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The Napoleonic tradition

B. Guy Peters
Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

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Abstract
Purpose This paper intends to provide a framework for understanding the concept of administrative tradition, and then applies it to Napoleonic administrative systems. Design/methodology/approach The analysis involves the creation of a number of dimensions that can be used to analyze traditions, and the paper demonstrates the range of application of the dimensions. Findings Provides ndings from a number of studies of public administration. Originality/value This framework is applied primarily to industrialized democracies in this paper but can be used across the full range of administrative systems, and is a signicant augmentation of existing frameworks for comparative analysis. Keywords Public administration, Public sector organizations, Europe, Organizational structures Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Public Sector Management Vol. 21 No. 2, 2008 pp. 118-132 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0951-3558 DOI 10.1108/09513550810855627

Administrative systems are, in some ways, the easiest components of the public sector for comparative analysis (Peters, 1988a, b). Public administration in all political systems is organized in a more or less bureaucratic manner, and is responsible for implementing public policy, as well as some additional functions such as policy advice. Despite the apparent similarities of the institutions of public administration, there are also important differences and those differences have crucial signicance for the ability of governments to perform their tasks efciently and effectively. Further, one format for public administration is not necessarily superior to others, but its effectiveness may be a function of how well it ts with other political and social patterns. One way of creating a more comprehensive explanation of the structure and behavior of public bureaucracies is to develop the concept of administrative traditions. By administrative tradition we mean an historically based set of values, structures and relationships with other institutions that denes the nature of appropriate public administration within society, a denition representing more than a little inuence of the normative institutionalism. This concept brings together several characteristics of administrative systems and demonstrates how these elements t together to create more or less coherent institutions. These characteristics are, as intimated above, in part inherited from the past as well as containing some contemporary adaptations to changed circumstances. Administrative traditions within the developed democracies can be grouped into several broad patterns, although each country has its own particular interpretation of the tradition. Even with the differences within the tradition, however, these patterns provide a means of understanding and interpreting public administration. The concept of tradition combines some elements of explanation for administrative behavior. For example, traditions have some elements of an administrative culture (see Chan and Clegg, 2002) but yet do not depend entirely or even primarily on cognitive explanations. Further, the concept of administrative traditions contains some elements of institutionalism, but neither is it entirely structuralist in its view of how individuals

and organizations behave in government. The concept of administrative tradition has some afnity with historical institutionalism in that it assumes that there is a persistent pattern of behavior that inuences administration in the contemporary period. There is also a strong sense that administrative structures are embedded in the broader political system and are engaged in a political process, but administrative traditions are distinguishable from state traditions. That is, the nature of public administration may be inuenced by the political system but also will develop independently. Although the concept of tradition sounds entirely historical and somewhat static, I will argue that despite their formation in the past, and development over decades and indeed centuries, traditions do have contemporary relevance and continue to inuence patterns of behavior in public bureaucracies. For example, this special issue will explore the manner in which one major administrative tradition labeled here the Napoleonic tradition inuences contemporary administrative reform, and may privilege some types of reforms but reduce the probabilities of others. The underlying administrative traditions may also inuence the way in which these countries, and others, have adapted to their membership in the European Union. Further, although the roots of the tradition are generally quite stable traditions are also dynamic. This dynamism is seen in part by the adaptations made by individual countries to the four basic patterns identied below, and the apparent divergence of administrative patterns. Further, traditions have themselves changed over time. Administrative systems within those systems have adjusted to the increased administrative workload produced by the modern welfare state which is also the modern administrative state. Further, the administrative systems and their traditions have had to adjust rst to mass democratization and then more recently to reinterpretations of democracy that permit greater individual inuence over public decisions. Thus, there is both continuity and change and that mixture is why this concept is appealing as a mechanism for comparison and explanation. Although the concepts may be related and there are cultural elements involved, administrative traditions are more that just political culture, or even administrative culture (see Peters, 2001, chapter 2). The notion of tradition does involve what people, especially political and administrative elites, think about administration, but it also involves a number of institutional features of public administration, as well as the relationships between state and society in administering public policies. The concept of tradition also is more oriented toward political elites and their involvement in governing while much of the literature on political culture is oriented toward the mass public. Administrative traditions may also be considered as just a restatement of the concept of style used to describe policy making in various states (Richardson, 1982; Van Waarden, 1995). While policy style appears to be a strong candidate for subsuming the idea of tradition for comparing administrative systems, there are also crucial differences. One is that the idea of style focuses more on the state as an entity rather than on administration, and on policy making rather than implementation. The public bureaucracy does have a denite role to play in the policy making process but policy style as conceptualized by scholars such as Jeremy Richardson involves a number of other factors, especially the role that societal interests play in the process. Knill (1999) has used the term administrative tradition when examining the reactions

