French Regional Administration

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1951.tb01416.x
Published date01 September 1951
Date01 September 1951
AuthorKeith Panter‐Brick
French Regional Administration
By
KEITH
PANTER-BRICK
Mr.
Punter-Brick
is
Assistant Lecturer
in
Political Scime
at
the
tondon
School
of
Economics and Political Saence.
MUCH
has already been written
both in this Journal* and
elsewhere
on
the various experiments
in
France since 1940 in regional
administration. There has, however,
been little detailed study, and perhaps
because of this the changes are
sometimes given an importance that
is
not warranted by the facts. There
is
a tendency to think of them as the
extension of the prefectorial system
to
larger areas, and thus as a more
or less deliberate attempt to deal
with
the problem, as acute in France
as it is
in
England, of administrative
areas.
The
Problem
The problem itself is simply stated.
The logic and symmetry of Napo-
leon’s
creation has broken down
under modem conditions. The
dkpartement
has become too small
as an administrative area, and,
on
the ground
of
greater efficiency, the
Ministerial Departments have set up
their
own
administrative areas. Again,
much of modern administration is
technical and specialised, and working
through these regional offices the
Ministerial Departments have estab-
lished direct contact and control over
local administration. The
dkparte-
ment
has had to give way to the
Ministerial Department. The
position of the Prefect as the local
command over
all
administrative
activity over a given area has been
undermined. French administration
became more or less split between
the old and the new, between the
traditional structure based upon area,
and the modern based upon function.
For many local officials the Prefect
was not the authoritative represen-
ative of their Minister. He came
to be looked upon as the special
representative of the Minister of the
Interior whose
intervention in
technical matters is inopportune and
to be avoided as far as possible.”
More and more local officials have
tended to look to the Minister or
the Ministry’s regional officials for
the
pouvoir hikrarchique.
The
following is the description given by
a Sub-prefect: “The legal texts
and renewed Ministerial instructions
declare that within the
dtpartement
the Prefect
is
the supreme authority,
and that all public services are strictly
subordinate to him. The practice
is, however, very different. For
some time now, and especially since
the war, there has been a grave
disintegration of the Prefect’s
authority. The local functioning
of the various Ministries is more and
more walled in; they are in direct
and almost exclusive contact with
Ministers. War-time brought two
main developments. State inter-
vention in social and economic
matters led to the provision of
numerous new services, all claiming
autonomy and naturally rebellious
to Prefectorial control. . .
.
Secondly,
the older Ministerial Departments
expanded their activities and deve-
loped their
own
organisation. Each
Ministry has tended to organise
itself at the level
of
the
dkpartement
as independently as possible of the
Prefect’s control.”
*
See
Recent Trends in French
‘+ocal
Administration,”
by
V.
D.
Lipman,
PUBLIC
A
Development in French Regional Adminis-
245
ADMINISTRATION,
S
ring,
1947,
and
tration,”
by
Brian
Zhpman,
PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION,
Winter,
1950.

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