ABSTRACT
In his memoirs, a former Minister for Finance (Arthuis 1998) tells this story: when taking office in 1995, he asked for full information about the real rewards of top civil servants. One year later he received a single page of figures, without official headers, printed on special paper from the secret services that prevents it from being copied. Conclusion of the parable: ‘The only true state secret in France is the amount of administrative elite wages.’ Such a lack of transparency must be seen in light of French reluctance to openly discuss revenues or money. As de Tocqueville (1856) demonstrated, one of the numerous ‘French paradoxes’ is the mix of a ‘passion for equality’ and/but a ‘love for privileges.’ In such a culture, it is unsurprising that opacity traditionally applies to politico-administrative elites’ rewards, which tend to be organized more as privileges guaranteed to status groups than as proper rewards for individual achievements. Some recent changes are occurring, though, due to the trans-national influence of the New Public Management (NPM) on rewards for the administrative elite, while tradition remains unchallenged for politicians.
