using the notion of a French leading class.)
GENIEYS: The Sociology of Political Elites in France 415
Other empirical research on French politicians has pointed out ways to ascend
in French society via politics (Cayrol et al., 1970, 1973; Charle, 1987; Charlot,
1973; Dogan, 1961; Gaxie, 1983). But even these studies have demonstrated a
continuing aversion to using elite theory. The very qualifying of someone as a
politician poses an epistemological, or even cultural-political, problem which is
only just beginning to fade in France (Genieys, 2000). Why has traditional French
analysis of French politicians been so slow to employ the tools of the sociology of
political elites?
In France, there seems to be a sort of refusal to define political elites. Robert
Putnam, who has carried out a comparative analysis of elites throughout the
world, reserves the term political elites for those who have more power than
others. Power is here understood to mean a power to truly influence, directly or
indirectly, politics and state activity (Putnam, 1976: 6). Members of parliament,
ministers, presidents, and highly placed administrative workers are seen as persons
having the possibility of exercising political domination, regardless of the type of
political regime they are in. What Putnam gains in comparability by thus defining
elites, and deliberately putting aside the decisional approach, he loses by limiting
his sociology of elites to legitimate political personnel. Colette Ysmal, who wrote
the article Elites and Leaders in the Trait de science politique (the French
equivalent of a handbook of political science), deeply criticizes this definition of
political elites as an unnecessary cutback which eliminates non-office-holding
partisan elites (1985: 604). Ysmal does not denounce the comparative approach to
the study of political elites, but she does find that Putnams particular approach
leads to a perverse effect. As she, Cayrol, and Parodi had earlier demonstrated,
in France a research tradition does exist which focuses explicitly on partisan elites
(Cayrol et al., 1970, 1973). Paradoxically, however, these researchers distance
themselves from that tradition by advocating partial skepticism toward the
heuristic value of the notion of elites and by implicitly suggesting the
importance of comparative research when they outline the sociological profile of
French members of parliament (Cayrol et al., 1973). Indeed, the authors
mentioned that, Regardless of the theoretical or political methods used, and
being that there are so many questions left unanswered regarding American
pluralist political science and Marxist research, it appears only logical to develop
new theoretical and empirical research ideas about elites and the nature of
power (Cayrol et al., 1970: 811). Their research on French parliamentarians is
focused on recruitment methods and the roles and political careers of members of
parliament, and is clearly influenced by the work of Matt Dogan on French
members of parliament (see below).
Other, more complex differentiations have emerged. We can, for example,
agree with Putnam that it is illogical to think that good representativeness within
elites necessarily means good democracy,
6
and this question has been amply
addressed by Best and Cotta (2000) in their important comparative study of the
evolution of the social properties of parliaments and democratic representation in
western Europe since 1848.
Overall, however, two options have come to be privileged: the first aiming to
examine the connections between the differentiations of the state and the unity of
elites (Badie and Birnbaum, 1979; Birnbaum, 1977, 1984) and the second,
inspired by Bourdieu, challenging the use of the term elites and trying to
underline the effects of the professionalization of politicians. The question asked
regarding the relative autonomy of elites becomes essential in order to escape
marxisme orthodoxe (Gaxie, 1973). Work on the French political class has begun to
focus on these two main research points and has tended to put aside the debate
about Anglo-Saxon sociology on elites.
Politics as Profession and Political Savoir-Faire: The First French Debate
French researchers who analyze the effects of the professionalization of politics on
politicians deliberately leave aside the sociology of elites in order to encourage a
way of thinking which privileges the independence of a group of people around a
specific interest. All the same, in reducing the causes of political attitudes to social
properties, this research attempts to go beyond the classic empirical work on the
continuity of politicians and the institutionalization of a new social class of
political representation when regimes change.
