Pathways To Power

Selecting Rulers In Pluralist Democracies

Mattei Dogan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000313048
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book focuses on the selection process of cabinet ministers in a variety of democratic political systems. It discusses the variety of recruitment patterns in some of parliament-centered systems, federal system, centralized system, one-party-dominant system and majoritarian system.

1
Career Pathways to the Cabinet in France, 1870–1986

Mattei Dogan

From 1870 to 1986, that is, from Louis-Adolphe Thiers to François Mitterrand, 1,078 ministers, secretaries of state, and undersecretaries have succeeded one another to power, across three political regimes and 140 governments in France. (The Vichy government is not included.) How were these 1,078 personalities selected? In order to reply to such a question, we will trace the path by which the ministers came to power. According to the available documentation, there were three principal pathways: the partisan capillarity, the filter of parliamentary committees, and the mandarin ascent. However, success in one or another of these pathways implied, with few exceptions, previous parliamentary legitimation. In effect, among the 1,078 ministers, nearly 1,000 were recruited from among deputies and senators. It would be possible to count, for the entire period considered—116 years—about 8,200 parliamentarians. One out of every 8 of these exercised ministerial functions. Given these data, one can say that ministerial accession has been based on true selection.

The importance of each of these three pathways varied from one period to another, and these variations are the focus of my analysis. The three pathways were in competition. If one predominated, it was necessarily at the expense of the other two. The partisan capillarity prevailed in certain periods, such as under the Mitterrand presidency. The filter of parliamentary committees dominated during the second half of the Third Republic. The mandarin ascent became more important under Charles de Gaulle and still more important under Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

My analysis refers to 631 ministers of the Third Republic; 227 of the Fourth Republic (20 of whom had survived from the third); 128 under the Gaullist Republic (including 29 survivors from the fourth); 95 appointed under Giscard d'Estaing (17 of whom had served before 1974); and 62 under the Mitterrand presidency until March 1986 (4 of whom had also served before 1981).

I am considering here a person's first appointment to a governmental position, without distinguishing between full ministers and secretaries or under secretaries of state, since the decisive moment occurs after similar processes in the two categories. But this distinction becomes essential for reappointments. It is necessary to indicate that among the 631 ministers of the Third Republic, 178 were under secretaries of state and never full ministers (except for a few who were elevated under the following republic). For the Fourth Republic, among the 227 ministers (see Table 1.1), 99 were only secretaries or under secretaries of state (and 36 others, first appointed secretaries of state, were later promoted as ministers). During the Gaullist republic, among 128 ministers, 24 were only secretaries of state, and 20 others who started in this position benefited later from a promotion to the higher rank.

My distinctions are an analytic necessity, but in the ascent of a politician, several factors intervene simultaneously or successively and, in most cases, cumulatively. It is rare that the achievements of a politician can be explained by a single factor. The real interdependence of factors is the major difficulty of analysis.

The turbulent history of France over a century obliges not only the historian but also the social scientist to distinguish several periods in order to analyze ministerial personnel (see Table 1.2). For the Third Republic, four periods can be identified: the republic of the dukes (1870-1877); the opportunistic republic (1878-1899); the radical republic (1900-1919); and the interwar period (1919-1939). For the Fourth Republic, it would be useful to distinguish the period of tripartism (1944-1947) from the later period of the third force, but such a differentiation would raise certain problems better avoided in this short analysis. A clear distinction must be made between the Gaullist republic and its successors, taking into consideration each presidency. In order to go beyond the historian's approach and to give sociological consistency to the analysis, we must proceed by groupings.

The Crucible of Resistance

To the three pathways to power should be added a conjunctional pathway of primary importance. The predominant characteristic of the collective portrait of ministers of all political tendencies in the period 1945-1969 is the active participation to the Resistance movement during the war. During World War II a preselection occurred, a selection staggered in time and observable only in retrospect. The minister-former Resistant is a predominant figure in all twenty-four governments of the Fourth Republic and in the eleven years of the Gaullist reign. However, the ministers themselves were not fully conscious of this. The numerical preponderance of former Resistants among ministers was not remarked upon in the autobiographies and memoirs of the politicians of that time. It was not observed while it was happening. The phenomenon has been observed and reconstructed by the sociologist. The Resistance as a "greenhouse" of future ministers intervened in the selection process a long time before they received parliamentary legitimation and regardless of which pathway was later followed by the former Resistant when he became a politician. Because of the importance of the Resistance as greenhouse, the social recruitment of ministers of the quarter century following World War II appears to be, in a sense, of secondary importance.