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of European Union countries to EU policy initiatives. Despite a focus on implementation of EU directives, Knills denition of traditions (more implicit than explicit) comes closer to policy styles than it does to administrative traditions. He discusses the degree of t between policies coming from Brussels and existing policy trajectories of the countries in question and the apparent ease of including the European policy initiatives in national governing styles. I have been stressing the public dimension of public administration when describing these traditions, but some attention must also be given to the administrative element. Some aspects of thinking about administration and management in different cultures are applicable to both the public and private sectors (Hofstede, 1984; Tayeb, 1988). For example, some cultures are more amenable to formal bureaucratic controls within organizations than are others, and likewise other cultures may emphasize the need for participation within organizations, whether public or private. As was true for other aspects of this concept there are some elements of continuity as well as some elements of change. Even for those cultures that are heavily hierarchical, for example, general trends of democratization and increased participation (Inglehart, 1990) in social and political life may make that bureaucracy less acceptable. In summary, the idea of an administrative tradition is anchored in the past, but it also can involve dynamic elements. I am arguing that we must understand where systems of public administration have been in order to understand where they are going. Further, we need to understand where the administrative systems can go, or at least can go most readily, if we are to understand change. While administrative traditions are not totally determinate, they do establish some parameters for action, and any proposed reforms that press the edges of those parameters are likely to be suspect and hence more difcult to adopt, and more difcult to implement. Dimensions of administrative traditions It would be easy to discuss administrative tradition by presenting a set of descriptions of individual administrative systems, such as those in southern Europe. While those descriptions could be valuable, they would be prone to giving differential attention to aspects of the existing systems, and would become simply descriptions in another format. Further, there is the danger of producing stereotypes of administrative systems that may contain some elements of truth, but may also make comparisons among those systems more difcult. Finally, the strictly descriptive characterizations of administrative systems would be primarily national, and would be less likely to identify the underlying elements of traditions that cut across national systems and link, as well as differentiate, a number of national administrations. In order to overcome some of the limitations of simple descriptions of administrative traditions I will rst develop a set of dimensions that are useful for understanding a range of administrative systems, including perhaps even non-Western traditions (see Burns and Bowonwata, 2002). The dimensions developed here consider the relationships of state to society and to individual citizens, the nature of administrative work, and patterns of control that exist within administrative organizations (again, often public as well as private). Further, as I will attempt to demonstrate later in the paper, these dimensions tend to t together to form coherent understandings of how public administration should function.