Here, one must recall the pioneering empirical research of Matt Dogan
(1953, 1957, 1961, 1967) on the social properties of French members of
parliament. It should be pointed out that until the 1970s Dogan was one of the
rare researchers in France who carried out quantitative sociographic studies on
French politicians. He studied the origins, religious and political socialization, and
the careers of parliamentarians as well as ministers, especially those under the
Third and Fourth Republics. The great intuition of this scholar lay in his
decision to analyze regime change and personnel change simultaneously. None-
theless, Dogan (1953, 1957) remained very focused upon the role of social
properties (in the broad sense) in the building of political careers, in order to
emphasize the fact that the social recruitment of members of parliament is
correlated with the social image of the voters. In his later work on political
representation under the French Fifth Republic, he gives much more attention to
the question of social origins as a factor in understanding political careers. It is the
extension of this research that gave rise to empirical inquiries into the Le dput
franais by researchers from the FNSP (Cayrol et al., 1970, 1973). This latter line
of study was inspired by the increasing use in the 1960s of survey research to study
members of parliament in Europe and the USA. As noted above, in the first
article, the writers criticized the research done on politicians and at the same time
pointed out the limits and put in doubt the relevance of an elitist approach to this
object (Cayrol et al., 1970). The second article begins with the clear observation
that in France no empirical inquiry had, until then, regularly asked a large part of
the members of parliament about their social backgrounds, their discovery of
politics, their entrance into political life and their career, their conceptions of the
parliamentary function, their opinions and their beliefs (Cayrol et al., 1973: 8).
These same researchers decided to make up for lost time by doing a large
empirical study. Unfortunately, this study was never repeated over time, which
prevented the production of longitudinal knowledge of French politicians. While
on this subject, it is interesting to note that, years later, Colette Ysmal moved
slightly away from her initial way of thinking. While still believing in the theory of
elites as prolegomenous, as in her Les lites politiques: Un monde clos? (Ysmal,
1995), she was now able to draw on a fund of empirical material which enriched
the initial inquiry.
With a more critical view, Daniel Gaxie published Les professionnels de la politique
(1973), in which the question of the relative autonomy of politicians was clearly
asked. Gaxie suggested an analysis of internal relationships within the articulated
political sphere which centered around a way of thinking about the concepts of
differentiation, specialization, and professionalization. The paradigm proposed by
Gaxie is fairly ambitious in the sense that he tends to offer a theoretical exit to the
debates between partisans of an analysis in terms of class and the few French
defenders of an analysis in terms of homogeneous and differentiated elites.
7
Gaxie
interprets the professionalization process by attributing a particularly strong role to
two classical sociological variables: those of social origins and socio-professional
categories. Starting from this and backed up by numerous empirical inquiries, he
shows how, for the past 20 years, there have been effects of his paradigm on all
categories of political actors, from party activists to members of parliament to
ministers (Gaxie, 1980, 1983). Moreover, Gaxie continues along the same lines as his
first thoughts on professionals in politics and refuses to use the term elite in his
work.
8
Lastly, it is interesting to note that in his large contribution in collaboration
with Heinrich Best on the recruitment of MPs in France since 1848, he discusses the
heritage of Dogan, at the same time continuing to insist upon his own paradigms
relevance (Best and Gaxie, 2000). These authors show that correlatively to changes
of political regime in France, especially since 1946, it is the figure of the professional
politician and politics as a profession which must be taken into consideration.
Notwithstanding this finding, the approach in terms of politics as a profession
has come to be the object of criticism in a series of works around the question of
political savoir-faire, in studies which propose a more global vision of political
activities (Garraud, 1989; Offerl, 1999). In mobilizing the US sociology of
professional roles and in becoming interested in the political practices of local
elites in the decentralization process, these researchers show that political
professionalization in the Weberian sense of the term is not as obvious as in the
reality of French political life. Without referring at all to the theory of elites, this
research on the background of parliamentary members shows the importance of
the learning process of politics and of political savoir-faire at the heart of the
National Assembly at the end of the 19th century (Joana, 1999).
These various attempts to circumvent the sociology of political elites has had an
isolating effect on research results. Research emphasizing the importance of the
political savoir-faire of political elites looks for the specificity of these politicians,
thereby losing the capacity to analyze political change. From a methodological
point of view, in losing itself in the quest for singularity, French research cuts itself
off, in the short term, from all comparative perspectives and, in the long term,
from a more general pool of thinking on the articulation between regimes and
political elites.
Lastly, if there is a research field in which the French situation justifies an
approach in terms of exceptionnalisme, it is not in the relative autonomy of staffing
policies compared to civil society, because this articulation is always reinforced by
the state. Since 1958, with the beginning of the Fifth Republic, the politico-
administrative elite has been seen in two ways: that of the involvement of senior
officials in the structures of political representation and that of a politicization of
the senior spheres of the civil service (Chevallier, 1997). This debate constitutes a
real challenge for the comparative sociology of elites in France as they are still
considered as custodians of the state.
