In Memory of Vincent Wright
| Published date | 01 December 1999 |
| Date | 01 December 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852399654012 |
| Author | Sabino Cassese |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
02_late article IRAS 65/4 11/11/99 11:01 am Page 467
In Memory of Vincent Wright
Sabino Cassese
Vincent Wright died on 8th July 1999 in Oxford. He spent the last year of his life
facing the worst sufferings with serenity. This did not prevent him from working
for as long as his strength allowed him to do so. Aware that he was nearing the
end, he hastened to conclude a great deal of work and to send his finished work
for publication.
Vincent Wright was one of the greatest European scholars of public adminis-
tration, which he analysed using a historical and comparative method. His studies
of the French administration can be comparable only with the powerful analyses
of British administration made in the mid-nineteenth century by the German
Rudolph von Gneist. The only work comparable with his surveys of privatization
and liberalization, senior civil servants and administrative reforms in various
European countries is the extensive research of the American John Armstrong on
the administrative ‘élites’ of four European countries in the last two centuries.
He was born on August 1937 in Whithaven, a small seaside town in a mining
area of the North of England. The political interests of his father, a miner, and the
Catholicism of his mother, stimulated his interest in history and other countries.
Following his education at a Catholic elementary school and at the local grammar
school, he worked in a local authority office (his father had meanwhile died). He
then served two years in the Navy on board an aircraft-carrier, travelling from the
Baltic to the Mediterranean. He subsequently enrolled at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE), where, between the late fifties and early
sixties, he completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies. At that time,
there were no scholars in comparative studies at the LSE. Vincent took Michael
Oakeshott’s courses, Laski’s successor, who made him read the classics of politi-
cal thought. (Once I asked him about William Robson, who had also been one of
his university teachers; he made some brief mention of his regal and slightly
haughty attitude and then began talking to me with admiration about the teach-
ings and scepticism of Oakeshott). William Pickles sent him to France. The
cosmopolitan atmosphere of the LSE did the rest.
Vincent then moved to France where, earning a living as a secondary school
teacher, he studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, under the guidance,
among others, of a versatile scholar, René Remond. From Paris he moved to Pau
in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques where, while working as lecturer in the University of
Bordeaux he began to work in the archives on prefects and notables.
International Review...
In Memory of Vincent Wright
Sabino Cassese
Vincent Wright died on 8th July 1999 in Oxford. He spent the last year of his life
facing the worst sufferings with serenity. This did not prevent him from working
for as long as his strength allowed him to do so. Aware that he was nearing the
end, he hastened to conclude a great deal of work and to send his finished work
for publication.
Vincent Wright was one of the greatest European scholars of public adminis-
tration, which he analysed using a historical and comparative method. His studies
of the French administration can be comparable only with the powerful analyses
of British administration made in the mid-nineteenth century by the German
Rudolph von Gneist. The only work comparable with his surveys of privatization
and liberalization, senior civil servants and administrative reforms in various
European countries is the extensive research of the American John Armstrong on
the administrative ‘élites’ of four European countries in the last two centuries.
He was born on August 1937 in Whithaven, a small seaside town in a mining
area of the North of England. The political interests of his father, a miner, and the
Catholicism of his mother, stimulated his interest in history and other countries.
Following his education at a Catholic elementary school and at the local grammar
school, he worked in a local authority office (his father had meanwhile died). He
then served two years in the Navy on board an aircraft-carrier, travelling from the
Baltic to the Mediterranean. He subsequently enrolled at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE), where, between the late fifties and early
sixties, he completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies. At that time,
there were no scholars in comparative studies at the LSE. Vincent took Michael
Oakeshott’s courses, Laski’s successor, who made him read the classics of politi-
cal thought. (Once I asked him about William Robson, who had also been one of
his university teachers; he made some brief mention of his regal and slightly
haughty attitude and then began talking to me with admiration about the teach-
ings and scepticism of Oakeshott). William Pickles sent him to France. The
cosmopolitan atmosphere of the LSE did the rest.
Vincent then moved to France where, earning a living as a secondary school
teacher, he studied at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, under the guidance,
among others, of a versatile scholar, René Remond. From Paris he moved to Pau
in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques where, while working as lecturer in the University of
Bordeaux he began to work in the archives on prefects and notables.
International Review...
To continue reading
Request your trial