Governing Top Officials from the Centre: the Politics of the Senior Civil Service in France and Great-Britain

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PSA 64th Annual International Conference

14 – 16 April 2014, Manchester

Executive Politics and Governance Group

Panel: Executive Politics at the Top

Tuesday 15 April, 3.30 pm, Trafford Room

Governing Top Officials from the Centre:

the Politics of the Senior Civil Service in France and Great-Britain

Natacha Gally

Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas

[email protected]

Abstract

Higher civil service reforms taking place in many OECD countries for almost thirty years have mainly been

studied as cases of NPM diffusion. Scholars have analysed instruments such as individual contracts, competency

frameworks and performance related pay, as they take part in a general movement of ‘flexibilisation’ and

delegation within the public sector, and have discussed their differentiated implementation in various institutional

and cultural contexts. However, few empirical researches have been done on the conditions of the reforms’ emergence

and on the actors pushing them on the administrative reform agenda. Adopting an actor-centred, this paper

compares reforms of the higher civil service from the 1990’s in two most different countries: France and Great-

Britain. Building on semi-directive interviews and on a detailed analysis of archives and public documentation, it

argues that reforms are indeed the result of an internal mobilization of administrative actors rather than the

product of a ‘top-down’ diffusion of NPM. Further, it emphasizes an insufficiently explored aspect of top officials’

management reforms: their centralizing dimension. In both countries, centralist organizations have seen in neo-

managerial techniques of recruitment, training, assessment, pay and career management a lever to develop a new

role as transversal regulators of the higher civil service. This attempt to ‘govern top officials from the centre’

challenges traditional regulation patterns within top administration, including professional and departmental

autonomy in personnel management policies, and the prominence of other centralist actors such as financial

ministries. The paper shows centralist organisations’ capacity to implement neo-managerial recipes is highly

dependent on two main factors: the strength of existing rules and practices on the administrative labour market,

and the backing of the Prime minister.

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INTRODUCTION

Since the end of the 1980’s, administrative elites have been a recurrent object of concern

in OECD countries. Higher civil service reforms have questionned traditional modes of

recruitment, training and career management and a variety of new instruments have been

introduced at the top, such as assessment centres, performance related pay, increased

professional mobility, competency frameworks, training and development sessions, etc. Fostered

by internatioanl organisations such as the PUMA comity of the OECD1, these reforms have

often been analysed as part of the general mouvement of diffusion of « New Public

Management » (Pollitt, Bouckaert, 2011), and as the product of the importation of private sector

practices within the public sector, following a neo-liberal logic (Hibou, 2012). However,

processes that have led to the emergence and implementation of higher civil service reforms have

rarely been studied in a qualitative and empirically grounded manner. Between macro-level

comparisons such as Pollitt and Bouckaert’s and micro-level analyses of certain aspects of these

reforms, such as those centered on a specific segment of the elite (Eymeri-Douzans, 1999,

2001a ; Gervais 2007a, 2007b, 2010), or on a particular aspect of the reforms such as

politicisation (Eymeri-Douzans, 2001b), career management (Eymeri-Douzans, 2006) or

competency frameworks (Hood, Lodge, 2004, 2005), no comprehensive comparative analysis of

these reforms has, to our knowledge, been proposed yet. For instance, little is know about the

way these reforms emerged in specific national contexts, which group have tried to diffuse them,

what resistance have been encountered, and how they were implemented concretely.

Based on a doctoral research conducted from 2008 to 2012, this communication

compares the emergence and implementation of top civil service reforms in two cases that are

generally considered as « most different » as far as administrative regimes are concerned.

Adopting a meso-level perspective, looking at collective actors who have taken part to these

reforms, we see them as products of collective action processes within the State. A number

of « common issues » arise from the comparison, suggesting that higher civil service reforms

reflect the competition between several types of actors for the definition of rules of access and

circulation at the top. Building on the literature about the sociology of markets (Fligstein, 1996,

2001), we describe higher civil service reform as matters of regulation of the administrative

labour market at the top. If higher administration is to be seen as a labour market, its peculiarity

lies in its bureaucratized nature. As an administrative labour market, literraly embedded in the State,

it is not only regulated by professional groups competiting with each other for the

monopolization of labour market segments (Abbott, 2008), but also subject to political and

bureaucratic attempts to define and control the allocation of positions at the top of the State.

These three institutionnal dynamics – professional, political and administrative – are crucial to

1OCDE, Gérer la haute fonction publique : la réforme de la haute fonction publique dans les pays membres de l’OCDE, 28e session

du Comité de la Gestion Publique, GOV/PUMA(2003)17/REV, 9 septembre 2004 ; OCDE, Performance-related Pay

Policies for Government Employees, 2005 ; Ketelaar, A., N. Manning et E. Turkisch, « Formules de gestion de la haute

fonction publique axées sur les performances : les expériences respectives de l’OCDE et de différents pays »,

Documents de travail sur la gouvernance publique, 2007/5, Editions OCDE ; OCDE, The Senior Civil Service in National

Governments of OECD Countries, Public Employment and Management Working Party, GOV/PGC/PEM(2008)2, 31

janvier 2008.

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understand higher civil service reforms in both countries. Observing them allows not only to

reveal stricking similarities between two allegedly « most different » cases, but also to reevaluate

differences that matter. Against the general thesis of NPM diffusion, our general argument is that

internal forces play a crucial role in higher civil service reforms. Especially, we argue that the

relative importance of professional, political and administrative dynamics is a crucial factor to

explain differences between French and British higher civil service reforms.

The paper applies this analytical framework to reforms that have taken place between the

beginning of the 1990’s and the mid-2000’s, using empirical material of three sorts : semi-

directive interviews2 conducted with top officials involved in the reforms, institutional literature

and especially administrative reports, and unreleased archive documents from several

institutions3. The first part of the paper deals with the construction of the “senior civil service” as

a problem and how higher civil service reforms were set on the agenda in the 1990’s in each

country. It shows that the policy process is different on each side of the Channel, since it relies

on the mobilization of different types of actor coalitions. In the second part, I explain how the

British Cabinet Office on the one hand and the French Administration and Civil Service

Directorate (Direction générale de l’administration et de la fonction publique – DGAFP) on the other, have

progressively converted to neo-managerial techniques and tried to regulate recruitment, training,

pay and career management of top officials from the centre. Eventually, the last part of the paper

discusses the relative autonomy of these centralist organizations, with regards to their

relationships with other administrative actors and with the Prime minister.

NEW POLICY, OLD MECHANISMS: TWO PROCESSES OF EMERGENCE HRM AS A POLICY ISSUE

ON ADMINISTRATIVE LABOUR MARKETS

The Senior Civil Service as a centralist reaction to Thatcher’s administrative politics: when professional concerns meet organizational interests.

The emergence of a centralist human resource management policy at the top of British

Civil Service in the middle of the 1990’s can be explained as a reaction from a small number of

people around the Cabinet Office to organizational and professional transformations in Whitehall

since the beginning of the 1980’s. Indeed, from 1979 and the election of the Conservative

Government, the British Civil Service has gone through a series of important and offensive

reforms engaged under the leadership of Prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Without coming

back in details on the “Thatcherian revolution”, which is already very well documented

(Campbell et Wilson 1995; Fry 1984, 1986, 1988; Metcalfe 1993; Richards 1997), it is nonetheless

important to bear in mind three main processes, which are of peculiar relevance as far as the

higher civil service is concerned: the shift in the balance of power within the centre of

government towards the Treasury, the delegation movement towards individual departments and

executive agencies, and the criticism of the Oxbridge generalist.

2 Interview quotations are all from our PhD Thesis (Gally 2012). Interviews were conducted between 2007 and 2010

in France and in Britain. 3 Especially, we have been able to access a number of documents from the Cabinet Office and the french general

directorate of the civil service (Direction générale de l’administration et de la fonction publique – DGAFP).

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The abolition of the Civil Service Department (CSD) in 1981 entails a new configuration

of power at the centre of British government. Whereas the creation of the CSD in 1969 following

the work of the Fulton Comity was aimed at taking the civil service policy away from the

restrictive power of the Treasury, this Department is considerably reinforced by Thatcher’s

reforms, which give manpower and pay functions back to HMT. In the meantime, other

functions previously owned by the CSD, such as those related to ‘Management and Efficiency’

and to recruitment, training and personnel management are transferred to a new Management and

Personnel Office (MPO), created in the Cabinet Office, whose aim is to coordinate, diffuse good

practices and evaluate the action and organization of other departments. The Efficiency Unit,

created in 1979 in N. 10 under the responsibility of Derek Rayner who reported directly to Mrs.

Thatcher, forms the third edge of the triangle in the governance of administrative reform policies.