Custodians of the State Versus State Elites: The Second French Debate
Indeed, as we shall see below, in France the development of the comparative
sociology of elites came about due to the question of the complicated relationship
between such elites and the state. In response to the classic question of the theory
of elites, the question of who governs France, the answers are complicated and
contradictory: the custodians of the state versus the elite of the state. The monism
or pluralism debate is more or less explicit with an unsurpassable analytical
threshold: the French state.
9
Why has comparative sociology in France come to be
so focused on the complex relation between the elite (or elites) and the state?
To answer that question, it is important now to look at the second dimension
which tends to make the analysis of elites and their relationship to the state
exceptional in France.
10
The first trend in this research work can be found in the
excellent first books of the US political scientist Ezra Suleiman (1976, 1979) about
elites and politics in France. This author shows that elites who were educated in
the grandes coles had the necessary strong and homogeneous bureaucratic training
to be placed in the world of politics. For him, the secrets of a successful, French,
modern political world resided in the emergence of these custodians of the
state. From a slightly different analytical perspective, he also analyzes the mech-
anisms which lead to the production and reproduction of French politico-
administrative elites. He entirely accepts an elitist perspective, inspired by
Schumpeter and centered on the elites capacity to adapt (Suleiman, 1979: 16).
He tries to show how French elites successfully adapted to social changes while
maintaining their power. This certainly explains why the important empirico-
theorique works by Ezra Suleiman were, in fact, rarely discussed in the political
science field in France. From his empirical study, Suleiman (1979: 19) gives a
wider definition, characterizing his subjects as follows:
[They are] state elites because they are trained by the state and destined [for]
its service. If they had restricted themselves just to the public services, this same
service would insure them a remarkable influence. But their importance goes
much further than the public sector as its members occupy today (even mono-
polize) the key positions of the administrative, political, industrial, financial
and even teaching sectors. We are therefore interested in the elites totally
created by the state, that is to say those who are trained, promoted and
legitimized by a highly selective teaching system and who use the education
given them by the state and the services of the state as a springboard to jump to
other careers.
In a general way, as regards elite sociology, by emphasizing the importance of the
role of institutions and organizations leading to the formation of a particular elite,
Suleiman enhances French research which tends to be focused more on the social
structure of senior officials (Darbel and Schnapper, 1969), on the techno-
cratization of top public functions (Thoenig, 1973), or even on les grands corps
(Kessler, 1986).
11
For Suleiman the specificity of the elite of the state lies primarily
in the special schooling given in the grandes coles, which leads to certain posts in
this power structure (grands corps, Direction dadministration centrale, and cabinets
ministriels). In becoming interested in more recent publications on the question
of limpossible reform of the Ecole Nationale dAdministration (ENA), he
underlines the phenomenon of devolution affecting this institution, which has
become a machine for classifying and for teaching. For him, For the last 20 years
the ENA has tried to choose a certain elite rather than to give new technical
training to future state administrators (Suleiman, 1995: 293). He then shows how
the principle of the availability of these administrative elites creates the
possibility of pursuing political careers. He also analyzes how the development of
pantouflage (a political phenomenon which is particular to French political
culture and which is characterized by the fact that certain former students of the
grandes coles and senior officials hold management positions in large French
capitalist companies) has accelerated due to the nationalization or
denationalization of large industries by the French state. He has counted 4500
narques (former students of the ENA) present in private industries to show that
service to the state truly constitutes a wonderful path to management positions in
the capitalist system in France (Suleiman, 1995). Lastly, he develops his ideas on
the articulation between social changes and changes in the elite yet further by
showing that the Golden Era of the State, linked to the action of the grands
commis de lEtat, today seems to be part of the past (Suleiman and Courty, 1997).
In fact, the continuity of public policies that we have seen over the 30 glory years
(194474) is now questioned by the interpenetration of power between the
administrative, political, industrial, and financial elites. All the same, although this
research trend underlines the central political role of the custodians of the state,
its devotees are nevertheless subscribing to the pluralistic approach of the elites.
