ABSTRACT
The Fifth Republic’s founders encouraged and accelerated the administration’s tendency to move into new sectors and reinforce its hold on existing domains. This was true of the Élysée staff and of ministerial cabinets, which the civil service dominated as never before, accounting for over 90 per cent of their members between 1958 and 1972. And it was the civil servants in the cabinets who were the most frequent participants in the réunions interministérielles that constitute the daily round of executive decision-making in France. Civil servants also staffed the growing number of ad hoc and permanent specialised bodies – 500 councils, 1,200 committees, 300 commissions by the mid-1960s – created to link the organs of the State with the major pressure groups.