If the Treasury has never owned, at that time, a full monopoly over civil service issues and was

never given back the prominent role it use to have in the pre-Fulton era, the end of the 1980’s

and beginning of 1990’s correspond to clear shift in that direction. In 1988, the MPO becomes

the Office of the Minister for the Civil Service (OMCS), and activities linked to Management and

efficiency are given to the Treasury, which also develops coordinating functions related as regards

personnel pay, management and recruitment.

Concomitantly to this shift of gravity within the centre of government, functions related

to recruitment, training and pay are delegated to individual departments, for civil servants under

grade 7 (Principals). Agencies are created after the Ibbs Report in 1988, and in 1991, two orders

in councils abolish the centralised recruitment of all civil servants below grade 7. The Civil

Service Commission is replaced by the Office of Civil Service Commissioners, whose role is

reduced to elaborating guidelines and auditing departmental practices for the vast majority of the

Civil Service. The recruitment of civil servants is delegated to an private agency “Recruitment and

Assessment Service”, with no obligation for Departments to resort to it, except for 5% of the

Service – those over grade 7 - whose recruitment is still to be ensured by the Commissioners,

including the Fast Stream process (Chapman 2004, 83). The arrival of John Major’s government,

and the publishing of the Competing for Quality White Paper by the Treasury in 1991, after an

internal report whose title was a lot more explicit (“Selling Government Services into Wider

Markets”), is followed by a series of privatizations. In consequence, in the beginning of the

1990’s, the OMCS is considerably weakened, which responsibilities are limited to matters, such as

deontology, equal opportunity, or assessment standards, without any operational power on the

Civil Service, except for the top grades – which we we’ll see is of considerable importance for the

rest of the story.

A third element of change in Whitehall during the 1980’s is worth taking into account. It

deals with the persistent criticism of the ‘Oxbridge generalist’, and the gradual opening up of the

administrative labour market to outsiders. Indeed, if the 1979 change in power has by no mean

created the criticism against the young graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, which was already

expressed at the end of 1960’s by the Fulton Committee and later in 1977 by the Expenditure

Committee of the House of Commons in its eleventh report4, administrative reforms led by

successive Conservative governments in the 1980’s have translated what remained a rather vague

4 House of Commons, Expenditure Committee, The Civil Service, Eleventh report, session 1976-77, 4 vol., London,

HMSO, 25 july 1977.

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disapproval into a series of measures undermining the monopoly of generalists over top positions

in the Civil Service. If the personal involvement of the Prime Minister in the higher nominations

has been clearly shown by the literature (Richards 1997), the nomination of outsiders concerns

only few individuals (nine people under the three Thatcher governments, and eight under John

Major’s were nominated at grade 1 and 1A of the Service according to David Richards’ figures

(Ibid, 249-250). In contrast, the creation of executive agencies from the end of the 1980’s has

produced a differentiation within the higher civil service, heads of executive agencies being

recruited on specific terms and conditions, fixed-term contracts, and possibly outside the career

Civil Service. According to Sylvia Horton and Jacqui Jones’ figures, in 1996, outsiders represent

25% of all heads of agencies (33 over 131), which is considerable (Horton et Jones 1996, 22).

Moreover, the model of the generalist is not only in competition with outsiders coming

from the private or the third sector, but also with specialists and professionals. As soon as 1983, a

report to the Prime Minister, by John S. Cassels, has suggested to extend the “Open Structure”5.

This was implemented in January 1984 for civil servants over grade 6 from other groups of the

general category (e.g. economists and accountants, information officers, librarians and

statisticians) and even from other categories (e.g. science group, professional and technology

group), and extended to grade 7 (Principals and equivalent) in January 1987. What can appear as a

technical measure has indeed tremendous consequences on the structure of the Civil Service and

career opportunities for generalists. Indeed, the last extension of the Open Structure concerns

more than sixty grades, and a bit less than 12 000 civil servants according to the Civil Service

Statistics6. It result in an increased competition for superior positions, in a context where the

number of post is simultaneously reduced by Conservative governments.

This broader context of administrative reform explains the development, in the following

years, of a centralist HRM policy for top officials. Indeed, the increasing organizational

differentiation of the British administration, due to the creation of executive agencies and the

growing autonomy of departments as regards their personnel management policies on the one

hand, and the decreasing number of high level positions, as a consequence of the privatization

policy on the other hand, are perceived as a threat by a small number of actors at the very centre

of the British Civil Service. In July 1992, in a context where the traditional career structure in

“escalator” (Hood et Lodge 2006, 68-76) is perceived as jeopardised, a study on career

management and succession planning in the higher civil service is jointly launched by the Head of

the Home Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler, and by Peter Levene, Head of the

Efficiency Unit. The Oughton Report7 is published on the 23rd November 1993 is the first

centralist initiative to foster a reflexion of the management of top officials and constitute the

matrix of the Senior Civil Service created three years later in 1996. The commission is almost

exclusively composed of centralist civil servants from the Cabinet Office and the Treasury, and

most significantly includes several figures from private sector firms such as Unilever or British

5 The Open Structure was created after Fulton to allow better mobility between specialists and generalists. The

conditions of creation of the Open Structure cannot be fully related here, but it is important to bear in mind that this

Structure, originally imagined to include all grades over Principals, had been limited to the three highest grades of the

Service, due to the pressure of generalist. For a detailed analysis of this reform, please see (Fry 1993; Gally 2012). 6 HM Treasury, Civil Service Statistics 1987, London, HMSO, 1987.

7 Efficiency Unit, Cabinet Office, Career Management and Succession Planning Study (Oughton Report), London, HMSO,

1993.

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Petroleum. Its goal is clearly presented as a reflexion on personnel policies triggered by the recent

transformations of British public administration8.

The principles put forward by the report represent a conservative compromise, whose

ultimate goal is to preserve the traditional principles of the career civil service. As Kevin

Theakston puts it, the report “was a classic civil service holding-operation: critical of some of the

existing practices, promising important changes, but defending traditional principles (e.g.

impartiality, non-politicization), and disappointing the really radical outside critics” (Theakston

1995, 154). Indeed, while acknowledging the opacity of nomination procedures at the top, and

admitting the tropism toward the Oxbridge profile, the Oughton report limits its

recommendations to rather vague and ambiguous measures about personnel management, greater

interchange between Departments or appointments procedures. On the latter for instance, it

recommends that for every nomination over Grade 3, “Departments must address for every

appointment the case for internal departmental advertisement, advertisement across the Civil

Service or full open competition” (p. 9), excluding the radical proposal of generalising open

competition. Similarly, the principle of contracts for top official is accepted, but the idea of a

fixed term, which radical reformers wanted to see extended to the entire civil service (Hood 1998,

452), is rejected on the grounds that “in the private sector context employment contracts are

designed to tie the individual to the organisation and give a sense of security, rather than to

distance them and make them feel that their employment status is always under review” (p. 74),

and that international example outside Britain and New Zealand are rare. Overall, the Oughton

report insists on the “key principles” of the traditional Civil Service, and underlines the

importance of “growing its own timber”, reasserting the principle of an internal labour market,

functioning according the “pyramid and escalator” logic, to quote again the terms of Hood and

Lodge. Building on numerous quotations attributed to private sector leaders, international

examples or expertise drawn from management specialists, the report is a good illustration of the

capacity of the Cabinet Office’s civil servants to seize legitimate references to their own goals.

The 1994 White Paper on the Civil Service, explicitly entitled “Continuity and Change”,

endorses the majority of the principles exposed in the Oughton report while suggesting the

creation of a new Senior Civil Service (SCS). The SCS is conceived as a central cadre of personnel

management for all Civil Servants above grade 5, which should foster interdepartmental mobility

and provide a “corporate resource” for the Civil Service. The numerous interviews we have

conducted with Civil Servants around the Treasury and the Cabinet Office at that time all

converge to see the creation of a central structure of management for top civil servants as an

organisational reaction to a loss of power of the centre. As one of the leader of the cabinet office

puts it,

“it came more out of an administrative dynamic than an political one… there was people within the

cabinet office and the… Robin Butler. I think it was the internal civil service machine if you

8 « Essentially the study team was invited to examine the nature of posts in the senior Civil Service, grade 1-3, known

collectively as the Senior Open Structure, to identify the skills and experience necessary to fill them, and to consider

the principles and personnel practices which should govern the movement and promotion of the most able civil

servants. In doing so, the study team was asked to examine the effects of the greater organizational and geographical

fragmentation of the Service on the career paths of those joining the Service and the need to supply individual to fill

the top posts”, Ibid., p. 13.