In contrast, the French variant of the monist approach to power puts forward
the scholarly mechanisms of the reproduction of the elite, while challenging the
scientific validity of the elite concept. The perspective of this research is doubly
flawed, in that working on elites can often lead, on the one hand, to legitimizing
the political point of view of the dominants and, on the other hand, to relying
on contestable, scientific empirical data (Bourdieu, 1989). Oleg Lewandowski
(1974) ably describes the nature of the debate: on the one hand, publications such
as Whos Who can be used as a base for a critical sociology of the elites (the image
of the elites for the ruling class), but on the other hand, recognition of the
structural differentiation of the ruling class is less important than the integration
mechanisms, which means that social representations are strongly shared at the
heart of the elite. Pierre Bourdieus way of thinking denounced the weakness of
the empirical source (Whos Who and so on) on which the works of these elites
were founded. For these writers, a true sociology of the dominant class should
concentrate on the role of scholarly institutions, as it is there that the sentiment of
belonging to one world is inculcated. The mere existence of a sociology of elites
is rendered difficult by the criticisms offered in the sociology of domination
(Bourdieu, 1989). Pierre Bourdieu denounced the principal research carried out
on elites as being founded on the construction of a partial object (or a biased
one), which makes it impossible to understand fully the phenomena of social
reproduction and the auto-legitimating of the noblesse dEtat.
12
Although pursuing
a different theoretical direction, he goes along with Ezra Suleiman, saying that the
phenomenon should be considered in its totality if one wishes to understand how
today, in France, a noblesse dEtat disposes of a large range of economic, bureau-
cratic, and even intellectual powers. He concludes that a conceptualization of
power around the elite category is not scientifically founded. A recent study by
Eymeri (2001) gives a summary of both Bourdieus and Suleimans opinions,
showing how today narques are able to monopolize the role of custodians of the
state. This author also rejects precise discussions on the sociology of elites and
shows how the socialization process of the narques begins long before they enter
the school, then showing how the ENA acts on people as a conforming machine.
This special training, which functions like a parallel university, offers access to all
the major state jobs, and the bureaucratic elites in France form the only social
group having no power equivalent. An illustration of this phenomenon can be
seen in the manifesto Notre Etat, written by some senior officials regarding a
reform project for the French state (Fauroux and Spitz, 2000).
13
In short, in France, research on elites is frequently concentrated on the central
role of the custodians of the state in political life. Some of Bourdieus critical
sociology and his refusal to validate the elite concept stems more from a political
ideology than a scientific one. In a more general way, we can say that the analysis
of elites in France focuses much more on the process of elite bureaucratization
in other words, considering what happened to such leaders before they reached
positions of power.
However, having emphasized the singular dimensions of French elite sociology,
it then becomes necessary to show how, in the past few years, the foundations of a
neo-elitism have been laid. In this new direction taken by elite research, more
emphasis is placed on the interactions between elites and institutions in the
decision-making process.
Some New Paths to a French Neo-Elitism
French neo-elitism has its foundations in the work of critics who focus on the
question of how the research object is constructed. The creator of the elite object
often stumbles on the polysemy of the term elite (or elites), to which one must
add the strong theoretical implications linked to it when it is used in the singular
or the plural. Indeed, the French neo-elitist perspective is built from two
questions. The first is how these elites come about in society, that is to say, their
social properties and ideological representations. The second resides in the
analysis of the involvement of elites in the decision-making process by taking into
account multi-positional and relational resources. In short, the aim is to develop a
more integrated approach which devotes a large part of the research to the
empirical study of the interactions within power configurations. A more integrated
approach is made possible by a combination of several analytical methods: (1)
social analysis permits us to grasp social properties; (2) positional and reputational
analysis focuses on the usages of positions; (3) the cognitive approach of the
referential allows us to interpret action logics; and (4) relational and decisional
analysis leads to an understanding of the recomposition of power. The French
neo-elitist approach thus analyzes the dynamics of political regime changes and
the transformation of the state more precisely. It can be presented as having three
main directions: the comparative approach, the historical approach, and the
public policy approach.
14
A Comparative Neo-Elitism
The first research carried out on comparative neo-elitism was simply an extension
of what Matt Dogan had already written in his empirical research about
politicians. From this perspective, Pierre Birnbaums works are both innovative for
the time and decisive for understanding how the comparative sociology of French
elites was built (Badie and Birnbaum, 1979; Birnbaum, 1977, 1985). In the middle
of the 1970s, in order to go further than Nicos Poulantzas or even C. Wright Mills
interpretations, this sociologist undertook research on the historical building of
the state in France, privileging the changes in the relationship between the elites
inside the politico-administrative power and those outside (Birnbaum, 1977).
