ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN FRANCE

JAMES W. GARNER

University of Illinois

For some years prior to the outbreak of the great war the proposed reorganization of the administrative system of France occupied a leading place among the questions of French internal politics. It provoked a flood of discussion in parliament; it was the subject of investigation and report by various parliamentary, extra-parliamentary and inter-ministerial commissions; it was dwelt upon regularly in the annual reports on the budget; it was a standing subject of discussion by the functionaries in their associations and by the political parties in their annual congresses; it was responsible for a vast output of literature in the form of books, brochures and articles; and it occupied a conspicuous place in the declaration of each incoming ministry upon taking office. In the parliamentary election campaign of 1910 no other question, except proportional representation, was so widely discussed by the candidates.1

THE CENTRALIZED CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH SYSTEM

In essential principles the administrative organization of France is that which Napoleon created by the famous law of 28 pluviôse in the year 1800, primarily for the purpose of consolidating and perpetuating his personal power. The superstructure has, of course, undergone certain changes through the introduction of the elective principle in respect to mayors and councils and

1 Of the 597 deputies elected in 1910, 346 had made administrative reform a part of their platforms. The platforms of the successful candidates were published by the state in a volume of 1267 pages under the title, Professions de Foi et Engagements Electoraux. The Professions were summarized and classified by M. Camille Fouquet and published by the state in a Rapport sur les Programmes et Engagements Electoraux. As to administrative reform see the latter publication, pp. 32 ff.

through the process of deconcentration by which various matters have been transferred from Paris to the agents of the central government in the departments, but the base remains largely unaltered, and is still dominated by the centralized principle of the ancien régime and the First Empire. As such, it has been the object of increasing attack in recent years by French writers, publicists and politicians who complain that the whole administrative organization is monarchical in spirit and principle, and in striking contradiction to the democratic principle upon which the Third Republic was supposed to have been founded. The "paradox of an imperial bureaucracy coexisting with a republican constitution" is, we are told, an anachronism and as such is responsible for the principal administrative evils from which France has long suffered.2

Departments, arrondissements and communes have essentially the same organization that Napoleon gave them, with this difference that the mayors and councils are now elected instead of appointed. The prefects still retain, for the most part, their ancient power; the local authorities are still subject to the same central administrative tutelage; and aside from the right to choose the members of the local councils, the people have no direct share in the choice or control of the administrative authorities. With the exception of the mayors and a comparatively small number of

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2 "We have universal suffrage and the parliamentary régime," says M. Paul Deschanel, now president of the chamber of deputies, "the country is spanned by a network of railroads and telegraphs but our administrative régime dates from the end of the eighteenth century at a time when none of these existed." L'Organisation de la Démocratie (Paris, 1910), p. 121. "France," he says, "is not a democracy but a bureaucracy." La Décentralisation, p. 11. See also the speeches by M. Deschanel in the chamber of deputies, Jan. 13, 1905, Journal Officiel, p. 6; of May 11, 1909, ibid., p. 1003; and of June 21, 1910, ibid., p. 2234. "The truth is," says Professor Barthélemy, "our institutions are monarchical; their democratic character is only partial and more apparent than real." Revue Pénitentiaire, June, 1906. For similar criticisms, see Chardon, Les Travaux Publics, 2nd ed. 1904, p. 347; Autesserre, La Centralisation Administrative (Paris, 1904), pp. 130 ff; Ripert, "La Réforme Administrative" in the Revue des Sciences Politiques, Vol. XXVI, p. 390; and Rabany, "Réforme Administrative," in the Revue Générale de l'Administration, 1910, p. 7.

The mayors, it will be recalled, are not elected by the people directly but by the municipal councils.

officials and employees appointed by the local councils, all functionaries, from the highway inspectors to prefects, are appointed, controlled, and may be removed by the central government at Paris or by its local representatives. Napoleon has long since disappeared and with him the political régime which he established; political revolutions have followed one another in quick succession, and the Republic is now accepted as the form of government under which the people of France will probably continue to live permanently; but, as stated above, no thorough-going attempt has yet been made to bring the administrative organization of the First Empire into complete harmony with the principles of the republican system."

French writers complain that many matters of purely local interest are administered and controlled by a minister at Paris, who from his office may touch a button and give orders to 89 prefects, 276 subprefects, 36,000 mayors, hundreds of public prosecutors and more than half a million other functionaries." Vivien, writing in 1859, declared that there was not a community in France, however remote, in which the government at Paris did not have an agent to whom it could give orders.' And it is even more true today. It is impossible for the ministers or the directors at Paris to give their personal attention to one-tenth of the mass of petty matters that come up from the communes for

• Commissioners of police are now appointed by the President of the Republic and may be removed by him. Municipal collectors are appointed by the President or by the prefect, depending on the importance of the commune. Other collectors are appointed either by the prefect or by the subprefect. Conservators of municipal museums are appointed by the prefect. Guards of communal forests are appointed by the prefect from lists of candidates presented by the conservators of forests. Teachers, communal highway inspectors and agents, public weighers, and firemen although their functions appear to be entirely local in character are appointed by the prefect, and the municipal authorities have no voice whatever in their selection. Berthélemy, Le Contrôle Exercé en France par le Pouvoir Central sur l'Administration des Communes, in the reports of the Premier Congrés International des Sciences Administratives (1910), Vol. I, sec. 1: 4.