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like…The cabinet secretary as the Head of the Civil Service had a big role to play indeed, in the

change (…) it is in the Cabinet office’s interest to have a cohesive group at the top, because if they

can influence that group, then that will certainly spread within departments.” (Entretien UK23)

The Senior Civil Service represents an opportunity for the Cabinet Office to reassert its

control over the Civil Service, and counter the increasing power of the Treasury, on the one hand

and of individual departments in the other hand. This is also a way to redefine the boundaries of

the higher civil service, in a context where the organizational differentiation due to the creation of

executive agencies and the extension of the Open Structure to specialists over grade 7 threatens

the monopoly of Oxbridge generalist over top positions. The First Division Association (FDA) –

representing the interest of top officials - has unsurprisingly favoured such a measure, as a way to

reassert the existence and cohesion of a professional group at the top, as suggested by a former

member of the Council of Civil Service Unions:

“the unions… unions who have got larger number of members who were getting on the SCS, were

largely comfortable with a lot of what was happening. I think the unions representing most of the

other staff, were cynical about it because they saw it as creating a two-tier civil service, and I think

that remains their concerns. And I worry sometimes that many of the debate which have taken place

around the civil service are not really in reality about the civil service at all, but about the three or

four thousand people in the SCS, on half a million people. ” (Entretien UK34).

At the same time, the question of where to put the border between the SCS and the rest

of the Service was a case for debate and negotiation. Indeed, the choice to include only grade 1 to

5 in the Senior Civil Service, which is a crucial point on which the Continuity and Change White

Paper differs from the Oughton report, represent a compromise between the minimal – and

initial – hypothesis of including only grade 1-3, and the larger version of the SCS until grade 7,

which would have then concerned more than 26 000 civil servants. Several interviewees have

mentioned the impossibility for the Cabinet Office to manage such a mass of people from the

centre. Others have mentioned the “necessity” to include Agencies Chief Executives into the

SCS. This limit has not ceased to be discussed later, and the development, in the 2000’s of a “Top

200 Group”, directly managed by the Cabinet Office, can be understood as a way of returning to

the initial delimitation of the Senior Open Structure. As a former member of the Cabinet Office

puts it:

“it was stopped at the grade 5 level, and we were talking about the people somewhere between 2500

and 4500 to the time when I was in my role in the cabinet office. That’s a lot of people (…) And I

think that there is a question about whether, and it was certainly debated at the time, the senior civil

service should actually have been smaller and started at the grade 3 level. (…) And I’ve never been

sure that it was the right decision. (…) But I think the fact with the senior civil service being so large

meant that the centre, the cabinet office, was never ever going to be able to control it, if you like,

influence it if you prefer, as much as if it would have been possible having a smaller senior civil

service…” (Entretien UK27)

Overall, the creation of the Senior Civil Service can be analysed as an organizational

response from the higher civil servants of the Cabinet Office to administrative reforms affecting

both the balance of power between departments (within the centre itself and between the centre

and other departments) and the internal labour market at the top of British administration.

Through this attempt of “professionalization from the centre”, the Cabinet Office tries to

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reassert its role as a transversal regulator of the higher civil service, which entails at the same time

a redefinition of its boundaries. In a way, it can be said that this administrative process has

preempted the Blairist motto of “Joined-Up Government”, which, as we shall see, will represent

an important political support in the further implementation of a centralist HRM policy for top

civil servants.

The French higher civil service “in crisis”: the emergence of a professional claim

In contrast to what happens in Britain, the arrival of the new government in France in

1981 does not entails an offensive action over the Civil Service and the central administration. In

a context where attention is focused on “externalist” reforms, such as decentralization, reforms

related to internal administrative organization remain marginal (Bezes 2002, 603). To put it

briefly, there is no politics of the higher civil service in the 1980’s, except for a few symbolic

actions launched by the Communist minister Anicet Le Pors, such as the creation of a third way

of entrance at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) reserved to people coming from the third

sector. The “modernisation reforms” conducted under the first cohabitation in 1986-1987, as well

as the “Renewal of the public service” programme launched by Prime Minister Michel Rocard

after 1989, do not care for the higher civil service. To the contrary, the political rhetoric of

responsibility and participation of civil servants to the modernisation effort tends to see street-

level or middle-range bureaucrats as the main actors of administrative transformations. Politically,

the strategy of the socialists, regarding their relationships with civil service unions, is primarily

directed towards lower grades of the civil service, and does not really consider the higher civil

service claims over mobility, career inequalities, or the specific question of the status of the corps

of Administrateurs Civils9, as a priority. The Durafour Protocol, signed on the 9th February 1990 in

order to raise the wages of the civil servants stops just under the level of the corps recruiting at the

end of the ENA or Ecole Polytechnique. Top civil servants are also excluded from bonuses

attributed to certain positions considered as specifically technical or involving greater

responsibilities (Nouvelle bonification indiciaire, NBI).

It is only in the beginning of the 1990’s that the question of a specific policy for higher

administration emerges on the agenda. From the end of the 1980’s, the press and some expert or

scientific publications echo the idea of an existing “malaise” in the higher civil service,

underlining an alleged loss of drawing power of top administration. At this time tough, this idea

remains based on weak sources, namely a decrease in the number of candidates at the ENA

entrance, which will indeed last no longer than two years, and the observation that a growing

number of civil servants were leaving the public service for the private sector, a phenomenon

called “pantouflage”10. But the construction of the higher civil service as a “problem” needed to

be tackled by a governmental policy results from a process of collective action coming from the

9 This question had been an important matter of discussions and reforms between 1945 and 1972, as studied by

Marie-Christine Kessler (1978), Jean-Michel Eymeri (1999). See also my dissertation (Gally 2012). 10 Michel Bauer, Dominique Danic, L’inspection des finances : 16 ans de pantoulflage : 1974-1989, Paris, Heidrick &

Struggles International, 1989 ; and in the press, for instance, André Passeron, « Malaise dans l’énarchie. La « fuite des

cerveaux » frappe la haute fonction publique », Le Monde, 11 octobre 1989 ; Laurent Mauduit, « Pantouflage. Les

inspecteurs des Finances aiment le privé », La tribune de l’économie, 21 mars 1990 ; « « Pantouflards » : la grande évasion

», Le Point, 23 avril 1990 ; Caroline Monnot, « Une étude réalisée par deux sociologues du CNRS. Les jeunes

inspecteurs des finances « pantouflent » de plus en plus tôt », Le Monde, 23 mai 1990.

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ENA alumni and then extended to the various corps of the higher civil service, including state

engineers from the Ecole Polytechnique. These associations gradually impose a diagnosis of “crisis”

of the top civil service. From spring 1990, the alumni of the ENA association (Association des

anciens élèves de l’ENA – AAEENA) engage an action towards Minister of the civil service Michel

Durafour and Prime Minister Michel Rocard, complaining about the higher civil servant being “in

low spirits”, due to a lack of career opportunities, and a growing discrepancy between public and

private wages11. In absence of clear engagement from either part, the association’s board votes a

first motion indicating its concern about pay in the higher civil service.

Adding to the question of wages, the issue of career opportunities is raised again with the

intention of the government to limit, or even forbid, the “pantouflage”. This announcement acts

as a trigger device in the decision of the AAEENA to engage further in a collective action of

defense of higher civil servants’ interests. Indeed, the décret 91-109 of the 17 january 1991, which

regulate the access of civil servants to the private sector and creates an commission for ethics in

charge of examining individual cases, does not only apply to ENA alumni. In spring 1991,

contacts are made between the AAEENA and other associations, including representatives of the

“grands corps d’ingénieurs” such as Ponts et Chaussées or Mines. Nine associations send a joint

motion to the Prime Minister on the 25 april 1991, clearly stating the link between the increase in

departure to the private sector and the degradation of working conditions and pay in the higher

civil service12. In the weeks following this action, the change in government and the decision of

the new Prime Minister Edith Cresson to transfer the ENA from Paris to Strasbourg lead to a

temporary break in the collective action, the AAEENA being fully dedicated to lobbying the

government against moving the ENA out of Paris.

Nonetheless, in 1992, a new interest group is constituted around engineers representative

associations, informally called the “Poulit Group”, from the name of Jean Poulit, its initiator,

who was then President of the association of the corps des Ponts et Chaussées. This group, aimed at

discussing issues of careers and wages, was gradually institutionalised – although it always refused

to ask the juridical statute of an association – and extended to other corps of the higher civil

service. 15 associations of civil servants were member of the group in 1995, whose purpose was

officially to embody the will of the various corps to coordinate with each other and to defend

collectively their interest vis-à-vis the government, under the name of Groupe des associations de la

haute fonction publique (GAHFP), most commonly known in the Higher Civil Service as “G16”.