In this paper I will be presenting the general ideas of these dimensions and developing the concepts for one of the four major traditions in European public administration: the Napoleonic tradition (see Wunder, 1995). This tradition is based on the model of the public sector developed by Napoleon I in France, and was spread throughout a good deal of southern Europe, as well as through the French colonial empire. Although the French administrative system remains the epitome of this tradition, these other countries have adopted many of the same ideas about, and approaches to, public administration. There are some signicant deviations from the fundamental model, but there is also some administrative DNA that helps to shape the patterns in the other systems. But although we know there have been historical inuences of the tradition, do they persist, and do they affect the adaptation of contemporary systems to both signicant reform pressures and the inuences for convergence coming from the European Union? State and society I The rst dimension addresses the fundamental question of the relationship of the state to the society. This is a crucial dening characteristic of state traditions (Dyson, 1980; Torstendahl, 1991) but also has substantial relevance for the conduct of public administration. Although there are certainly more subtle differences than are possible to discuss in this short space (see Peters, 2002, 2004a, b), we can begin with a rather stark dichotomy between organic and contractarian conceptions of the relationship between state and society. In the organic conception the state is assumed to be linked from its inception with society, and the two entities have little meaning apart from each other. This almost metaphysical conception of the state and its role in governance can be contrasted with a contractarian notion in which the state arose from a conscious contract, expressed through a constitution or other constitutive arrangements, between the members of the society and the institutions that will govern them (see Elazar, 1994). In the contractarian conception the state is not a natural entity but rather is a human construct and thus also malleable, and capable of being changed by the parties to the contract. The contracting partners in these relationships are not individual actors at a single point in time but rather are the members of the society in the future as well as the present, and the contract therefore is generally more implicit than explicit. The Napoleonic tradition certainly embraces the more organic conception of the state, with the state being conceived as a means of integrating society, and subsuming social difference in the general entity that is the overarching source of governance. That conception became evident in the riots in France in 2005 in which the universalistic conception of citizenship had prevented even knowing relative levels of unemployment among social groups, much less addressing the differences. That having been said, the Napoleonic conception is beginning to erode, e.g. in Spain with the movement toward regionalization and perhaps even genuine federalization. These changes entertain the notion that the state is more a product of human design than an organic representation of society. Likewise, frequent constitutional changes, and changes of fundamental laws such as electoral laws, may make the notion of the enduring, organic state somewhat questionable. Although dening the nature of the public sector in general, relationships between state and society also have direct impact on the manner in which public administration is likely to be conducted. In particular the organic conceptions tend to ascribe less of an

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autonomous role to society and to citizens with the state having an obligation to defend society. The state and its administrators therefore know relatively few bounds, and a state-centric conception of governance is the consequence (Peters and Pierre, 2002). There are prescribed procedures for exercising that power, but the power itself is inherent in the state. Thus, in a contractarian conception any residual rights tend to lie with the citizens, while in the state centric view they rather naturally lie with the state. In the context of reform, therefore, the state-centric position may hamper the introduction of more citizen-focused reforms, e.g. a consumer orientation in public programs. Law vs management A second feature that denes administrative traditions is the choice between management and law to dene the fundamental tasks of administration. This is another rather stark dichotomy and will require some renement. Even in the dichotomous form, however, this concept captures an important dimension of difference among administrative systems. One way of dening the principal role of the public administrator is to consider him or her as charged with administering public law. This legalistic conception of public administration assumes that law is readily understandable and that all individual administrators must apply the law to cases. Good administration in this essentially Weberian world of administration, is therefore employing the law appropriately and effectively to achieve public purposes. Of course, the simplicity of applying the law declines the higher one rises in the hierarchy of the state, and policymaking and policy advice becomes more crucial to the role of the civil servant. Further, political issues become more important at higher levels of the administrative hierarchy, but even then the fundamental legalistic conception changes little among the top ofcials. The alternative view of the role of the public administrator is that of the manager. This view of the job of a civil servant does not deny the importance of following the law but does imply that the rst responsibility of the senior public servant is to get things done, and to make the organization for which he or she is responsible perform as well as possible when implementing the laws on the statute books. At this point the two conceptions of the role of the civil servant merge to some extent, given that the managerial efforts are directed at implementing the law, with management being a means to that end. Still, as much of the implementation literature (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1976; Winter, 2003) emphasizes, the law is the beginning point rather than the ending point for managerial public administration. The implementation literature also demonstrates the degree of discretion available to civil servants at all levels of government (Page, 2000), and hence the extent to which law is not a denitive guide for civil servants. Cutting across these two conceptions is the role of senior public servant as policy advisor. One may question the extent to which this role is a relatively modern invention, arising as the public sector expanded in response to demands rst of warfare and then of welfare. The role of civil servants in providing policy advice expanded to meet these demands at the same time that the demands began to overwhelm the capacity of politicians to cope with the volume and complexity of policy making (Rose, 1976). The role of policy advisor has some degree of congruence with both of the above-mentioned dominant roles. On the one hand, existing laws and drafting future law is certainly one aspect of policy advice. On the other hand, policy