"Only Caesar and the distances have been annihilated," says M. Chardon, one of the best known writers on French administration, "R. F.' is stamped on the reports but they are intended for the Emperor." Les Travaux Publics, p. 347. • Cf. Boncour et Maurras, Un Début Nouveau sur la République et la Centralisation, p. 136.

7 Etudes Administratives, Vol. I, p. 74.

their action; this duty must therefore be shifted to the shoulders of subordinates; it has in consequence come to pass that many matters of local concern are determined by chiefs of bureaus and clerks at Paris rather than by the local authorities who are most interested and who are in a better position to determine them quickly and perhaps more wisely.

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Not only is the administration itself highly centralized but to a large extent the principle of centralization prevails in respect to legislation of a local character. The legislative competence of the local councils is much restricted and in consequence the national parliament legislates upon many matters which in the United States are left to local legislative bodies or other authorities. The communes, in consequence, often suffer from the inevitable delays incident to such a system, to say nothing of the inconvenience which results from their dependence upon the national legislature, which, aside from being occupied with a multitude of matters of general interest, is ill-fitted to legislate upon local affairs. Not infrequently the communes are compelled to wait for months for the necessary parliamentary authority to levy an additional tax which has been made necessary by the action of parliament itself in imposing upon them the burden of establishing and maintaining a new service. All writers on French administration seem to be agreed that parliament should surrender, for the most part, its power of local legislation and transfer it to the local assemblies where it would seem more properly to belong. It would not only result in great benefit to the communes themselves but would relieve parliament from the burden of legislating upon local matters for which it has neither time nor knowledge; and at the same time it would free the deputies from the constant pressure to which they are subjected by their constituencies.10

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8 Cf. Avenel, La Décentralisation, p. 16. The physical impossibility of the ministers giving attention to any but the most important questions of public policy is dwelt upon by M. Raymond Poincaré in the Revue Bleue of June 9, 1911. • Cf. Chautemps, Rapport sur le Budget Général de l'Exercise, 1912, Ministère de l'Interieur, No. 1239, Chambre des Députés, p. 87.

10 The advantage of this reform is dwelt upon by M. Cheron in his Rapport sur le Budget Général de l'Exercise, 1912, No. 1260, Chambre des Députés, p. 88.

ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL OF THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES

While the mayors of the communes are now chosen by the municipal councils and while both communes and departments have popularly elected councils, they are subject to strict control by the central government at Paris or by its representatives in the department. This control the French writers call the tutelle administrative, and it is exercised both over the authorities themselves and over their official acts. Thus the mayor may be removed from office by decree of the President of the Republic, and he may be suspended from his functions for a period of three months by the minister of the interior, and for one month by the prefect; and this power has sometimes been exercised, it is charged, for getting rid of socialist mayors or others who were in political opposition to the government. In this way, the right of the municipal council to choose a mayor who represents the political views of the local inhabitants may be reduced to naught."1 Municipal councils may be dissolved by decree of the President of the Republic, and in cases of urgency the council may be provisionally suspended by the prefect, in which case a special delegation is appointed to take its place. This power was frequently employed during the Second Empire for the purpose of getting rid of politically hostile municipal councils and replacing them by more docile commissions. 12 It has occasionally, though

11 This, of course, has been a source of much complaint. The practice of the government of summarily dismissing politically hostile mayors who nevertheless had the confidence of the local inhabitants led to the enactment of a law in 1903 giving the mayor a right to a hearing and requiring orders of suspension or dismissal to be accompanied by a statement of reasons. See Barthélemy, "Le Mouvement de Décentralisation" in the Revue du Droit Public et de la Science Politique, Vol. XXVI, p. 131. The same law relieved mayors from the necessity of obtaining the consent of the prefect in order to resign their offices, and was passed as a result of the events following a "strike" of mayors in the Midi in June, 1907, when many of them abandoned their offices, for which act they were prosecuted by the government.

12 J. Barthélemy, article cited above, p. 117. The prefect, it may be added, has the power to dismiss any member of the municipal council whom he regards as ineligible, but the latter has the right of appeal to the prefectoral council. Likewise the prefect may remove any member of the council who absents himself without valid excuse from three successive meetings of the council, and the council of state may declare vacant the seat of any member who refuses to perform a duty required of him by law.