Paradoxically, the transfer of the ENA to Strasbourg has simultaneously eclipsed the

debate about wages and career and provided an opportunity to re-make that claim towards

government. When new Prime Minister Edouard Balladur comes into power in 1993, beginning a

second cohabitation, the decision to make the transfer cannot be reconsidered. In compensation,

the AAEENA obtains, after a meeting with the Prime Minister, the setting up of a commission

“to establish an objective and undisputable statement about top civil servants’ situation”. On the

1st June 1993, Minister of the Civil Service André Rossinot asks to Jean Prada to write what can

be today considered as the first report on the “higher executive staff” (encadrement supérieur) of the

11 Pierre Mongin, « M. Michel Durafour reçoit les anciens élèves de l’ENA », ENA mensuel, n°204, juillet-aout 1990,

p. 47-49. 12 Compte-rendu du Conseil d’administration du 21 mars 1991, ENA mensuel, n°213, juillet 1991, p. 43-44.

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Civil Service13. For the first time, associations representative of various corps of the higher civil

service are consulted, figures are published about the evolution of their wages, and a diagnosis of

“crisis” in the higher civil service is clearly put forward. The recommendations of the report

remain rather conservative in comparison with the claim made by professional associations. It

does not suggest the possibility of a general increase in wages and does not choose a clear

alternative as far as career structures and prospects for Administrateurs civils are concerned.

Nevertheless, the general philosophy of the report remains important, because it builds essentially

on the idea of functional (or position-based) differentiation within the higher civil service.

Suggesting selective increases in pay for certain “key positions”, it departs from the traditional

logic of the French policy of the civil service, were pay is historically primarily related to the

belonging to a profession (corps), and to the exercise of a peculiar activity in a specific position.

The use of the term “senior executive”, referring to the managerial aspect of senior civil servants’

job – as opposed to their role as policy advisers for instance, is in itself significant of the

philosophy underlying the reforms.

The Prada Report is a cornerstone in the construction of the higher civil service as an

“issue” and its setting on the agenda of the administrative reform. It adds to the wider debate

launched in 1993 by the report of the commission of the Commissariat Général au Plan headed

by Christian Blanc14. A year later, this issue has a good place among other measures in the big

project of “reforming the State” launched by Prime Minister Alain Juppé. Reforming the higher

executive is one of the missions given to the new-born Commissariat à la réforme de l’Etat (CRE)15.

The CRE is the first central organization – it reports directly to the Prime Minister – being in

charge of a general reform of the higher civil service. On 29 may 1996, the interdepartmental

committee for the reform of the state (Comité interministériel à la réforme de l’Etat – CIRE)

announces several measures in that direction, recommending to change the initial training in the

ENA, to develop continuous training common to civil servants from various schools (ENA,

Polytechnique, Ecole nationale de la magistrature), to ensure a wider advertisement of vacancies,

to implement contracts with explicit objectives to achieve, to proceed to job reevaluation within

the service and to increase the mobility of ENA alumni. In 1996, a report about career

management in the higher civil service is commanded by the Prime Minister to Jean-Pierre Weiss,

from the corps des Ponts et Chaussées16. The following year, a study about the admnistrateur civils’

careers is published by Julien Pavillard and Jean-Michel Eymeri for the Direction générale de

l’administration et de la fonction publique17. In the meantime, the G16 continues its task of gathering

documentation and statistics about the evolution of the number, the wages and career trajectories

of higher civil servants. In a document published in 1998, it endorses the majority of the Prada

13 Jean Prada, Rapport sur l’encadrement supérieur, Paris, Ministère de la Fonction publique, non paginé, ronéoté.

14 Commission “Etat, administration et services publics de l’an 2000” présidée par Christian Blanc, préparation du

XIe Plan, Pour un Etat stratège, garant de l’intérêt général, Paris, La documentation française, janvier 1993. 15 It is worth noticing that a man links these three initiatives together : Alain Ménémésis who has collaborated to the

writing of both Blanc and Prada reports, and later to the writing of the memorandum from the Prime Minister thant

launch the “Reforming the State” programme in 1995. 16 Jean-Pierre Weiss, L’Encadrement supérieur des administrations de l’Etat : rapport à M. le Premier ministre, Paris,

La Documentation française, décembre 1996. 17 Jean-Michel Eymeri, Julien Pavillard, Les administrateurs civils: fin de carrière et débouchés, rapport d’étude DGAFP,

Paris, La documentation française, 1997.

11

report’s suggestions. It also mobilizes foreign examples of successful reforms, among which the

British Senior Civil Service has a good place.

However, the short life of the CRE, victim of administrative competition together with

the sudden loss of legitimacy of the Prime Minister Alain Juppé following the Pension reform of

1995 (Bezes 2009, 400 ssq), did not entailed the implementation of a senior civil service reform.

At the end of the 1990’s, the implementation of a higher civil service reform in France is still

suspended, in a context where there is no central organization in charge of this issue. Contrary to

what we observed in the British case, in France the dynamics of emergence of the higher civil

service as a public policy issue are primarily related to professional mobilization and the

expression of collective claims by higher civil servant about wages and career prospects. Whereas

the collective mobilization allows the issue to gradually emerge on the agenda of administrative

reformers, it also has important consequences on the delimitation of a group concerned by this

reform. In other terms, the definition of the problem also contribute to the definition of a group

carrying it, which in this case tends to (temporary) transcend the inherited barriers between the

various corps of the higher civil service.

“Professionalization from the centre” versus “corporatist mobilization”: two classical patterns of administrative labour markets in Britain and France

The emergence of the issue of higher civil service reform in France and Britain in the

1990’s reveals one of the most significant differences between these countries as regards the

dynamics of regulation of top administration. In my dissertation (Gally 2012), I have provided an

historical analysis of the evolution of the higher civil service, inspired by neo-weberian sociology

of professions (Abbott 1988; Freidson 2001; Sarfatti-Larson 1977) and by sociology of labour

markets (Fligstein 2001), whose main results is to highlight two different dominant patterns of

regulation of administrative labour markets.

Schematically, in the case of Britain, the historical construction and evolution of the

higher civil service can be seen as the product of a mechanism of “professionalization from the

centre”, which has been led by centralist organizations dedicated to the overall regulation of the

civil service. Since the creation of the Civil Service Commission in 1855, the main tension at play

around the regulation of the administrative labour market deals with the opposition between the

centre on the one hand (embodied by various successive institutions sometimes attached to the

Treasury, sometimes reporting directly to the Prime Minister), and individual departments on the

other hand. The evolution of the British higher civil service can be analysed as a story of how

centralist organizations try to shape a cohesive and uniform higher civil service, against the

centrifugal forces of “departmentalism”.

On the contrary, in the case of France, the main tension concerns professional

competition between groups that compose the higher civil service (the various “corps”). This

“corporatist mimetism” mechanism, according to which subaltern corps are always trying to

imitate other more prestigious corps (and especially the “grands corps” such as Conseil d’Etat or

Inspection générale des finances) (Segrestin 1985), was indeed already at stake in the 19th century, as I

shown in the process of institutionalization of the competitive entrance examination (Gally 2012,

115-122). If a centralist policy of the higher Civil Service has been fostered by reformers around

Michel Debré after World War 2, with the creation of the ENA, the Civil Service Department,

the general statute, and the corps of Administrateurs Civils, it has never really succeeded in

12

imposing itself against the corporatist dynamic, especially with regards the higher civil service,

where the hierarchy and competition between various corps remains very acute.

Without going into more details in the historical analysis of the administrative labour

market in both countries, it is worth noticing that these different mechanisms seem to have fully

reproduced in the contemporary period of the 1990’s. Indeed, they appear as an institutional

legacy, which shape the way the policy of the higher civil service develops on each side of the

Channel, and partly determines the relative autonomy of centralist organizations as regards the

emergence of the problem on the agenda. Nevertheless, as we shall see in the second part of this

paper, the formulation of a neo-managerial policy towards the higher civil service is perceived in

both cases by centralist organizations as an opportunity to build their own administrative capacity

against competing attempts to regulate the higher civil service.

GOVERNING THE HIGHER CIVIL SERVICE: THE CONVERSION OF CENTRALIST

ADMINISTRATIONS TO NEO-MANAGERIAL INSTRUMENTS

A centralist policy for an open labour market? The new role of the Office of Public Service as producer of HRM policy orientations

Throughout the 1990’s, a clear shift of gravity is observable at the centre of British

government, from a Treasury-Prime Minister axis to a Cabinet Office-Prime Minister axis (Smith

1999, 161-182). In context were Department are given increasing autonomy in their relation with

executive agencies, the Treasury encounter a period of criticism, leading to a significant

reorganisation of the Department. Between 1990 and 1994, the Treasury’s numbers are more

than halved, whereas the Cabinet Office’s expand from 1484 to 2230 in the same period, mainly

due to the creation in 1992, within the Cabinet Office, of a new Office of Public Service and

Science (OPSS), inheriting the functions of the former OMCS and taking back other functions

transferred to other ministers, such as the Chessington Computer Centre and the Central

Computer and Telecommunication Agency (CCTA), which the Treasury used to be in charge of.