advice is often a great deal more than legal drafting; it is advising about how goals can be achieved, and even on the possible political consequences of the policy choices. Those consequences may be expressed in both substantive and political terms (see Bovens et al., 2001), thereby linking advice from bureaucrats to the political arena rather directly. All of the above having been said, the managerialist conception of the role of the public servant is becoming more widely spread than in the past. The ideas of the new public management (Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2003; Hood, 1991) have been diffused widely, in part to meet the nancial and managerial challenges posed by the expanded role of the state. The politics of reform discussed in the remaining chapters in this special edition demonstrate the continuing skepticism of some Napoleonic systems to managerialism in the public sector. These ideas are, however, ideas in good currency, and have penetrated even the German and French systems (and similar systems) that have resisted managerialist ideas in the past (see Schroter, 2000; Stol, 2006). These shifts in the perceived role of the senior public service toward management will also have an impact on the relationship between politics and administration, the next of the characteristics of administrative traditions to be discussed. Administration and politics A third dimension of administrative traditions to some extent involves specication and elaboration of the rst two. This dimension is based on the relationship assumed to exist between politicians and their civil servants. The basic question is the extent to which public servants are expected to be autonomous from political pressures, administering the law sine ira et studio, or conversely the extent to which they, and especially civil servants toward the top of the hierarchy, are expected to be politically sensitive, if not politically active, in making and executing law. Further, there is the question of the extent to which administrative and political careers are separate. In some countries, for example, the parliament contains a large number of career public servants who are simply on leave while pursuing a political career. They can return to civil service careers once their political adventures are over, and having those political contacts is rarely detrimental to their careers; indeed the effect is often quite positive. Just as the question of the dominance of law or management denes one aspect of the involvement of civil servants in the processes of governing, so too does the question of how political and administrative leaders are supposed to work together in the policy process. In all administrative traditions there is a conception, albeit developed somewhat later in some, that at least some part of the civil service should be apolitical and be charged simply with administering the law in as fair and impartial a manner as possible. That having been said, there is some point of proximity to political leaders in most administrative systems where it is clear that appointments have to take into account politics. To some extent the role of senior civil servants is inherently political. Even if they are not partisan appointments, and efforts are made to make them anonymous to parliament and the public (Hood, 2001), these ofcials inevitably perform tasks that are important for the success of the government of the day. Given that importance, the government of the day will want to exercise some form of control over these ofcials (Peters and Pierre, 2002). That control may be extremely overt, e.g. the capacity to name their own ofcials, or it may be subtle, having senior ofcials moved sideways,

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with the news being announced in the most oblique manner possible. The incompatibility of a minister and a civil servant may have nothing to do with political party preferences, but simply be differences in personality or cast of mind, e.g. Mrs Thatchers search for civil servants like us (Hennessey, 1989). Still, there are marked differences in the extent to which civil servants are politicized and in their vulnerability to dismissal or forced retirement if there are changes to partisan control of government. The degree of politicization of the civil service is widely argued to be increasing, even in countries that have prided themselves on having a strong merit system and a neutral public service (Lacam, 2000; Peters and Pierre, 2002). Likewise, the ideas of the new public management already mentioned tend to denigrate the concept of a career, neutral civil service and to favor of a more committed, and perhaps temporary, public service. The diffusion of these conceptions of management in some ways reduce the distinctiveness of administrative traditions but these traditions also are very resilient. It may well be, in fact, that over time the challenges to administrative traditions posed by NPM may reinforce, rather than erode, traditions. There is some evidence of a backlash against the dominance of these ideas, and some restatement of older ideas about what constitute appropriate levels of political involvement in the recruitment of public servants and in the execution of law (see below). The Napoleonic tradition tends to have fewer barriers between the political and the administrative than most other traditions. Administrators often have political careers, both as active politicians and as appointees to positions in ministerial cabinets and similar structures that are linked to political leaders. Indeed many politicians begin their careers as civil servants trained by the state and then move into political careers. That having been said, some of the same concerns about politicization have been raised in French, Italian and Spanish administration as have in other countries, in part because of the need to direct administration in a system highly constrained by law. The career Implied in the above discussion of politics and administration is a conception of a civil service career being at least partially distinct from not only political careers, but also from private sector careers. One feature that has tended to differentiate administrative traditions is the extent to which there is a distinct bureaucratic career, and the extent to which individuals tend to remain in administrative positions for their entire working life. Historically one element of the formation of the state bureaucracy was its differentiation both from the household of the monarch and from the private sector. The further structural differentiation of the bureaucracy led to creation of separate legal categories for public servants, most clearly identiable in Germany with the category of Beamten for senior level public servants other public employees are employed under general labor law. The corps system in France and systems in the Napoleonic tradition also differentiates elite public servants from rest, and also creates differentiation even within the elite (see Eymeri, 2000). Although the civil service often is differentiated from other careers in society, there are signicant differences in the extent to which interchange between public and private sector careers is acceptable within the tradition. At one end of a continuum public positions that would in most societies be occupied by career public servants are in the US occupied by political appointees who move in and out of government