Influenced by Stein Rokkans historical sociology perspective,
15
he showed how
one can understand the progress and consolidation of state institutionalization
from the analysis of the birth of a particular politico-administrative personnel, a
particular meritocratic recruitment belonging to a system of roles, and the
pursuing of careers in a special politico-administrative space which remains
closed to intruders from the business world. In these essays on French power
elites, Birnbaum (1977) analyzes the specificity of political power and the careers
of people inside the state. Building a relational model between political elites
(administrative and economic) at different periods in contemporary French
history allows him to put forward the idea of a strong state whose institutional
form was represented by the Fifth Republic (Birnbaum, 1977, 1984, 1985). Then,
in moving on to a comparative sociology of different states, he shows that if senior
officials are very much present among the politicians of the strong state (as in
France), they are almost never present in the political elites of weak states (such
as Great Britain or the USA).
16
From this perspective, Birnbaum underlines the
particularity of French political elites, such that even when there were radical
changes in governments (as in 1985), a very strong link between bureaucrats and
politicians still remained. Subsequent events, such as political alternation
(CURAPP, 1986) and then the period of cohabitation, only helped to confirm
this theory.
17
Lastly, the most recent research shows that the members of the socialist
governments ministerial cabinets have political careers fairly similar to those of
senior officials from conservative governments (Mathiot and Sawicki, 1999a,
1999b). Other French researchers have developed this approach in a comparative
perspective of western Europe (Genieys and Hassenteufel, 1997). This last-
mentioned work has shown that French research on the comparative sociology of
regime changes often tends to overestimate the role of elites in the analysis of such
transitions in Spain and Germany. An effort is made to avoid a simplistic sociology
of the political trajectory of elites in order not to exaggerate its impact upon their
capacity for action, but it seems obvious that in this particular type of political
situation, in which the question of legitimation and delegitimation is asked with
more acuteness than in routine political life, understanding the potential to
mobilize political resources requires analysis of individual or collective elite
backgrounds, or both, as is shown in the analysis of the role of elites within
changing Spanish political regimes.
18
Indeed, in western Europe today, a research
field which is opening up more and more deals with the comparison of the
political paths of the intermediary elites and their capacity to influence politics on
a meso-governmental level (Pasquier, 2004).
A Historical Neo-Elitism
Some French social scientists have set out to understand the reality of elites from
the perspective of a historical sociology of politics. Pierre Birnbaum pursues his
research through the complex process of the integration of Jewish people in the
higher reaches of the state around the question of the role of juifs dEtat. He shows
that to understand the actions of the elites, one must take into account the
cultural specificity of the social-historical context. Since the mid-1980s, Birnbaum
has worked on a large historical research project about the integration of Jewish
people in French public professions. His careful study of the political trajectory of
people from this faith, analyzing the biographical trajectory of certain families (in
its true sense) who have worked for the state, permits him to analyze the
integration process over a long period of time and ultimately to put forward a new
analytical category: the State Jew. What he means by the latter is the Jewish elite
who from the outset show a true appreciation of their new roles in the public
interest service, and invest all their energy in their job, ridding themselves of their
old mindsets to now put on the noble badges of serious and responsible state
dignitaries (Birnbaum, 1992: 8). In this analytical, historical framework, it is not a
matter of measuring the social determinism of the elites, but more of identifying
the elective affinities and the adhesion logic which supports an elite category
which is singular in the development of the sens de lEtat rpublicain. Strong on this
innovative social-historical way of thinking, the writer opens up a second area of
research with the story of 171 Jewish grands commis de lEtat (judges, generals, prfets,
and sous-prfets), showing the career impediments due to race or religion
under the Third Republic as these madmen of the Republic are obliged to face a
regime which willingly embraced popular anti-Semitic presumptions.
In a more explicitly comparatist register, the historian Christophe Charle
(1987) uses the elite concept in the comparative analysis of processes regarding
regime change in Europe.