Involvement in the Resistance did not necessarily imply ambition of making a political career. In any case, between engagement in the Resistance and appointment to government, many years passed, although some individuals went directly from the clandestine network of the Resistance to the political stage. It is in the crucible of the Resistance that most of the men who became political leaders were molded: 190 of the 227 ministers of the Fourth Republic, or 84 percent, and 69 of the 128 ministers of the Gaullist reign, 54 percent. Among these men there were deputies who voted in 1940 against the delegation of power to Marshal Philippe Petain, deported persons, prisoners, civilians condemned to death by the Gestapo, founders of clandestine networks, commanders of the Free French Forces, chiefs of underground organizations, people sought by the Gestapo, fighters in the internal Resistance, civil servants dismissed by the Vichy government, members of the National Council of Resistance and of the provisional government in Algiers, members of the Consultative Assembly, chiefs of the Resistance in the colonies, and chargés de missions sent by General de Gaulle. In 1944, at the Liberation, the cadres of the Resistance became the cadres of political parties; consequently, the de Gaulle government was composed, in great majority, of former Resistants who had become official chiefs of parties overnight.

Was it visible in the 1950s, when precarious governments were constructed, that the selection of ministers was limited to the men ennobled before the rebirth of the democratic regime, that this selection was predetermined, staggered in time? Perhaps the prime ministers had the illusion that they were choosing the members of their cabinets

Table 1.1 Number of Newcomers in Each Cabinet, Fourth Republic (Ministers, Secretaries and Undersecretaries of State)

Table 1.2 Pathways to Government by Historical Periods

according to precise criteria responding to the political issues of the day. In fact, their latitude was limited, as the retrospective analysis demonstrated, by events and by behavior that were made manifest a long time before.

The Fourth Republic fell and the fifth was installed, but there were still men of the Resistance placed in command. Figure 1.1 illustrates the selection of the most important ministers of the de Gaulle regime among former Resistants. In effect, the names of those who are inside the so-called London circle were also those of the princes and barons of the Gaullist republic. When this regime was inaugurated in 1958, its rulers had already been potentially designated, with few exceptions. The former Resistants dominated the Gaullist decade.

Surely, the immense majority of the population had strong sympathies with the Resistance, but the truth is that less than 1 percent of French adults participated directly in clandestine activities against the enemy. Assuming that the 200,000 active members of the Resistance constituted a kind of sample of the whole adult population, and knowing that 1 percent of the adult population was university educated, we could then also assume that 2,000 of the Resistants had university educations. The proportion with university degrees was certainly higher among leaders than among members. Those men who possessed this double qualification, member of the Resistance and university graduate, represented 1/10,000 of the adult population (1 percent, Resistance members times 1 percent, graduates). By supposing that the proportion of graduates among Resistance leaders was twice as high as among persons who did not participate in the Resistance, we deduce that Fourth Republic ministers were recruited from an extremely restricted category that represented—just to give an idea—1/50,000 of the male population between twenty-five and sixty years of age. Paris had not yet been liberated when this preselection occurred!

It is also important to note that many of the former members of the Resistance who became ministers during the Gaullist Republic belonged to the exterior Resistance, whereas the majority of Fourth Republic ministers had participated in the interior Resistance. If Jean Moulin, leader of the interior Resistance, had survived, he would undoubtedly have become one of the dominant figures of the Fourth Republic. About forty former Resistance ministers of the Gaullist Republic had already been ministers or at least members of Parliament under the fourth. This fact brilliantly illuminates the impact of the Resistance beyond that of the changing of regimes. Many among them were in General de Gaulle's entourage in London or Algiers.

The preponderance of Resistance members among ministers diminished over the years but remained impressive even during Georges

FIGURE 1.1 Background to Companionship and Patronage Under the Gaullist Republic, 1958-1974

Pompidou's presidency. Only after the appearance of younger faces following Giscard d'Estaing's election, thirty years after Liberation, did former members of the Resistance cease to dominate the political scene. Mitterrand was not too young to have participated in the Resistance; he joined the interior Resistance in 1941.

We observe a phenomenon similar to the Resistance at the beginning of the Third Republic: opposition to the empire before 1870. Those who had fought for the republic against Napoleon III were quite naturally found in the front ranks. Like the Resistance fighter of 1940-1944, those who opposed the empire could claim a certain republican legitimacy.

Parliamentary Legitimation

A fact with profound significance for studying the selection of ministers comes to the fore. Of 631 Third Republic ministers, only 62 were chosen from outside Parliament, and most of those came from the military. Among the 227 Fourth Republic ministers, there were only 6 nonparliamentarians (de Gaulle, Léon Blum, André Malraux, Raoul Dautry, Yves Farge, and Bougenot). In spite of the constitutional prohibition against holding a ministerial office and a parliamentary seat simultaneously, 104 out of 128 ministers during the Gaullist republic held seats in Parliament at the time of their promotion to the cabinet. In other words, in order to become a minister, an aspirant had to have been consecrated by universal suffrage so as to acquire a kind of legitimacy. This legitimacy has not been explicitly invoked during the formation of cabinets. But in parliamentary regimes such as the Third and Fourth republics, in which Parliament was the center of gravity, only those who sat there could acquire the legitimacy necessary for promotion to the cabinet. This is a problem of parliamentary arithmetic: Under a parliamentary regime, a majority constantly has to express itself, and the prime minister must shape this majority. The best means to do this is to choose ministers from among the most influential parliamentarians.

