France

The traditional picture of French politics and government has shown a highly centralised state, with weak local government, and a fragmented party system producing political instability and anaemic political leadership. Against this background the one focal point of stability and strength has been the civil service, elitist and highly trained in its upper ranks, able, and even willing, to fill the vacuum left by inefficient politicians and parties. The French absolute monarchs, and then Napoleon, were interested in government rather than democracy. The machinery of public administration was constructed first, and political democracy was fitfully grafted on afterwards during the late nineteenth century. The French were governed in a centralised fashion, with all policy-making roads leading to Paris; moreover, in Paris the civil servants governed whilst the politicians bickered.