The Public Service in France
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1954.tb01219.x |
| Author | T. D. Kingdom |
| Published date | 01 December 1954 |
| Date | 01 December 1954 |
The
Public Service
in
France
By
T.
D.
KINGDOM
Mr.
Kingdom reviews
a
recently
published book whach provzdes a
comprehensive account
of
the French Civil Sewice.’
MEMBER of a French delegation visiting London soon after the last war
A
observed that in public administration the usual national characteristics
seemed to him to be reversed
in
that the British tried to foresee every
contingency in order to prevent injustice in social legislation whereas his
own countrymen proceeded empirically
:
if the code bore hardly on unusual
cases, that, for the time being, would have to be lumped by the administre
but it would be put right when the next crisis came along and the code was
thrown into the melting pot. At that time-a few months before the Act
of
1946 introducing a statut gCnCral des fonctionnaires-there was an element
of truth in this paradox
so
far as concerned the treatment of civil service
matters. Although there had been a good deal of thought and writing about
questions of government organisation and of the powers and responsibilities
of officials in particular contexts, there had since the beginning of the
nineteenth century been little serious discussion about the officials themselves
comparable with the succession of published reports on the British Civil
Service. Even the 1946 Act, which was voted at the end of a parliamentary
session, provoked no debate of the principles which should govern the relation
between the State and its agents and passed almost unnoticed by the general
public. The need for a comprehensive account of the French Civil Service
has now been excellently filled by the person best fitted to write about
it,
M.
Rogcr
Grkgoire, the first holder of the post of Directeur de la Fonction
publique.
The author remarks that it would be unthinkable in France
to
recruit for
administrative posts among men and women without some form of legal
training, and his own background at the Conseil
d’Etat,
if nothing else, must
have impelled him to start his book by showing how the juridical conception
of the official squares with the French conception of the State. The idea
that in the matter of conditions of employment civil servants are a class apart
is
linked with the position that they, or at least some of them, are conceived
to hold as public authorities in their own right, i.e.,
as
being in some sense
a
part of the State and not merely employees of the State. That formula
certainly distinguishes the French civil servant from his American opposite
number, who is like any other salaried person except that, in the job he is in
at the moment, he happens to be paid out of public funds. When therefore
the French have to find an answer to some problem thrown up by a modern
civil service-e.g., the question
of
the right to strike-it is natural for them to
look
for
guidance to principles of Administrative Law. This is difficult
ground for the general reader in an Anglo-Saxon country and
M.
GrCgoire’s
opening chapters, for all their lucidity, may leave him a little bewildered.
The jurisprudence of the Conseil
d’Etat
in civil service matters derives from
*La
Fonczion Publique,
by
Roger Grkgoire. Collection
“
Sciences Politiques.”
Librairie Armand Colin,
Paris.
1954.
Pp.
1346.
1200
fr.
450
To continue reading
Request your trial