In 1994, the Fundamental Expenditure Review of the Treasury leads to another cut in the

financial department’s numbers (Chapman 1997, 64 ssq; Smith 1999, 159), and in 1996, the Civil

Service Management and Pay Directorate, one of the important Treasury’s levers over other

departments, is abolished.

Created to implement John Major’s Citizen’s Charter, the OPSS continuously grows

during the 1990’s, especially from 1994 onwards and the arrival of Michael Heseltine as Deputy

Prime Minister and head of the OPS (the second “s” for science being transferred to the

Department of Trade and Industry). Focused on the civil service policy, the OPS is in charge,

within the Cabinet Office, of recruitment, pension, and management policies, as well as

producing statistics on the civil service and negotiate at a transversal level with Unions. During

the 1990’s, the OPS produces an increasing number of guidelines for departmental action, not

only in the realm of administrative-users relationships (Citizen’s Charter, 1991), but also in other

domains such as personnel management (Civil Service Management Code, 1993), relationships

between Ministers and Civil Servants (Code of Ministerial conduct, 1992), or even access to

administrative documents for opposition members (Code of Practice on Access to Government

Information, 1994). If the OPS tries to impose itself as a transversal regulator of civil service

13

issues and beyond, its power remains however very limited on the vast majority of the Civil

Service, whose direct management and pay is delegated to Departments.

Nevertheless, the five highest grades of the Civil Service remain, after the creation of the

SCS, centrally managed by the OPS. In a context where individual departments are increasingly

autonomous and where the Cabinet Office does not hold the purse to constrain them, the senior

civil service policy becomes a means to reassert its influence over the rest of Whitehall. In these

conditions, the senior civil service policy becomes gradually the laboratory from where the OPS

seeks to build its own expertise. The Senior Civil Service Group, created within the OPS in 1996,

is at the core of this attempt of the OPS to become the key actor in the formulation of civil

service reforms. It is significant that this Group counts several officials coming from the

Treasury, including the former Principal Establishment and Finance Officer of the Treasury,

whose role gradually extend until he becomes the Head of the Civil Service Corporate

Management Group in 2000.

The implementation of the Senior Civil Service constitutes the main realization of the

OPS in the 1990’s. Despite the conservative aspect that I already mentioned (consisting in the

redefinition of the external boundary of the higher civil service at grade 5 in the continuity of

what had been decided in the 1970’s with the Open Structure), the SCS does not only consist of a

protective reaction against the evolution of British public administration. It does entail a number

of deviations from the historical path according to which higher civil servants have been

managed before the 1990’s. In other terms, the OPS is not a simple reincarnation of the old Civil

Service Department, but does pursue a new type of policy, based on neo-managerial principles,

such as open competition for nominations at all levels rather than network-based designation

within the ‘Village’, promotion based on annual competency assessment rather than on pure

seniority, establishment of succession plannings in Departments, implementation of training and

development sessions, individualization of wages through performance related pay, etc. What

explains this conversion of the centre to neo-managerial principles?

This conversion of the Cabinet Office to New Public Management can be explained by

the ambiguous nature of instruments themselves, which tend to entail simultaneously a

centrifugal movement of delegation of responsibilities towards the periphery and the emergence

of new types of centralization from the centre. For instance, promoting Open Competition for

higher nominations can appear quite paradoxical from the centre’s point of view, if the sense it

undermines the external boundary of the labour market, provide additional competition for

career civil servants, and diminish the power of the Centre over the “Whitehall Village” (Heclo et

Wildavsky 1974). But it is also a way, for the Cabinet Office, to justify the existence of a central

HR policy for the “identification of talents”, including interchange between Departments, central

evaluation schemes, central training programmes. In this sense, it contributes to reinforce the

prevalence of the centre over Departments, and pushes in the direction of a cross-departmental

cadre of Senior Civil Servants regulated from the centre. A former senior executive of the

Cabinet Office subtly express this ambivalence:

“Well, the way I reconcile that was to say to people, I’m in favour of open competition with internals

versus externals, but I hope the internal will always win. And my objective is to prepare people

internally who can beat the competition. So I was in favour of competition but wanted to equip

people inside so that they could get the appointments.” (Entretien UK33)

14

Another good example of such ambiguous instrument is the implementation of the Job

Evaluation for Senior Posts (JESP) system. Following the publication of the 1994 and 1995

White Papers on the Civil Service18, the abolition of grades within the SCS and their replacement

by “overlapping pay bands, broadly linked to different levels of responsibility”19 is on the agenda.

The last report recommends that “Heads of Department would be responsible for evolving

arrangements for determining pay for their staff, taking account of performance, level of

responsibility and the marketability of their skills and experience, and subject to the constraint of

overall departmental running costs”20. This measure clearly stands for the delegation of further

responsibilities to Department as far as the Senior Civil Service is concerned, potentially

undermining the control of the Cabinet Office and its capacity to foster a transversal pay and

promotion policy.

In order to counterbalance this movement, the Cabinet Office has developed a new

instrument of evaluation of senior posts, conceived as a means to replace the old systems of

grades without losing the transversal character of the system. Each job is “weighted” according to

five broad competencies common to every position in the SCS: “managing people”,

“accountability”, “judgement”, “influence” and “professional competence”. The total of points

attributed for each of these five criteria determines the “job weight”, which places the job into a

pay band. This new technique of classification is indeed a compromise between the initial logic of

full delegation to Departments and the former one of grades whose pay was determined by the

centre. Allowing more flexibility to Department, it still preserves the transversal comparability of

positions according to a common set of criteria defined by the Cabinet Office. Indeed, those

criteria seem to have been defined in order to preserve the prominence of generalist in senior

positions of the Civil Service. It reserves a very limited weight to professional and specialist

criteria (only 3 points over a total of 22), whereas generalist competences such as “influencing”,

“analysing” are highly valued in the framework. This preference for generalist skills has been

denounced by specialists, who find it hard to compete with traditional Oxbridge fastreamers21.

At the end of the 1990’s, the Cabinet Office remains nonetheless a weak actor in the

process of Job Evaluation compared to individual Departments. In absence of strictly

quantitative criteria, what takes place is less the imposition of a uniform framework from the

centre to Department than a process of bargaining, which the Cabinet Office can hardly win. The

subjectivity of the scores attributed to different positions, and the complexity of discussions

between experts of the “evaluation panel”, has led the Cabinet Office to withdraw from this

procedure, and limit its intervention to check that the pay band is respected. An effect of the pay

18 The Civil Service. Continuity and Change, Presented to Parliament by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the

Exchequer, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, London, HMSO, cm2627, July 1994; The Civil Service.

Taking Forward Continuity and Change, London, HMSO, Cm2748, January 1995. 19 The Civil Service. Taking Forward Continuity and Change, op. cit., §4.14, p. 19.

20 Idem

21 This is reported by the evaluation report of the SCS by consultants from Hay Group, which reveal “complaints

from some specialists that aspects of the system (a generic competence model, relative performance assessment

alongside generalists, etc) worked against them”, Cabinet Office, Senior Civil Service Pay and Performance Management,

Newsletter, Issue 10, April 2003, Annex : « Evaluation of the Senior Civil Service. Pay and Performance Management

Systems. Hay Group Report », p. 3.

15

bands system has indeed been a larger differentiation of pay in the Civil Service, allowing

Departments to attract much more candidates from the private sector.

From “statute guardian” to “HR Group Director”: the slow and unachieved conversion of the DGAFP to neo-managerial principles

In France, the change of majority in Parliament after the dissolution of the National

Assembly by Jacques Chirac is followed by a reorientation of administrative reform policies

which is profitable to the Direction générale de l’administration et de la fonction publique. Indeed, the new

government needs to differentiate itself from the Juppé government and its methods, especially

regarding its relationship to the Civil Service and Civil Service unions. Whereas the “Reforming

the State” programm has been implemented outside of regular institutions in ad hoc organizations

such as the Commissariat à la Réforme de l’Etat (CRE), the Jospin Government chooses to base its

administrative policy upon the DGAFP, which is traditionally the key intermediary to civil service

unions. In July 1998, the CRE is abolished and the administrative reform portfolio is given back

to the new minister of the Civil Service. A cross-departmental delegation to the reform of the

State (Délégation interministérielle à la réforme de l’Etat – DIRE) is set up, with the Head of DGAFP as

its president.

