Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:22:21.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Self-Image, Legitimacy and the Stability of Elites: The Case of France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Extract

Why do some elites endure whereas other die? This is a question to which many historians and social theorists have addressed themselves in trying to explain the severe conflicts that have plagued particular societies. It is, of course, a truism that certain societies are more prone to conflicts and to instability than others. But even within such societies there often lies, beneath the all too evident turbulence, a considerable stability of certain groups and institutions. The change that occurs in the wake of crises often distributes its impact on different sectors of society so unevenly that sweeping changes sometimes completely by-pass, or are successfully resisted, by certain groups. The result is that some groups and institutions manage to preserve their dominant positions and their privileges even while the society as a whole is experiencing crises, instability and change.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Armstrong, John A., The European Administrative Elite (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 24.Google Scholar

2 For data on the positions occupied by members of the grand corps in the political, administrative, parapublic, financial, industrial and educational sectors, see Suleiman, Ezra N., Elites in French Society: The Politics of Survival (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, forthcoming 1977), Chap. IV.Google Scholar

3 Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

4 See the fine discussion of the problem of elite transformation in Putnam, Robert D., The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976), pp. 165214.Google Scholar

5 Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free Press, 1964), p. 325.Google Scholar

6 The theoretical literature while not unconcerned with the problem of the elite's acceptance by the society, stresses above all the need for self-consciousness and self-confidence on the part of the elite. Similarly, our data bears largely upon the elites' self-image rather than on the reaction of the society to the elite, something about which we have little data.

7 Bonilla, Frank, The Failure of Elites (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), p. 256.Google Scholar

8 Shils, Edward, Center and Periphery: Essays in Macrosociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 12.Google Scholar

9 Shils, , Center and Periphery, p. 12.Google Scholar

10 Shils, , Center and Periphery, p. 15.Google Scholar

11 Shils, , Center and Periphery, pp. 1516.Google Scholar

12 Dahrendorf, Ralf, Society and Democracy in Germany (New York: Doubleday 1967), p. 278.Google Scholar

13 Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany, p. 278.Google Scholar

14 Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany, p. 269.Google Scholar

15 Schumpter, Joseph, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

16 Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany, p. 277.Google Scholar

17 Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany, pp. 218–19.Google Scholar

18 Weber, , The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 364.Google Scholar

19 Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany, p. 221.Google Scholar

20 Pareto, Vilfredo, The Rise and Fall of Elites (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), p. 36.Google Scholar

21 Pareto, , The Rise and Fall of Elites, p. 59.Google Scholar

22 Pareto, , The Rise and Fall of Elites, pp. 6970.Google Scholar

23 Mosca, Gaetano, The Ruling Class (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939), p. 117.Google Scholar

24 Mosca, , The Ruling Class, p. 70.Google Scholar

25 Mosca, , The Ruling Class, p. 118.Google Scholar

26 de Balzac, Honoré, Le Curé de Village (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1967), p. 183.Google Scholar The novel was originally published in 1846.

27 For an analysis of the battles between the governments of the Third Republic and the Ecole Polytechnique, see Shinn, Terry, The Dawning of an Elite: Polytechnicians and the Polytechnician CirclesGoogle Scholar (unpublished manuscript, to be published in French by Presse de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques).

28 Michel Crozier has suggested that the grands corps are chiefly responsible for innovations in the administrative sector. See his The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 309.Google Scholar See also his La Société bloquée (Paris: Seuil, 1970), p. 113.Google Scholar

29 Weinberg, Ian, The English Public Schools: The Sociology of Elite Education (New York: Atherton, 1967), p. 8.Google Scholar

30 For further details on this, see Suleiman, Ezra N., Politics, Power and Bureaucracy in France (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 8894.Google Scholar

31 See Thoenig, Jean-Claude, L'Ere des technocrates: le cas des ponts et chaussées (Paris: Editions d'Organizations, 1973).Google Scholar

32 The impact of a future left-wing government on France's elitist structures is discussed in Suleiman, Ezra N., ‘La Gauche et la haute administration’, Promotions, No. 100 (11, 1976), 43–5.Google Scholar

33 Items 1, 2 and 3 were first used in the Michigan multination study of bureaucrats and politicians. For comparisons with Britain, Germany and Italy, see Putnam, Robert D., ‘The Political Attitudes of Senior Civil Servants in Britain, Germany and Italy’, British Journal of Political Science, 111 (1973), 257–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This essay is reprinted in Dogan, Mattei, ed., The Mandarins of Western Europe: The Political Role of Top Civil Servants (Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1975), pp. 87128.Google Scholar

34 Thoenig, Jean-Claude, ‘L'Example Français des Grands Corps’, paper presented at the Eighth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Munich, 1970, p. 12.Google Scholar

35 For a discussion of other factors accounting for elite stability, see Suleiman, , Elites in French SocietyGoogle Scholar, Chaps. VI and VII.

36 Weber, , The Story of Social and Economic Organization, p. 360.Google Scholar

37 Cited in Alia, Josette, ‘Les Agents secrets du pouvoir’, Nouvel Observateur, 11 03 1974, p. 34.Google Scholar

38 Maurin, General, ‘Allocution prononcée devant les élèves de l'Ecole Polytechnique’, La Jaune et la Rouge, No. 2, 03 1946, p. 79.Google Scholar

39 Cot, Pierre D., ‘Le Rôle des Grands Corps d'ingénieurs dans le société française d'aujourdhui’, La Jaune et la Rouge, No. 230, 10 1968, p. 1.Google Scholar

40 See Baudelot, Christian and Establet, Roger, L'Ecole capitaliste en France (Paris: Maspéro, 1971)Google Scholar, Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, J. C., Les Héritiers (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1974)Google Scholar and La Reproduction (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1971).Google Scholar

41 The Fulton Committee, The Civil Service Vol. I (London: HMSO, Cmnd 3638, 1968), pp. 133–7.Google Scholar