19
This author breaks down the elements for a
comparative social history of the elites and state in France and western Europe
(19th and 20th centuries). He invites us to understand better why since the
French Revolution, the elites and the State have seen their legitimacy contested at
regular intervals (Charle, 1997). Remembering the three successive ambitions of
the study of elites, and in particular those linked to the state, this writer affirms
that today we need to answer only two questions: Who governs? and How does
one get to the top? The sociology of power elites must explain the traits of
specific regimes, their relationship with the whole society, and the possible
blocking mechanisms which arise and make political crises more serious in France
than in other European countries. Starting from this dynamic approach, this
historian puts forward a comparative social history of elites in which the
Napoleonic and Prussian integration model of the state is seen as completely
opposite to the English model (Charle, 2001). He therefore shows that the
behavior and the choices of the successive elites depend simultaneously on their
social characteristics, on their margin for maneuver compared to the demands of
their employer, or at least to those demands which they take into consideration
according to the relationship of the political forces of the moment and regarding
the senior officials who ensure the continuity of this policy, especially its
application in the mid-to-long term.
Insisting on the changing relations which exist between elites and institutional-
ized forms of power, these social historians once again place emphasis upon the
weight of these social-historical and cultural contexts, thereby supplementing the
findings of Anglo-Saxon research on this question (Reinhard, 1996).
A Public Action Neo-Elitism
The third path of French neo-elitism is definitely the most original and interesting
one for international comparison from both an empirical and a theoretical point
of view. In this approach, the role of ideas in transforming institutions and public
policies is introduced in a particularly stimulating manner (Hall, 1997). This
approach is also a continuation of the work of Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman
on the varied roles of bureaucrats and politicians in the decision-making process.
In the French research field, the analysis of public policies was inspired by the
work of Jobert and Muller (1987) on lEtat en action. The analysis of public
policies (in asking about the roles of actors in public policy-making) has opened a
fertile area for this type of investigation regarding the role of the French
custodians of the state in political changes. The early research emphasized the
interrelations between ideological representations and the production of a
particular rfrentiel daction publique on sectoral public policies.
20
From this
perspective, which goes beyond statist, neo-corporatist approaches, it is necessary
to understand how sectoral elites see the world when structuring the logic of
state action. Therefore, public decisions can be considered to be the result of a
process of imposing cognitive representations elaborated by the sectoral elites
(which are most often composed of different groups of custodians of the state).
This research perspective inspired a major work of comparative sociology studying
the role of certain elites in the imposition of neo-liberal ideas in French public
policies (Jobert and Thret, 1994).
21
This research, even if it does not explicitly
adhere to an elitist perspective, opens the way to a research area in which state
elites are understood from the point of view of cognitive mobilization and
intellectual influence on the decision process. Comparative analysis of this
differential reception of neo-liberalism allows us to update the different elite
categories, particularly in France by including the state economists, who in the
socialist government cabinets since 1983, have carried this change to the heart of
the state (Jobert, 1994). This new elitist perspective can be interpreted as a
reconsideration of the role of bureaucratic elites in the state transformation
process. Since then a new sociology of elites in interaction has come into being
whereby the question of who governs goes along with that of what is governed.
From the perspective of the elites-in-action analysis, some work on the role of this
sectional elite in employment, health, and public social policies in France since
1981 has been carried out (Genieys, 2005; Mathiot, 2000). Understanding of the
role of these elites or elite groups in the decision-making process in the state
welfare sector was enriched by pursuing a deeper explanation of their social
background and their politico-administrative trajectory. The use of this method
helped explain the turn toward neo-liberalism in France, led by the left, and made
it possible to show the existence at the heart of the state of a small group forming
a Welfare elite that was characterized by the accumulation of several types of
resources (administrative, political, survey, and relational) and the long period
spent in one sector (more than three years). The analysis of these trajectories
shows how specialized bodies such as the Cours des comptes or the Inspection
gnrale des affaires sociales (IGAS), but also the training given in the Direction
de la Prvision and the Direction du Budget at Bercy (Finance Ministry) are strong
indicators of the growing autonomy of this elite. In terms of social representation,
the welfare state shares a common cognitive framework (referential): To keep
social security one must adapt to financial constraints, reinforcing the role of State
piloting and focusing social allowances on those the least provided for (Genieys,
2005).
By way of conclusion, we wish to insist on the fact that the work done on French
neo-elitism is particularly significant for the development of French elite sociology
when dealing with international comparisons. It is thus important that this most
recent approach to the study of elites always takes into account both the
programmatic ideas that elites generate and the strategic positions that they
occupy in western democracies, in order to be able better to compare the changes
now taking place in the capitalist model of government (Lehmbruch, 2003: 41).