However, this change does not entail a simple turning back to orthodoxy and the

traditional role of the DGAFP as a guardian of the Civil Service’s general statute. Whereas the

Directorate was traditionally headed by a civil servant from the Conseil d’Etat and staffed mostly

by experts in administrative law whose role was primarily to write and translate the statute for

other Departments or check the conformity of their decisions, the new Director General

nominated in March 1998 is Gilbert Santel, a chief ingenier of the Ponts and Chaussées Corps, who

has just spent six years as a director of personnel and administration management in the Ministère

de l’Equipement, where he was also delegate for modernisation and delegation. The choice of a

human resource management specialist, coming from a Department that has already been

labelled as a “good student” of administrative modernization (Gervais 2007), is all the more

significant. As mentioned by a member of the Minister of the Civil Service’s cabinet, this period

marked a managerial turning point for the DGAFP:

“Politicians had considered that we were entering the era of management... moreover, we considered

that the Directors coming from the Conseil d’Etat did not prove their worth. It was important to give

a signal. To give credibility to the DGAFP vis-à-vis Heads of Departments. Someone who has

already practiced... is more credible towards Departments. At that time also the DGAFP was at

the same time the DRIRE, as a sort of super manager that put together issues about the reform of

the State and the Civil Service.” (Entretien FR15)

Of course, this role of “super manager” does not instantaneously replace the traditional

role of the DGAFP and the control of this organization by law experts, and especially by the

Conseil d’Etat. The loss of monopoly of the latter over the position of Director general entails the

creation of a new position of director, aside the DGAFP22, which has always been given to a

member of the Conseil d’Etat since 1998. Rather than a disruptive change, this evolution resembles

more to a process of “layering”, in the sense of Streeck and Thelen (2005), a neo-managerial

22 This director is not exactly a “deputy director”, in the sense that is statutory equivalent to the Director general

position. (The Director General grade does not have a statutory existence in French public administration).

16

component coming on top of the traditional statutory guardian role of the DGAFP. From 1998

onwards, actors supporting this reformist element seek to impose the DGAFP as a central expert

of human resource management in order to gain influence over individual Departments. They

mobilize the DGAFP’s legal expertise to support neo-managerial objectives, and try to go beyond

the purely statutory role of the DGAFP. In this perspective, the design of a new policy towards

the higher civil service is seen as a good starting point, following the idea that reforming top

administration could then lead to a wider reform of the whole civil service.

At the end of the year 1998 and beginning of 1999, a new “action plan to improve the

management of senior executives” is discussed during two cross-departmental meetings (11

December 1998 and 19 February 1999). Ten thematic measures are decided, which fall into the

orientations of the Prada report, and deal with continuous training, mobility, career prospects,

and job weighting. In april 1999, four working groups are settled under the responsibility of the

DGAFP on “assessment methods”, “succession plannings”, “job weighting” and “open

recruiting grounds”. These groups’ presidents are experienced modernizers and/or HRM

experts23. No member of the Conseil d’Etat is invited to participate to either of these groups, the

DGAFP being the only source of legal expertise. Several measures entail from these workshops,

which reform one of the most important text transversal to the higher civil service that is the so-

called “1955 decree”, regulating the access to and exercise of Deputy director functions. In

February 2000, a decree about the length of occupation of deputy director positions is taken,

which limits the possibility to stay more than six years in office, improve the transparency of

vacancies by making compulsory the publication of a job description and the advertisement of

each position24 . This measure is justified by its creators as a means to constraint personnel

directors in Departments to think about the future of their civil servants, or as an incentive

towards the development of succession planning:

“Deputy Director stayed in their positions because no one knew where to send them. I made the two

by three years decree... I think I was trying to solve a real problem, but I would have preferred being

able to train personnel managers to apply this king of principles... the idea was to oblige people to

make a review of the situation every three years, and ask the question “what do we do?”” (Entretien

FR48)

A second significant measure reforms the access to executive positions regulated through

the 1955 decree, with the goal of opening them to a larger number of civil servants. This measure

of the 18 June 2001 implements the conclusions of one of the above mentioned workshops,

presided over by Daniel Limodin, which recommended that nominations to such positions

should not be decided according to the belonging to a corps, but considering competences needed.

23 For instance, Jacky Richard, presiding over the working group on job weighting, is a former personnel director at

the Department of National Education. Claire Bazy-Malaurie, President of the working group on “assessment

methods”, has previously served in the Ministère de l’Equipement. Daniel Limodin, in charge of the “recruitment”

working group, had participated in the reorganization mission for central administration in 1982 (MODAC) and was

then Director of personnel, training and social action within the French Home Office (Ministère de l’Intérieur). Jean-

Pierre Weiss, already called upon to write a report on succession plannings, take over the presidency of the fourth

group. 24 Décret n° 2000-143 du 21 février 2000 modifiant le décret no 55-1226 du 19 septembre 1955 relatif aux conditions

de nomination et d’avancement dans les emplois de chef de service, de directeur adjoint et de sous-directeur des

administrations centrales de l’État.

17

Indeed, the 1955 decree had initially been conceived as a means to reserve a large majority of

executive post to the corps of administrateurs civils, which was facing difficulties since its creation in

1945. If exceptions to this rule already existed, these positions were until 2001 reserved to

members of the ENA corps. From 2001 onwards, Deputy-Director positions become open in a

wider proportion (30% instead of 25%) to every member of a corps over a certain pay level,

including engineers, ministerial specialists or even executives coming from the health or territorial

services.

Beyond the 1955 decree, a wider effort to reform higher administration comes from the

attempt to implement a job weighting exercise, following the conclusions of Jacky Richard’s

working group. This is based on the same logic than those used in the JESP system in Britain, the

main idea being to hierarchically classify positions according to criteria transversal to the Civil

Service. As in the British case though, the job weighting exercise has mainly been implemented

by Departments at the departmental level. In France, it has indeed been used to grant certain

positions new bonuses in order to increase wages and answer professional complaints (“nouvelle

bonification indiciaire”). In the field of “assessment methods”, the working group has conducted a

reflexion about “competency frameworks”, which has clearly looked over the British model (the

British Leadership Competency Framework is annexed to the report), although the framework

proposed by the French report is way less detailed than its British counterpart. But its general

purpose is the same: emphasizing behavioural and competencies such as “ability to define a

policy for a working unit”, “ability to organize”, “ability to conduct projects”, “capacity to lead

and animate”, “ability to negotiate with other departments”, “ability to anticipate and innovate”.

Eventually, the DGAFP has begun, from the end of the 1990’s, to foster cross-

departmental reflexions on HR and management. The Directorate animates several networks

since 1998, aimed at diffusing “better practices” and methods in “change management”. As far as

top civil servants are concerned, a network of “executive delegates” is put in place, as well as a

network of correspondents for Administrateurs civils. This animator role is strengthened from 2001

onwards with the arrival of Jacky Richard in replacement of Gilbert Santel as Head of the

DGAFP. For the first time, a former member of the corps of Administrateurs civils occupies this

position, and this corps is going to serve as a laboratory of the new role of “HR Group Director”

that Jacky Richard is willing to develop in the DGAFP. In April 2002, a few days before the

presidential election, a new cross-departmental mission to manage the administrateurs civils is

created, with a role of “monitoring career developments of administrateurs civils and advise

individuals in their orientation (...) it analyses Departmental management policies towards

administrateurs civils. It formulates suggestions and recommendations in order to reinforce the

cross-departmental vocation of the corps”25. The archives of this mission show that debates are

focused around the definition of the administrateurs civils’ occupation and competencies, three core

competencies being put forward: “management”, “legal analysis”, “budgetary and financial

competences”. This attempt to redefine the professional role of administrateurs civils leads to a new

label: the “specialised generalist”.

25 Arrêté du 16 avril 2002 portant création de la mission interministérielle du suivi de la gestion des administrateurs

civils, JORF du 18 avril 2002, p. 6824.

18

These different measures launched at the end of the 1990’s by the DGAFP constitute the

first attempt to redefine the rules of access and circulation within the French higher

administration. As in the case of the extension of the Open Structure in Britain, the opening up

of executive positions towards specialists and the reflexion about new types of competencies

question the monopoly of generalists from the ENA over top positions and lead to professional

redefinitions. Moreover, it contributes to gradually diffuse a functional logic in the ways of

thinking the higher civil service and is clearly an attempt to diminish the power of the different

corps over HRM policies. In this context, the notion of administrative career is redefined as a

succession of positions occupied by somebody, which is very different from the French statutory

conception of a career, as an ascendant journey from grades to grades within a certain corps.

However, the capacity of the DGAFP to constraint other Departments and intervene in the

operational management of higher civil servant is very limited. The ideal of the “HR Group

Directorate”, according to which the DGAFP would define general HR policies and standards

applied by individual Departments, is far from acknowledged across the Civil Service.

