著者

岡本 託

出版者

公益財団法人史学会

雑誌

史學雜誌 (ISSN:00182478)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.123, no.8, pp.1497-1521, 2014-08-20

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This article discusses how high-ranking officials were trained under France's July Monarchy (1830-1848), at a time when government administration was becoming more and more complex and a bureaucratic organization was gradually being institutionalized. The author takes up the case of the Auditorat in the Conseil d'Etat, focusing on the logic behind the recruitment and training of its administrative officials. He describes the actual circumstances of recruitment and training of auditeurs via a synthesis of three approaches: 1) institutional analysis of the auditeur based on laws and ordinances, 2) prosopographical analysis utilizing the personal data of 211 auditeurs and 3) analysis of petitions for recruitment of auditeurs as well as their internal evaluation. The author concludes that first, two contrary opinions existed regarding the institution of auditeur during the time in question. One was the conservative idea which considered the auditorat as a stagiaire who would become merel a maitre des requetes or a conseiller in the Conseil d'Etat in the future; the other was the republican idea which considered the institution to be the grande ecole d'administration, in which trained officials who could be entrusted with any administrative post. The laws and ordinances pertaining to auditeurs promulgated under the July Monarchy all embodied the opposition between these ideologies. Secondly, the necessary conditions of auditeur recruitment were threefold: 1) the social background of the candidate, 2) the influence of recommenders and 3) the abilities of the candidate. However, it is impossible to determine which condition was the most conclusive, leading one to believe that it was a combination of them which led to successful recruitment. Finally, as to the system of auditeur training, the author points out that auditeurs were expected to acquire the skills of administrative officials through experience gained along different career paths, which included a central administrative post, a local administrative post and a post in the Conseil d'Etat. However, auditeur training was not very successful because of the customs surrounding the promotion of central administrative officials and the lack of administrative ability on the part of the auditeurs themselves. In addition, the lack of maitre des requetes posts in the Conseil d'Etat made the training of auditeurs more difficult. Nevertheless, approximately half of those who had trained at the auditorat under the July Monarchy were given administrative appointments and reappointed by the next political regime. This proportion of reappointments exceeded the number during the Napoleonic era and the Bourbon Restoration. Consequently, it can be said that the institution of auditeur under the July Monarchy served the function of training high-ranking officials to some extent and that this institution had a impact on both the struggle for hegemony in the Chambre des pairs and the Chambre des deputes, and on the institutionalization of the recruitment and the careers of high-ranking officials during the nineteenth century.