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II.2 - Why Administrative Centralization Is an Institution of the Ancien Régime and Not, As Some Say, the Work of the Revolution or Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Jon Elster
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
Arthur Goldhammer
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
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Summary

Back in the days when we had political assemblies in France, I once heard an orator refer to administrative centralization as “that admirable triumph of the Revolution, for which we are the envy of Europe.” I am prepared to grant that centralization was an admirable triumph and that we are the envy of Europe for it, but I maintain that it was not a triumph of the Revolution. On the contrary, it was a product of the Ancien Régime, and, I would add, the only portion of the political constitution of the Ancien Régime that survived the Revolution because it was the only one that could adapt to the new social state that the Revolution created. The reader who has the patience to read this chapter attentively will perhaps find that I have proved my thesis with a superfluity of evidence.

First, I beg the reader's indulgence if I neglect for now the so-called pays d'états, that is, provinces that administered themselves, or, rather, still appeared to administer themselves, at least in part.

The pays d'états, occupying the far reaches of the kingdom, contained scarcely a quarter of the total population of France, and in only two of them was provincial liberty really still alive. I will show later the extent to which the central government had subjected them to the same rules as the rest of the country.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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