THE POLITICS OF SENIOR CIVIL SERVICE: ADMINISTRATIVE COMPETITION AND POLITICAL

SUPPORT TO CENTRALIST ORGANISATIONS

Civil Service Policy as a strategic issue for executive politics: Tony Blair and the centre of Government

Tony Blair’s arrival in power marks the beginning of a third phase in the development of

a centralist policy towards senior civil servants. Indeed, the new Prime Minister uses the Cabinet

Office as a place to impulse its transversal reform policies under the motto “Joined-Up

Government”, which have been at the core of its first term in office. Supported by a Prime

Minister whose goal is clearly to “govern from the centre” (Faucher-King et Le Galès 2007, 106;

Richards 1997, 105 ssq), the Cabinet Office is given a wider responsibility over administrative

reform. Civil Service Reform especially, becomes an important programme carried out by the

Cabinet Secretary in the name of the Prime Minister. In June 1997, a “Better Government Team”

is constituted within the Cabinet Office in order to write a White Paper on “Government vision

for public services”26. In January 1998, a new Cabinet Secretary is nominated (Richard Wilson),

and a reorganization of the Cabinet Office is announced in June of the same year, in order to

reinforce its role in the formulation and implementation of public policies in general and

administrative reform policy in particular. The Office of Public Service is abolished and its

services are fully integrated within the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister considering it as the

“corporate headquarters” of the Civil Service.

A number of transversal devices are implemented across Whitehall. A Civil Service

Management Board is created, getting departmental permanent secretaries of individual

Departments together under the presidency of the Cabinet Secretary in order to consider issues

about the management of the Civil Service. Simultaneously, a Centre for Management and Policy

Studies (CMPS) is created within the Cabinet Office, taking the Civil Service College back to the

centre (it had become an executive agency in 1989). The Cabinet Office’s 1999 annual report

26 Cabinet Office, Civil Service Reform. Report to the Prime Minister from Sir Richard Wilson, Head of the Home

Civil Service, London, Cabinet Office, 1999.

19

reasserts its role not only as a coordination organization but as a direct support to the Prime

Minister in the conduct of public policy, which is a dramatically new idea in a system where the

head of government is supposed to be only the first among equals (primus inter pares) and does not

traditionally own a portfolio for himself. The Civil Service reform is one of the five priorities of

the Cabinet Office, whose mission is now to ‘ensure corporate management of the unified Civil

Service”, including in a context of devolution. A new service called “Civil Service Corporate

Management” is created by merging the former Senior Civil Service Group and the Civil Service

Employer Group.

This story of Tony Blair leaning on the Cabinet Office to reassert its leadership over

government is however incomplete. Indeed, the Treasury remains a crucial player of this attempt

to govern from the Centre. The Comprehensive Spending Review initiated in 1998, leading to the

formalization of quasi-contractual relationships between individual Departments and the

Treasury through Public Service Agreements, is a clear evidence of the institutionalization of

“regulation inside Government” instruments (Hood et al. 1998, 1999). Richard Wilson’s reform

of the Civil Service is not exempted from this government technique, relying on the definition of

explicit policy targets and the evaluation of administrative performance against them. It adopts

the rhetoric of target-oriented policies, conforming to a “Public Service Agreement” from 1999

onwards and producing an annual report on its achievements considering “performance targets”.

The target-oriented government is reinforced during Tony Blair’s second term in Office, as the

Prime Minister chooses to emphasize the thematic of “delivery” in matters of public policies and

public service. A new Cabinet Secretary, Andrew Turnbull, is nominated in 2002, while a Strategy

Unit and a Delivery Unit (PMDU) are created within the Cabinet Office and reporting directly to

the Prime Minister. However, a few months later, the PMDU is transferred to the Treasury, on

demand of its head, Michael Barber, who considers the support of HMT as an important issue to

face ministerial Departments’ autonomy (Barber 2007, 55-58). Rather than a new swing in the

balance of power from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office, what is at stake is an overall

reinforcement of the Centre’s administrative capacity.

This administrative capacity is deployed through what can be called, after Hood et al.,

“regulatory creep” (Hood et al. 1999, 84 ssq). In the 2000’s, the Cabinet Office publishes a great

number of texts and documents without any legal value but aimed at serving as “guidelines” in

the implementation of “best practices”. For instance, the Civil Service Management Code

contains a number of recommendations to Ministers with regards to recruitments, terms and

conditions, ethics and discipline, career management, training and development, pay, mobility,

pensions, etc. The Code defines the role of the Cabinet Office as a coordinator of ministerial

policies. Whereas the Cabinet Office has no legal or formal power over individual Departments,

it does try to progressively impose itself as a transversal regulator of the Civil Service, through

soft regulation and what Hood et al. Have called “mutuality” (Hood et al. 1999, 48 ssq). Whereas

networking was always at the core of the Cabinet Office’s action, it certainly grows significantly in

the 2000’s. The Wednesday morning meetings, gathering every Permanent Secretary around the

Cabinet Secretary, the Senior Appointment Select Committee (SASC) and the Civil Service

Management Board were already crucial instruments of the Cabinet Secretary’s regulatory power.

In 2003, SASC becomes the Senior Leadership Committee (SLC), with an increasing role of

potential tracking and selection under Tony Blair’s second and third terms in Office. In a context

where Tony Blair does not look personally into higher civil service nominations (Richards 2007,

20

164 ssq), the network of Permanent Secretaries around the Cabinet Office does play an important

role in the selection of candidates and the building of highflyers careers. Especially in a context of

increasing opening of senior positions to outsiders (cf. supra), the Senior Leadership Committee

can be seen as a defensive instrument whose ultimate function is to keep a hand over nomination

processes. As a member of the Cabinet Office puts it:

“what that committee had on is a number of permanent secretary, and the Civil Service

commissioner, and try to take an overview on the posts and then where the talent was, and tried to

manage some of that so that. If there was somebody in that population who was seen to be a future

permanent secretary and who needed broader experience, we might try to arrange a posting for that

person, rather than to have some sort of competition, where somebody else might get it, and this

person might not get the development they needed. So that was the first question.” (Entretien UK27)

The operational orientation of the SLC has further been reinforced from 2009 onwards,

since the redefinition of the Committee’s role towards the management of the “Top 200” group,

created in 2006 and limited to the first two grades of the Civil Service, while a “Talent review

Board” has been created to detect and develop high potential directors at grade three level. The

Top 200 group, created by Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, who replaced Andrew Turnbull in

2005, is aimed at constituting a network of “leaders” at the top of the Civil Service, whose

concern would not only be their own Department but the Civil Service as a whole, according to

the motto “corporate leadership at the top”. Imagined by Gill Rider, a former HR and

Management Director from Accenture appointed in 2006 as new Director of the Corporate

Development Group within the Cabinet Office, the meetings of the “Top 200” are clearly

inspired from private sector practices, aimed at creating a sense of commonality across

departments and develop higher civil servants’ loyalty toward the Civil Service itself and not only

towards their individual departments.

This attempt to create a centralised labour market for top civil servants builds on neo-

managerial instruments diffused by the Cabinet Office, such as competency frameworks, 360

evaluation tools, and central training and development sessions. These instruments are far from

neutral and convey a new definition of administrative careers. While civil service careers were

traditionally conceived according to classical internal labour market standards, with an early entry

and progressive ascension within a ministerial Department, mainly on the basis of seniority, neo-

managerial rhetoric and tools promoted by the Cabinet Office emphasize individual responsibility

in proactively building their “competency profile” through various positions at different level and

possibly in different departments, as well as through development or training sessions. The

counterpart to this individualization of career building is the involvement of the Centre of

government, and especially the Cabinet Office, in the detection and development of “talents” as

well as in the fostering of a “corporate leadership” for the Civil Service. A number of central

programs, such as The High Potential Development Scheme, or Induction and Development

sessions for new members of the Senior Civil Service have been developed by the Cabinet Office

and the National School of Government in the 2000.

To what extent do these new instruments of central management of the Senior Civil

Service change the traditional power games in Whitehall and the structure of the British

administrative labour market? If the Cabinet Office has certainly gained influence in the past two

decades as a central coordinator for civil service reform, it still faces the resistance of ministerial

21

departments, especially those of sufficient size and prestige to be self-sufficient and consequently

willing to keep control of their internal labour market. Indeed, behind career management and

pay policies, the capacity for politicians to reward civil servants in exchange of their loyalty is at

stake. In other words, Departmentalism is the product of both administrative and political logics

reinforcing each other, especially in case of large departments headed by power cabinet ministers.

However, while big Departments such as the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) have

obviously no interest in collaborating with the centre, this is not the case of smaller departments,

which can see in the centralist action of the Cabinet Office a means to externalize difficulties in

recruitment and career management, or even an opportunity to extend the pool of candidates

they are able to attract.

Who governs the French higher civil service? Professional self-regulation, administrative competition and the absence of efficient political leadership.

