State reform in France: From public service to public management?

Alistair Mark COLE*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    11 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The 'Reform of the State' is one of the recurrent themes in French politics, but it is deeply ambivalent. Understanding the causes or independent variables of state reform cannot be dissociated from understanding the core narratives that are used to justify the reform process. In this article we observe processes of state reform since the late 1980s through the lens of two rather different forms of justification that are labelled as public service and state productivity. Though there are some similarities between the two, they represent distinct ways of understanding the nature and scope of the State and the weighting of endogenous and exogenous forces driving the reform process itself. While state reform is a by-product of the public services narrative, it occupies a central role in that of state productivity. Crucially, for the purposes of this article, they take a different stance towards new public management, which is firmly resisted in the public services narrative as foreign to French political and administrative traditions, but forms a central theme in accounts of state productivity.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)343-357
    Number of pages15
    JournalPerspectives on European Politics and Society
    Volume11
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Dec 2010

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Sociology and Political Science
    • Political Science and International Relations

    User-Defined Keywords

    • France
    • New public management
    • Public service
    • Sarkozy
    • State reform

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