BOOK REVIEWS

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1953.tb01685.x
Published date01 June 1953
Date01 June 1953
BOOK
REVIEWS
Le
Civil Service Britannique
By
PAUL-MARIE
GAUDEMET.
Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques
No.
33.
Librairie Armand Colin, Paris.
1952.
Pp.
173.
SOME
of the international business that
used to be transacted through diplomatic
channels alone now brings civil servants
in the various departments face to face
with their opposite numbers in other
countries. At the same time people are
trying to improve public administration
by exchanging information about practices
which have proved their success in one
country and might with advantage be
copied by another. Comparative studies
are therefore in vogue, but they carry with
them the risk that comparisons may be
invalidated through a failure to take full
account of the background of tradition and
habit of the countries under review. The
significance
of
a particular practice may
be quite misunderstood
if
it is not observed
in its setting. A case in point is the
United Kingdom rule that certain high
appointments in a Department may not
be made without the approval of the
Prime Minister, advised by the Permanent
Secretary to the Treasury. The object of
this rule
is
of course to ensure that in the
filling of the highest posts account is
taken of the pooled talent of the whole
Civil Service and not only of the staff
serving in the particular Department.
But the observer from a country where
advancement in the public service depends
on influence may well assume the rule to
be no more than a means of preserving a
limited number of key posts from the
effects of nepotism. Even between
Western European countries there is much
scope for misunderstanding, and the
indolent reviewer, confronted
with
a
foreign study
of
British administration,
may expect to be able to fill his columns
with a catalogue of false interpretations.
On
this
occasion-subject to a few small
points and one rather large one-there is
no such happy hunting ground, and
Professor Gaudemet is to be congratulated
upon an essay on the British Civil Service
which is shrewd and perceptive as well as
sympathetic.
The researcher begins
with
the disability
that when he asks for a copy of “the
organic law
about the CiviI Service he
is informed that nothing of the kind exists.
He may be shown a book of Treasury
rules, only to be told that it is no part
of
the law of the land. Indeed the amount
of formal regulation, except
in
the matter
of
pensions, tends to diminish rather than
increase. The rights and responsibilities
of civil servants are based not on any
statute, but on conventions which suc-
cessive Governments have thought it
right to maintain. Parliament too is
jealous for the efficiency of the adminis-
trative machine and the author notes that
parliamentary interest in it-but not, he
adds, in the careers of individual civil
servants-is closer than in countries where
the status of the official is prescribed by
law. Although the British civil servant
lacks formal rights, the system in practice
affords safeguards every bit as good as a
statutory text.
In most Continental countries the
government official has a standing of
his
own and is traditionally regarded as
someone set in authority over the man in
the street. The conception of service
is
now fostered, but there are vestiges of the
old ideas; for example a French author
writing since the last war says that the
language of official communications ought
to exhibit the courtesy shown by a superior
to an inferior. Of the British official,
Professor Gaudemet writes
:
I1 n’est
pas une
autoritt
mais un
serviteur.’
Whether
or
not he always succeeds in
living up to the ideal
of
service, it is clear
that he is not
an authority
in
his
own
right. He is the instrument of the Minister
to whom he is responsible, and here one
should note a certain difference between
the French and the British systems.
Describing the career of a member of our
Administrative Class, Professor Gaudemet
speaks of his “passage dans un cabinet
ministkriel.” That is a working translation
of
going into the private office,” as we
should put it-a spell of service as private
secretary to a Minister-but Continental
readers must not assume from it
the
existence in this country of a Minister’s
cabinet
in the sense of a body
of
political
advisers with whom the Minister has
surrounded himself. In fact British civil
servants are themselves the confidential
advisers of Ministers and not simply the
189

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