Compared to what happened in Britain, where Tony Blair has clearly favoured the

Cabinet Office’s influence over civil service reforms, HR Minister management policies initiated

by the DGAFP in the 1990 have received less political attention from the new governmental

team in power from 2002 onwards. The nomination of Jean-Pierre Raffarin as Prime Minister in

may 2002 after the election of Jacques Chirac represent a great opportunity for a group of local

authorities representatives, acceding to executive positions (Le Lidec 2005, 2007). The new

Minister of the Civil Service is Jean-Paul Delevoye, former president of the Association of

French mayors, and fervent defender of a “territorial model”, based on the “Republic of

proximity” (“République des proximités”), the second step towards decentralization being on top of

the Prime minister’s agenda (Le Lidec 2005, 117). The first year of Delevoye’s mandate is marked

by a contentious relationship with representatives of the senior civil service, which consider the

new minister as an outsider and succeed in influencing the composition of its cabinet. In October

2002, when the Conseil d’Etat delivers a negative notice concerning the project of constitutional

reform on decentralization, this is interpreted by the press and the representatives of local

authorities as the product of the resistance of a conservative and Parisian senior civil service.

In this context, the senior civil service could have remained a non-issue for the new

governmental team, and it was certainly the case, until a vigorous criticism of the Ecole nationale

d’administration developed in the summer, coming first from students and administrative personnel

of the school and extending to a parliamentary criticism during budgetary debates of the

autumn27. To a certain extent, the reform of the ENA and the senior civil service launched in

October 2003 by Jean-Paul Delevoye can be interpreted as a means for the Minister to control

this mobilization, but it is worth bearing in mind that this is not the only priority of the Minister,

while decentralization and a great reform of civil service pensions are on the agenda.

The political salience acquired by the matter gives a chance to the DGAFP to further

develop its conversion into the “HR Group Director” of the State, to quote the terms of the then

Director General Jacky Richard. In addition to its role as a source of judicial expertise and advice,

which continues to be valued, especially by a Minister who remains an outsider to the higher civil

service system, the DGAFP tries to become a leading organization in matter of HR for the Civil

27 This process has been studied in details, which cannot be presented here. For more accurate developments, please

see my thesis (Gally 2012, 503 ssq).

22

Service. However, despite the opportunity represented by the crisis of the ENA for the DGAFP

to further develop the measures initiated in the first reform programme launched in 1999 and

impose itself as a “cross-departmental mediator” (Eymeri-Douzans 2002), the political support

for its action remains rather weak and temporary. Consequently, and similarly to what happens in

Britain, the DGAFP builds it strategy on the establishment of “networks” or commissions, such

as the Cross-departmental mission for senior civil service management (Mission interministérielle de

pilotage de l’encadrement supérieur – MIPES), which role is to produce data on senior civil service

recruitment and career and to make recommendations about possible reforms.

The absence of strong political support to the development of a central HRM policy for

the senior civil service makes the DGAFP’s ambitions difficult to achieve. As in Britain, the

power of the centre remains highly dependent on individual departments’ collaboration. But

another factor appears as a strong determinant of the successful diffusion of neo-managerial

instruments: the absence of resistance from professional groups, and especially the compliance of

the grands corps. It is significant that one of the main success of the 2003 reform of the senior civil

service is performance-related pay. Implemented following the recommendation of the Silicani

Report28, commanded by the Prime Minister and published in February 2004, this measure builds

on the well-known professional line of argument about low wages already developed in the

1990’s by the G16, and illustrated by international and public-private comparisons. Adding a new

layer of bonus related to performance, the PRP eventually appears as a way to raise senior civil

servants’ pay, which is obviously widely accepted across the higher civil service. On the contrary,

measures about mobility between Departments and corps have faced important resistances

because they question the existing stratification of the higher civil service and the implicit

hierarchy between different professional groups.

While the difficulties faced by the DGAFP are likely to be increased by the absence of

political support for the establishment of a centralized civil service management policy, one can

wonder whether a clear political involvement on the issue would help to overcome administrative

and professional resistance. But what happens between 2005 and 2006 suggest a rather negative

answer to this question. In the autumn 2005, a new Director General for the Civil Service is

nominated, a few months after the arrival in power of a new Prime Minister Dominique de

Villepin. Paul Peny is a HR specialist, formerly HR Director of the French Home Office

(Ministère de l’intérieur), and politically close to the governmental majority (contrary to his

predecessor Jacky Richard). The new Director General is a defender of neo-managerial

instruments and is chooses to continue the conversion of the DGAFP towards its new role of

“HR Directorate” for the whole Civil Service. But even more important is the personal

involvement of the Prime Minister in favour of a centralized management of higher civil servants.

In October 2005, the Prime Minister De Villepin announces, without any preliminary discussions

with the DGAFP, the creation of a “General Secretary for Administration” (SGA), in charge of

“managing more efficiently the executive leaders of the Civil Service”, and reporting directly to

the Prime Minister. This announcement can by analysed in the first place as a political attempt

from the Prime Minister to better control the attribution of higher positions in top

administrations and thus arouse the loyalty of civil servants in the perspective of his candidacy to

28 Jean-Ludovic Silicani is a member of the State Council (Conseil d’Etat) who was already known for his involvement

as Head of the Commissariat à la Réforme de l’Etat (CRE) from 1995 to 1998.

23

the Presidential election coming in 2007. It is also a means to reinforce the power of the Prime

Minister as an institution vis-à-vis an increasingly powerful Department of Finance at a time when

new budgetary rules through the Loi organique sur les lois de finances is about to be implemented. The

report commended by the Prime Minister to Christine Le Bihan-Graf, member of the Conseil

d’Etat and Director at the DGAFP (deputy to the Director General), is explicit about one of

these two rationales behind the creation of the SGA, mentioning the monopoly of the grands corps

over top positions and arguing in favour of a freer choice for politicians. Unsurprisingly, while

the decree creating the SGA has been signed on the 26 April 2006, no one was ever nominated to

the position, until it was abolished a few years later. As many interviewees recall, this new

institution would have put a number of powerful administrative actors in the shade, such as the

Secrétariat general du gouvernement (SGG), which strongly opposed to the nomination of a SGA. This

story of the SGA may appear anecdotic, but is indeed very significant of the difficult position of

the Prime Minister in France, vis-à-vis the Senior Civil Service, which is composed of mainly self-

regulated and rather autonomous corps.

The last factor explaining the difficulties of the implementation of a centralized HRM

policy in the French senior civil service is, once again in a similar way to Britain, the competition

between administrative organizations within the centre of government itself, namely between the

Prime Minister and the Department of Finance. During the Presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, from

2007 to 2012, this competition has been peculiarly visible. Indeed, the creation of a large

Department for the Budget and the Civil Service after the presidential election of 2007 has taken

the responsibility for the Civil Service from the Prime Minister’s portfolio to give it to the

Minister of the Budget. This institutional design - a drastic innovation in the fifth Republic – is

the symbol of the leadership role devoted to the financial ministry in the implementation of

administrative reforms, and especially the famous “General review of Public Policies” (Révision

générale des politiques publiques) announced by Nicolas Sarkozy. It also confirms the will of the

Government to treat Civil Service policies as a budgetary matter. In the traditional policy-making

with Unions, it is an attempt to weaken the Unions by changing the statute of their historic

spokespersons. The transfer of the DGAFP to the new Department for the Budget could even

have led to its merger with the General Directorate for the State Modernization (Direction générale

de la modernisation de l’Etat – DGME), depriving the Prime Minister of its influence over the Civil

Service policy. However, the Prime Minister’s office and the Secrétaire général du Gouvernement did

not accept this change so easily. Between 2007 and 2012, other evolutions have occurred, which

seem to have led to a further reinforcement of the Prime Minister’s role in Senior Civil Service

matters. Especially, the nomination in October 2009 of a new Director in charge with the Senior

Civil Service within the SGG shows that the old idea of the SGA is still on the agenda. From june

2011 onwards, the Civil Service is given back an independent Minister (François

Sauvadet).Eventually, other measures, especially concerning the territorial reform implemented

from 2009 onwards, tend to give an increasing leadership to the Prime Minister (Bezes et Le

Lidec 2010). Most recently, in October 2012, the creation of the “General Secretary for the

Modernization of Public Action” (Secrétariat general pour la modernization de l’action publique), merging

the former DGME from the Department of Finance with other services in order to create a

cross-departmental organization in charge with “administrative modernization”, which reports

directly to the Prime Minister goes in that direction as well.

24

CONCLUSION

The paper has shown that centralist HRM policies toward the Senior Civil Service have

developed in France as in Britain from the 1990’s, although through different mechanisms. While

in Britain, the emergence of a common cadre to govern the higher civil service is pushed forward

by a central organization – the Cabinet Office – in reaction to organizational transformations, in

France, this process is based on a professional mobilization of the different groups within the

higher civil service. In both cases, central HRM policies represent an opportunity for central

organizations to extend their influence over other Departments, although not through direct

regulations but rather as host of networks and provider of standard or expertise. The capacity of

the Centre to diffuse HRM instruments appears greater in Britain, where the Prime Minister has

been a clearer support to centralist policies.

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