The Chamber of Deputies and not the Senate gave the cabinet its investiture, even though the Senate contributed to the fall of some Third Republic governments. Quite naturally, ministers were preferably chosen from among deputies, rarely from among senators. Only 48 Third Republic ministers served exclusively in the Senate. Other ministers who had started their careers in the Chamber entered the government only after having passed through the Senate, as Georges Clemenceau did. Those men who switched houses between two cabinet positions do not affect my analysis since it is restricted to first appointments as ministers.

Table 1.3 Parliamentary Seniority and Number of Governments Served, French Third Republic (1870-1940)

If the selection of ministers occurs primarily within the Chamber of Deputies, the reason is that this body brings together the greater part of the most influential political elite. There were influential leaders elsewhere—in the Senate and at the head of certain parties and unions, pressure groups, or parapolitical organizations—but, in the final analysis, the Palais Bourbon was the forum. Only during the tripartite period after Liberation did the lower house lose its omnipotence to the benefit of the parties. A few years later another center of gravity, the presidency, was established.

The precariousness of cabinet positions contrasts with the longevity of most ministers' parliamentary careers. In effect, 122 Third Republic ministers sat in Parliament for more than a quarter of a century (40 of them sat for more than thirty-five years); 224 others sat between sixteen and twenty-five years; 100 sat between eleven and fifteen years; and 92 between six and ten years. Very few ministers, only 31 (5 percent), had short parliamentary careers—less than five years. This tally does not include the 62 nonparliamentarians.

However, the majority of these people entered a government shortly after having entered Parliament: 192 were appointed less than four years after their first election (see Table 1.3). This means, at least for the deputies, that appointments occurred during their first term. One hundred others were appointed during the fifth or sixth year of their parliamentary mandate. The 83 who had to wait a long time, more than fifteen years, before appointment to a government represent only a small fraction of ministerial personnel: 14 percent (among them, the Socialists).

The paradox is that, two times out of three, the greater part of a parliamentary career occurred not before but after cabinet experience. Appointment as minister did not take place after a long parliamentary career, as in Britain during the same period or in Japan today. In fact, members of the British government between 1868 and 1958 had an average experience of fourteen years in the House of Commons when appointed (Willson 1959, 226). In France, entry into a cabinet did not depend upon parliamentary seniority. There is no significant relationship between seniority in Parliament and promotion to a cabinet, even if a clear distinction is made between full-fledged ministers and mere undersecretaries of state. Nevertheless, one limitation could not be circumvented: It was essential to have sat in the Chamber for two or three years in order to have any chances for promotion to a cabinet-level position. Once this condition was met, parliamentary seniority hardly came into play at all.

The classical relationship of cause and effect was reversed: Parliamentary seniority did not favor promotion to a cabinet; rather, participation in a cabinet seems to have brought about a prolongation of parliamentary careers for a long period after the last cabinet office. Former ministers succeeded better than the average deputy in getting reelected under universal male suffrage. Whereas 17 percent of the deputies of the Third Republic sat during at least five legislatures (twenty years), a good quarter of the ministers succeeded in sitting for that long; 59 percent of the deputies sat less than eight years, as contrasted with only 15 percent of the ministers (Dogan 1953, 331).

But the principal reason for this longevity in Parliament was refuge in the Senate. A third of the ministers, exactly 203, quit the Chamber of Deputies to fill more comfortable Senate seats, guaranteed for at least nine years. Few among them returned to a cabinet during their Senate mandates. More than half, 119 out of 203, continued sitting in the Senate between twelve and thirty years.

Not only were cabinet careers short and precarious, but also they came to an end so early that the rich political experience the deputy had gained still permitted many hopes, fed by cabinet crises. The number of former ministers that were in waiting increased in both houses. If one counts among the deputies ministers in office, former and future ministers, one sees the total rise from 59 for the 1876 legislature to 80 for the one beginning in 1885, to 197 in 1906, 139 in 1914, and 173 in 1928. Political loss of position, which occurred prematurely for most ministers, went along with a sometimes excessive prolongation of their parliamentary careers. This was certainly a source of political frustration that increased cabinet instability, especially among those whose fortunes fell shortly after they had risen.

As a result of the election of the president by universal suffrage after 1965, parliamentary legitimacy has lost its primacy. Consequently, its importance in the choice of ministers has declined. However, the number of nonparliamenta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Introduction: Selecting Cabinet Ministers
• 1 Career Pathways to the Cabinet in France, 1870-1986
• 2 Presidential Personnel and Political Capital: From Roosevelt to Reagan
• 3 Selecting Chief Executives in Norway and the United States
• 4 How to Become a Cabinet Minister in Italy: Unwritten Rules of the Political Game
• 5 Junior Ministers and Ministerial Careers in Britain
• 6 The Making of a Japanese Cabinet
• 7 Pathways to India's National Governing Elite
• 8 Selection of Cabinet Ministers in Ireland, 1922-1982
• 9 Selection by Lot in Ancient Athens
• 10 Irremovable Leaders and Ministerial Instability in European Democracies
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Index