Notes
1. In Anglo-Saxon countries, the elite concept became an alternative to the Marxist
concept of the ruling class when the first empirical research was undertaken. We refer
here to the works of Eva Etzioni-Halevy (1993, 1997), who shows how Anglo-Saxon
social scientists slowly admitted the utility (or the relevance) of elite sociology in
understanding democratic theory.
2. The mritocratie rpublicaine is the ideological syncretism formulated by the founding
fathers (Gambetta, Ferry, and so on) of the Third Republic in 1877. Besides the fact that
access to citizenship is available regardless of all social, cultural, or racial considerations,
this republican philosophy invents a model of social promotion founded on taking into
consideration an individuals effort and talent, which is tested by a system called the
concours (a highly competitive exam). Thus, doing this concours becomes a mandatory
step in joining the elite channels of the grandes coles or in entering the state
administration.
3. For an overview of the stakes involved in the debate carried out in this roundtable, see
the three dossiers (I, II, and III) produced from it and published in Revue franaise de
science politique (1964a, 1964b, 1965).
4. Aron points to a pre-existing semantic quarrel around the terms ruling class, elites,
and establishment. He specifies that I have myself used the term [elites] in other
circumstances because it is in current use but, upon reflection, I think it better to speak
of political personnel. Arons expression, personnel politique, might seem to refer
generally to all elected officials, but its use by him and his successors, as we will see
below, makes it clear that the reference is more narrowly to members of parliament
only.
5. In an autobiographical article which he presented at the ECPR sessions at the University
of Leiden in April 1993, Pierre Birnbaum admitted, As luck would have it Raymond
Aron, the holder of the only chair of political sociology, agreed to act as my supervisor
... From that time on the study of elites, which was to be the salient feature of my long
academic career, allowed me to focus on the working of influence and power within the
Etat fort. I hesitated between several research paths: I was first tempted by Paretos elite
theory, then by elite theories in the United States. My first study thus consisted of an
examination of the American debate between pluralism and elitism (Birnbaum, 1997:
179).
6. Putnam (1976: 44) writes: To summarize, the impact of elite social background on
politics and policy remains plausible, but ambiguous and unsubstantiated. We cannot
be certain that an elite that represents all social groups proportionally would actually
foster stability or effectiveness or responsiveness ... This moral answer to the So what?
question remains the bedrock on which interest in the social composition of elites is
founded.
7. Here a slightly different intellectual slant is presented in Eva Etzioni-Halevys (1997)
debate between classes and elites because of her understanding of democratic theory.
8. In his recent synthetic article on the question of the analysis of professional politics in
France, Dominique Damamme points out two limits to this paradigm. For him the
French paradigm of the professionnels de la politique leads to lintellectualo-centrisme or,
even to populisme dnonciateur (Damamme, 1999: 66).
9. I have already shown in an article which argues for the return to a comparative
sociology in the field of political science in France how this subdiscipline of political
science was a prisoner due to its originality. From all this we can see the strong
contrast between, on one side, Anglo-Saxon work in which the theory of elites is always
more or less employed in the quest for a better-functioning democratic regime and, on
the other, French research which is focused on the analysis of the relationship between
the custodians of the state and the elites of the state (Genieys, 2000).
10. This remark could be addressed to all the researchers at Harvard University, who in
their vast comparative analysis of the relationships between bureaucrats and politicians
in western democracy tend too often to group Frances situation with that of countries
such as Germany and Italy (Aberbach et al., 1981).
11. Much research followed which confirmed this sociological singularity and which also
separated itself from the comparative sociology of elites. This is the case with
Dominique Chagnollaud (1991), who is interested more particularly in the history of
institutions such as the Ecole Libre des Science Politique (today, Science Po) or even
the Ecole Nationale dAdministration (ENA), in order to show how senior officials
became, in France, le premier des Ordres in the second half of the 20th century.
12. This phenomenon is even more explicit in Alain Garrigous (2001) work Les lites contre
la Rpublique. Here, the author denounces both the transformation of Science Po into a
business school and the conflict generated by ENAs being the center for the states
nobility. In the framework of this work, the term elites is used in order to denounce
the monopolizing of power by the states aristocracy.