frequently. Likewise, the Scandinavian public sectors have been open to recruitment from outside a career public service, and there is less differentiation than in most industrialized democracies. On the other end of the continuum the Canadian public services continues as a clearly dened career systems with little movement in and out. In addition to the degree of separation from the private sector, within the civil service itself, there are marked variations in the denition of the career and the manner in which individuals are recruited, promoted, rewarded and managed in the course of their careers. For example, in the German case mentioned above recruitment to the administrative elite tends to occur at the inception of the career. Likewise, in France the senior civil service is selected from the Ecole Nationale dAdministration, with few opportunities for later entry into the elite positions. In principle other administrative systems are more open to internal recruitment and the ability of lower level civil servants to work their way up through the system, but even in those systems mobility is the exception rather than the rule. The in and out pattern mentioned for American public employees points to another important aspect of the career. For the US the interchange between the public and private sectors occurs throughout the individuals working life, but in other systems there is a tendency for public employees to move to the private sector but to do so only once. The most important example of this movement is in France, with pantouage used to describe the movement of elite public servants into the private sector, often at a rather early age. The importance of this pattern is that the civil service continues to constitute an all-purpose elite for the society and to some extent constitutes a network that links the two sectors and provides for state involvement in a range of private sector economic and social activities. Also in the Napoleonic tradition Spanish bureaucrats can move into the private sector for limited periods of time, but unlike their French counterparts are expected to return. Uniformity One common value for public administration is equality. Citizens should be treated fairly and equally according to their needs and their eligibility for services (Walsh and Stewart, 1992). Especially in democratic regimes, the equal treatment of citizens is almost a dening element of good administration. While equality is an important value so are democracy and self-determination, and citizens should have some opportunity to shape their own policy regimens. The opportunity to exercise that inuence may lead to different policy choices for different parts of the country, if not for individual citizens. In addition, the willingness to accept differences in administration may permit greater efciency, given that policies as implemented will reect differing conditions and preferences and hence may not encounter as much opposition as might uniform policies perceived to be more alien and Draconian. As well as reecting values of and about citizens, the denition of a desired level of uniformity in policy and administration also says something about the nature of the state itself. Governments may attempt to create uniformity of services and policy in their territory, believing that this will build a cohesive and integrated political system, and also ensure greater equality for citizens. Conversely, other constitutional arrangements may permit or encourage greater divergence of administrative systems not only to permit virtual experimentation with policy, but also as a means of controlling potentially dictatorial central governments (Jacob, 1974). That is clearly

