ABSTRACT
Sociographic analysis of the health and social policy elites from 1981 to 1997 tends to confirm the dominant hypotheses in place since the founding of the French Fifth Republic, to wit the power of senior civil servants at the heart of the policy-making machinery. This chapter assesses the class effect in two ways: most obviously quantitative analysis of the choices made by successive graduating classes, and through interview questions. Analysis of membership of political administrative elites in clubs, discussion forums, and the like, points us in the direction of external places of socialization into the sector. For the elites who came into the sector through family policy, volunteer work was an important means of socialization. The empirical research carried out for this study undermines the hypothesis according to which particular graduating classes of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) end up governing specific sectors of the state using the networks built up while in school.
