ABSTRACT
SOME ministries are concerned with particular aspects of the affairs of the national economy as a whole. Examples are the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Labour. Other ministries are responsible in a more general way for the affairs of a particular sector of the economy. This is true of the Ministries of Industry, Agriculture and Public Works and Transport. The French sometimes describes these as ‘technical’ ministries. The term is used in two closely related ways. It covers those aspects of economic policy which are neither financial nor social. It is also used to describe those government services which are run by ‘technicians’ (i.e. technically qualified civil servants) rather than by civil servants of the general administrative class. The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications is another great technical ministry, certainly in terms of the staff it employs. But it is a very specialized ministry and does not have the same wide responsibilities in the economic field as the three other great ministries mentioned above. For this reason it will not be discussed here. On the other hand, we shall also look in this chapter at the Ministry of Construction (another, smaller, technical ministry) and at the organization for regional planning which may appropriately be dealt with here because some of the services concerned were previously associated with the Ministry of Construction.