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part of the logic of federalism, and some nominally unitary states provide opportunities for variation in policy and administration, e.g. Sweden and the other Nordic countries. Uniformity also has been a strategy for state-building. In the case of France this was clear in the attempt of Napoleon, and to some extent the monarchs before him, to create a unied nation from a set of feudal structures that had varying degrees of allegiance to the previous monarchy. As in Napoleons famous statement, it was necessary to make Frenchmen. This top-down strategy of state-building assumed that reducing differences was the best way to generate commitment to the state. Of course, state-builders in federal states have assumed quite the opposite, and have attempted to create loyalty through recognizing differences, while at the same time providing for the public goods and services that are more appropriately provided in a more uniform and centralized manner. The perceived need for uniformity in the case of France was manifested in colonial adventures as well as in administration at home. We can, for example, contrast the British tradition of indirect rule in India and much of its African empire with the French and Spanish tradition of direct rule, uniformity and incorporation. The UK ruled several of its colonies with a few hundred people, tending to use indigenous power structures to impose their control. In India, for example, a signicant portion of the subcontinent was ruled through the indigenous royalty rather than through direct imposition by the colonial power. In contrast, French colonial policy tended to attempt to create new components for metropolitan France, and that style persists in the DOM and TOM that exist within France, and within the European Union. The reform ideas discussed in this special issue are a major challenge to ideas of uniformity in administration. One aspect of the contemporary reform agenda has been to enhance opportunities for citizens and lower echelon public employees to make more choices for themselves, and also for more autonomous organizations to make independent choices about public services. Likewise, ideas about contracting and the use of social actors to provide public services also increase diversity in public services, and hence may not be as acceptable in states with a long-term commitment to uniformity. State and society II We have already discussed one aspect of the relationship between state and society, relevant primarily at the most macro level of political analysis. There is also another important aspect of this relationship more directly relevant for the day-to-day operations of government and public administration. This aspect of the relationship denes the role that societal actors can legitimately play in making and implementing public policies. Some state, and administrative, traditions grant a legitimate position to societal interests, and have attempted to integrate social actors into the policy process as aids and complements to state power. Further, given their connections with important segments of society, the involvement of these social groups is also as an alternative source of legitimation for government action. For example, corporatist interest intermediation provides a limited range of interest groups the right to take part in policy making, with the expectation that they will trade that right to participate for some complicity in the decisions taken. More recently network models of governing (Kickert et al., 1997) have created an alternative conception of the involvement of social interests in governing.

The alternative conception of the role of societal interests in relationship to government is that their involvement in governing to some extent undermines the authority of the state, and represents an unwarranted incursion into state prerogatives. Political systems operating with this conception of the state and its relationship to society tend to limit access to interest groups and those groups must expend a good deal of political energy in the politics of access. In almost any democratic system it is difcult to exclude social interests entirely, so the question becomes which interests and under what circumstances are they be admitted. At the extreme hegemonic parties in authoritarian systems create their own unions or their own associations to (presumably) represent the interests of segments of society. Even in democratic regimes governments may be involved in fostering and legitimating interest groups that support the general policy thrusts of the state, and perhaps the government of the day. LaPalombara (1966), for example, advances the idea of parantela organizations that are closely linked with the hegemonic party. The above discussion is largely concerned with the state as an entity and its relationships with societal interests. There is also a specic administrative element involved in this dimension. First, perhaps the principal point of contact between societal interests and the state is the administrative system. Most people (professionals as well as the general public) tend to think about interest groups lobbying and attempting to inuence legislative decisions, but there are many more administrative decisions in the public sector than legislative decisions (Kerwin, 2002; Page, 2000). Advice about new legislation often comes from the bureaucracy, and therefore participation on advisory committees or in other opportunities to shape the views of bureaucratic organizations on policy provides societal interests the opportunity to inuence legislation. That inuence may be indirect inuencing the legislature through inuencing the bureaucracy, but it is still inuence. Further, organizations in the public bureaucracy may be more willing to accept involvement of interest groups than are political leaders, given that their source of legitimacy is not as threatened as would that of elected ofcials. Indeed, the expertise of the bureaucracy may be enhanced by involving other experts from the private sector, and consultative organizations within the bureaucracy often embody those social interests and may provide regular access for social actors who might have more difculty accessing the legislature. Also, interest groups are crucial in implementing a variety of public programs so if they have a more legitimate status they are also more likely to be effective in that role. Just as the ideas of new public management have diffused widely and are making managerialism more common in a variety of settings, so too are ideas about using the private sector in implementing policies on behalf of the public sector. This involvement of not-for-prot organizations in governance is justied in part simply by the need to save on the costs of administration, with the use of not-for-prot organizations being especially useful in this regard. The use of non-governmental organizations also may help legitimate the implementation of these programs in an era in which government is not highly regarded by much of the public. Even if government were in general more highly regarded for some programs the familiarity of interest groups may make their involvement in the decisions important for legitimacy of the decisions. This aspect of state-society relationships might have been thought to covary with the rst variable describing these relationships. More state-centric, organic systems

