The Influence of the French Prime Minister in the Policy
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THE INFLUENCE OF THE FRENCH PRIME MINISTER IN THE POLICY MAKING PROCESS 1981-1991 ty ROBERT ELGIE Ph. D. Thesis London School of Economics University of London UMI Number: U062736 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Disscrrlation Publishing UMI U062736 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 f 69o 23 11 ABSTRACT The institution of the Prime Minister in France remains remarkably understudied. There are many personalised accounts of the work of individual Prime Ministers and their relations with Presidents and government ministers, however, there has been no rigorous attempt to analyse the Prime Minister's overall influence in the governmental decision making process. The aim of this thesis is to provide a systematic analysis of the Prime Minister's influence over the policy making process from 1981- 1991. The first chapter examines the existing literature on the core executive in France and identifies six models of core executive operations. Under each of these models the Prime Minister's influence over the decision making process can be seen to differ. In order to determine the validity of these different models, eight public policy decisions are then examined and the role played by the Prime Minister in the preparation of each of them is identified. From this study, it will be argued that the Prime Minister's influence in the policy process was dependent upon his position in relation to three types of constraints: quasi-permanent institutional constraints, conjunctural constraints and momentary constraints. In the final chapter the six models of core executive operations will be reconsidered. It will be argued that, instead of there being a single model which accounts for the Prime Minister's influence over policy making, it is possible to move from one model to another. Each move being caused by a change in his relations with the three types of constraints identified previously. Ill Acknowledgements My principal debt of gratitude must go to my supervisor. Dr. Howard Machin. He has been an indefatigable source of encouragement and support over the past three years. Without his help, this project would never have seen the light of day. More importantly, however, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the LSE and the credit for all the pleasure that I derived from my work must for the most part be attributed to him. I must also extend my thanks to Professor Patrick Dunleavy at the LSE for reviewing the first chapter and commenting upon it and to Dr. Desmond King for encouraging me in my first year. I would also like warmly to thank Moshe Maor whose own individual research style was the inspiration behind my merciless pursuit of interviews whilst in France. I am especially grateful to the various politicians and administrators in Paris who took time off from their duties and allowed me to interview them. In particular, I must thank M. Bertrand Cousin for his invaluable help on several occasions and for commenting upon the first draft of chapter three. Likewise, I must thank M. Bertrand Delcros for his comments also. Much of the research for this project was carried out in the British Library of Economic and Political Science at the LSE and at the library of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris. Thanks must go to the staff at these two institutions. I would also like to thank the Economic and Social Research Council for their generous funding over the past three years. In particular, I should like to thank the ESRC for making it possible for me to spend a year in Paris co^ucting field work for this project. Additionally, I would like to acknowledge the support I received from the Philip Williams Memorial IV Fund which provided me with much needed financial support for my stay in Paris. Specifically, I would like to thank Vincent Wright at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Serge Hurtig at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris for their help in enabling me to receive the above award. Finally, I would like to dedicate this project to my parents for all their unfailing support and love over the years and to Etain Tannam, Tâim i ngrâ leat. Robert Elgie November 4th 1991 C o n ten ts Abstract Page ii Acknowledgements iii Chapter 1, Models of Core Executive Operations in France 1 Chapter 2, The French Prime Minister and the Policy Process 36 Chapter 3, Broadcasting Policy 49 Chapter 4, Budgetary Policy 93 Chapter 5, Crisis Policy Making: i. The Devaquet University Reforms, 1986 138 Chapter 6, Crisis Policy Making: ii. The Politics of Devaluation, March 1983 168 Chapter 7, The Limits to Prime Ministerial Influence 196 Chapter 8, The Capacity for Systemic Dynamism 238 Appendix, List of Interviewees 266 Footnotes 269 Bibliography 282 Chapter One Models of Core Executive Operations in France The institution of the Prime Minister stands at the heart of the core executive^ in France. As a result, it has been the object of a considerable amount of media, academic and public attention. Indeed, there are countless studies which deal either directly with the role of the Prime Minister in France, or which, more frequently, refer rather more tangentially to the office. In the main, however, these studies are academically unrewarding. In fact, the nature and influence of the Prime Minister's influence in the policy process is remarkably poorly documented. In France, core executive studies tend to be of two types. The first type are journalistic studies and are particularly numerous. Naturally the Prime Minister is the focus of a great deal of attention in the national and weekly press. Such media scrutiny of the Prime Minister's role, however, tends to be highly personalised, anecdotal and lacking in analytical rigour. This situation is hardly surprising as the expectations and the constraints within which the press operates are not conducive to any other sort of study. Academic accounts, which form the second type, also tend to be disappointingly incomplete. Amongst these accounts there is a well developed juridical literature based on the Prime Minister's place in constitutional and administrative law. This literature, however, naturally tends to underestimate the political climate within which the Prime Minister operates. Of the rest, there are only a small handful of studies which focus upon the Prime Minister directly.2 Whilst these studies are no doubt useful, they are also out of date and in the main concentrate on the Prime Minister's administrative resources, rather than his influence in the policy process. The remaining academic accounts refer to the Prime Minister only indirectly, usually in the context of presidential studies. There are three main reasons as to why rigorous studies of the French Prime Minister's influence remain underdeveloped. The first is due to the political supremacy of the President for much of the Fifth Republic. Both journalistic and academic accounts will naturally focus their attention upon the perceived centre of power in the country. In the French case this attention has led to presidential studies since 1958. The result has been that prime ministerial studies have been seen to be of only secondary importance. It is also the case that, since the 1962 constitutional reform which instituted the direct election of the President, French politics has become more personality orientated. Individuals are judged on their capacity to hold the top office. This situation has served to personalise both the journalistic and academic literature. Emphasis, therefore, has been placed upon the individual strengths and weaknesses of the President and his main rival, the Prime Minister, rather than on an analytical appreciation of their influence in the policy process. The second reason for the lack of prime ministerial studies is due to the high level of secrecy which surrounds the workings of the core executive. Secrecy is clearly not a problem confined to France and similar problems have hampered work on the core executive in, for example, the UK and Ireland.^ In France, all government documents are classified as secret and do not reach the public domain until years after the event. Moreover, even when minutes of past Conseil des ministres, or committee meetings do appear, there is no procès-verbal from which a full picture of the governmental debate could be reconstructed. Instead, there is only a general résumé of the meetings' conclusions. Such secrecy fosters the impressionistic, anecdotal accounts which characterise journalistic studies of the core executive. These anecdotes are fascinating precisely because of the high level of secrecy and they have the advantage for the journalist that they are hard to contradict. The third reason is because of the normative element upon which many studies are based. Whilst in the UK this normative element is largely confined to the belief in some quarters that there ought to be cabinet government, in France the doctrinal aspect is much stronger. Mainly because of the institutional shortcomings of the Third and Fourth French Republics, the debate surrounding the organisational structure of the Fifth Republic has been particularly doctrinaire. This debate has typically centred around, on the one hand, the notion supported by the gaullists that there ought to be presidential government and, on the other, the communist (and previously socialist) belief that there ought to be parliamentary government.