13. In a critical article on this work, Franoise Dreyfus (2002) shows how, in France, this
state elite claims a monopoly of state expertise. She attributes this recent phenomenon
to a considerable weakening of academic work on the administrative science of the
state.
14. By French neo-elitism, we refer to the work done in the 1980s which simply added to
what Matt Dogan had already written about politicians, leading to the role of elites
and the dynamics of political regimes. Following the example of certain political
scientists, he puts forward the importance of both the functioning of the state and of
democratic procedures (Dogan and Higley, 1998; Field and Higley, 1980; Higley and
Gunther, 1992).
15. In an introductory chapter about his own research background, it is the author himself
who mentions the help and support which Rokkan gave him in developing this research
perspective (Birnbaum, 1997).
16. In collaboration with Betrand Badie, he shows how the processes of differentiation or of
dedifferentiation of the state leads to the emergence of a particular type of elite. From
this, the apprehension of values and cultural codes become elements for the
comprehension of the training of an elite (Badie and Birnbaum, 1979).
17. Cohabitation goes back to a period when duel executive power opposed a prsident de
la Rpublique and a premier ministre from different political parties. Since the middle of
the 1980s, France has seen three periods of cohabitation: 198688, 199395, and
19972002. This institutional dysfonctionnement is not innocent with regard to the crises
which today affect the Fifth Republic.
18. It was then a question of rereading the role of the elites committed to this process,
taking into account not only their social attributes and their political trajectory
(individual or collective), but also the political representations which they bear. The
analysis of the political trajectories of Spanish peripheral elites confirms the overlap of
two logics within the political representation (central and periphery) at the heart of this
political system (Genieys, 1997).
19. The following is Christophe Charles (1997: 39) recent defense of the terminology of
the word elite: Je reconnais les inconvnients de lemploi de lexpression les lites
en raison de lhritage partien et de son usage empirique vague dans certains travaux
de sociologie ou de science politique. Deux avantages expliquent malgr tout que jy
recoure: dune part, le syntagme permet dembrasser, sous un concept plus abstrait, les
divers types de groupes dirigeants ou dominants qui se sont succds en France depuis
deux sicles et dont les appellations, historiquement dates, ont chang au fil des
rgimes; dautre part, la forme plurielle rappelle deux traits affirms des groupes
dirigeants en France que cet article essaie dexpliquer: la pluralit des groupes en lutte
dans le champ du pouvoir et leur lgitimit en permanence conteste.
20. Bruno Jobert and Pierre Muller (1987: 689) define this as: limage dominante du
secteur, de la discipline, de la profession ... Il est construit: cest une image sociale du
secteur. Il nest pas rationnel parce quil correspond dabord la perception quont les
groupes dominant le secteur et conforme leur intrts corporatifs ... Cest une image
qui est elle mme le produit des rapports de force dans le secteur. Souvent, la structure
mme du rfrentiel refltera un compromise entre les diffrentes lites en
comptition au sein du secteur.
21. This research opens the way to a research area in which state elites are understood
through their cognitive mobilization and intellectual influence on the decision-making
processes. The comparative analysis of this differential reception of neo-liberalism
allows us to update different elite categories which have carried this change into the
heart of the state. Therefore, it is up to researchers to grasp the modalities of ideational
imposition in a new way in order to build public action without falling into a linear
approach to new elites whereby those with the most appropriate world vision would
come to replace the old elite (Jobert and Thret, 1994).
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Biographical Note
WILLIAM GENIEYS is a CNRS Senior Research Fellow at the Centre dEtude du
Politique en Europe Latine at the University of Montpellier. His publications
include Les lites espagnoles face lEtat in 1997 (translated into Spanish in 2004);
De la thorie la sociologie des lites en interaction: Vers un no-litisme? in
CURAPP; Les mthodes au concret in 2000; Pour une sociologie compare des lites
en interaction, Revue internationale de politique compare in 2002; and La
constitution dune lite du Welfare en France dans la France des annes 90,
Sociologie du travail in 2005. He is also the editor of Le choix des armes: Thories,
acteurs et politiques, published in 2004. ADDRESS: Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique, CEPEL University of Montpellier 1, 39, rue de lUniversit, 34060
Montpellier cedex France [email: [email protected]].
Acknowledgments. The author thanks Holly Chevalier for translating this article from French
into English and his colleagues John Higley (University of Texas at Austin) and Marc Smyrl
(University of Montpellier) for their helpful comments.

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