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might be thought to exclude inuences of interest groups and seek to preserve their autonomy in the face of pressures from interest groups. That is not, however, necessarily the case. It may also be that the organic conception of linkage between state and society results in the acceptance of a more legitimate role of interest groups and with that a diminished capacity of the state to exercise autonomy. Likewise, while we might expect government institutions within state traditions based on a more or less formal contract between state and society attempting to maintain their autonomy in the face of what might be considered excessive pressures from a society that does not have any particular respect for the State as the embodiment of a higher public calling. In the Napoleonic tradition interest groups, although a necessity, are often considered almost as illegitimate interventions into the governing role, and autonomy of the state. These interests therefore are not incorporated into administration as in northern Europe, and public administration tends to be selective about which interests it will work with, generally those willing to accept the tutelage of the state. State autonomy is often maligned as a concept but yet is a crucial goal for some administrative traditions, and the Napoleonic tradition has emphasized state power over the role of society. We do need to consider, however, whether the development of network governance and other mechanisms for participation have enhanced the role of society in these cases. Accountability The nal dimension that I use to differentiate administrative traditions is the manner in which accountability is enforced within the public sector. This dimension of administrative traditions is closely related to the earlier dimension of law versus management, given that legal mechanisms are central feature of accountability regimens within several traditions. There is also some element of the politics and administration dimension in this dimension, given that accountability may be a more political exercise for controlling bureaucracy than it is purely administrative (see Pollack, 2003). Although there are those similarities to those other dimensions of administration, there is also something distinctive in the manner in which accountability is pursued within various traditions. Accountability and control are central, if not the central, variables in the analysis of public administration (Day and Klein, 1987; Hood et al., 2004). Many complaints articulated concerning the power of bureaucracies center on the perception that these institutions are unelected, unaccountable, and have powers that many average citizen currently believe are unfettered. Likewise, corruption and abuse of administrative discretion for personal gain have been cited as central to problems of legitimacy and trust in societies. Citizens have more proximate connection with the bureaucracy than they do with most other institutions in the political system so they are more likely to be personally aware of malfeasance by bureaucrats than they might of elected politicians, leaving aside well-publicized cases such as those of Bill Clinton and French ministers responsible for AIDS-infected blood who were held personally responsible for that policy failure (see Bovens et al., 2001). Powers are delegated to bureaucracies in all political systems, and consequently accountability mechanisms must constrain and monitor the exercise of that discretion. The popular perception of almost absolute bureaucratic power is held despite the continuing and increasing efforts by political leaders to demand that public servants be

more accountable, individually and collectively, for their actions. One reaction to the perceived problems in the public bureaucracy can be identied in attempts to reform the public sector. For example, some new public management reforms implemented over the past several decades have been directed at creating new mechanisms for accountability (Bouckaert and Pollitt, 2003; Christensen and Laegreid, 2002). For example, even rather modest reforms such as citizens charters are intended in part to hold the individual civil servant accountable for his or her actions (Tritter, 1994). At the same time other aspects of NPM reforms appear to have reduced accountability and have necessitated further attempts to impose controls over bureaucracy (Peters, 2001). In the Napoleonic tradition accountability is, in contrast to the ideas of new public management, accountability is formal and legalistic. While certainly there are political elements and a role for parliament and even the public, the principal elements for control are through legal instrumentalities such as the Conseil dEtat and its analogs. Further, many of the controls are exercised ex ante, so that administrators often must gain approval prior to making decisions, rather than acting decisively and then be held accountable later. This pattern may ensure the strict legalism of actions, but also makes effective administration more difcult. Conclusion To understand contemporary administrative behavior it is crucial to take current pressures such as the ideas of the new public management. It is also important to recognize the underlying ideas about the state in general and public administration in particular that have helped to shape administrative systems. This paper has developed a concept of administrative traditions to gain some greater ability to understand the underlying ideas about administration. Rather than simply providing cultural descriptions of administration, the use of a number of dimensions facilitates comparison across systems and also helps understand change and reform within individual cases. This paper has concentrated on what I have called the Napoleonic tradition in administration, derived from the French model but now diffused widely in southern Europe and many other parts of the world. That tradition is presented here somewhat in isolation from others, given limitations of space, but were there room for more complete comparative analysis the distinctiveness of the tradition would be apparent. In particular, the emphasis on law, on formality, and on uniformity distinguish this tradition and make the implementation of many new public management reforms now so central to administration in other systems difcult, if perhaps not impossible in some instances. This tradition is a powerful legacy of the past that continues to have a pervasive inuence, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, in contemporary administration.
References Bouckaert, G. and Pollitt, C. (2003), Public Management Reform, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bovens, M.A.P., t Hart, P. and Peters, B.G. (2001), Success and Failure in Public Governance, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Burns, J. and Bowonwata, B. (2002), Civil Service Systems in Asia, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.

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Further reading Arnold, P.E. (1998), Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization Planning, 1905-1996, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Banon, R. and Tamayo, M. (1997), The transformation of the central administration in Spanish intergovernmental relations, Publius, Vol. 27, pp. 85-114. Braun, D. and Busch, A. (1999), Public Policy and Political Ideas, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Christensen, J.G. (2001), Bureaucratic autonomy as a political asset, in Peters, B.G. and Pierre, J. (Eds), Bureaucrats, Politicians, and Administrative Reform, Routledge, London. Christensen, T. (2002), Forvaltning og politikk, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo. DiIulio, J.J. (1994), Deregulating Government, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Elkins, D.J. and Simeon, R.E.B. (1979), A cause in search of an effect: or what does political culture explain?, Comparative Politics, Vol. 11, pp. 117-46. Halligan, J.A. (2002), Comparative Administrative Reform, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Hazareesingh, S. (1994), Political Traditions in Modern France, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hunold, C. and Peters, B.G. (2003), Deliberative democracy and the public bureaucracy, in Maatali, M. (Ed.), Communications and Democracy, Ideas Press, Philadelphia, PA.

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Ingraham, P.W. (1995), Foundations of Merit: Public Service in American Democracy, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. James, O. (2003), The Executive Agency Revolution in Whitehall, Palgrave, Basingstoke. Kernaghan, K. (1992), Empowerment and public administration: revolutionary advance or passing fancy?, Canadian Public Administration, Vol. 35, pp. 194-214. nig, K. and Beck, J. (1997), Moderniserung von Staat und Verwaltung: Zum Neuen Offentichen Ko Management, Nomos, Baden-Baden. ` Larvaron, B. (2001), Le prefet: face au XXIe siecle, Economica, Paris. Massot, J. and Giradot, T. (1999), Le Conseil dEtat, La Documentation Francaise, Paris. Mitchell, D. and Castles, F. (1990), Families of Nations, Routledge, London. Nakamura, A. (2003), Japan, in Hood, C. and Peters, B.G. (Eds), Rewards of High Public Ofce in Asia and the Pacic, Routledge, London. Page, E.C. (2003), Europeanization and persistence in administrative systems, in Hayward, J. and Menon, A. (Eds), Governing Europe, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Peters, B.G. (2000), The Future of Governing, 2nd ed., University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KN. Peters, B.G. (2003), Reforme dun Etat sans Etat: Les changements au sein du gouvernment americain, Revue francaise dadministration publique, p. 105. Pierre, J. (1995), Bureaucracy in the Modern Age, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. Pierson, P. (2000), Increasing returns, path dependence and the study of politics, American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, pp. 251-67. Pierson, P. and Skocpol, T. (2002), Historical institutionalism in contemporary political science, in Katznelson, I. and Milner, H. (Eds), Political Science: The State of the Discipline, W.W. Norton, New York, NY. Pollitt, C. and Talbot, C. (2003), Unbundled Government, Routledge, London. Rokkan, S. (1967), Votes count but resources decide, in Dahl, R.A. (Ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Savoie, D.J. (2001), Governing from the Centre, University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Scharpf, F.W., Reissert, B. and Schnabel, F. (1976), Politikverechtung, Scriptor, Kronberg. Schon, D.A. (1971), Beyond the Stable State, Temple Smith, London. Sjolund, M. (1994), Sweden, in Hood, C. and Peters, B.G. (Eds), Rewards at the Top, Sage, London. Somers, M.R. (1995), Whats political or cultural about political culture and the public sphere? Toward an historical sociology of concept formation, Sociological Theory, Vol. 13, pp. 113-44. Sorenson, E. and Torng, J. (2002), Network politics, political capital and democracy, International Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 26, pp. 609-34. Suleiman, E.N. (2003), Dismantling Democratic States, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Van Theil, S. (2002), Quangocratization, ICS, Utrecht. Corresponding author B. Guy Peters can be contacted at: bgpeters@pitt.edu To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints