Policy implementation in the French public bureaucracy: The case of education

Using evidence gathered in interviews with local politicians and officials, this study examines the relationship between educational and prefectoral bureaucracies, between educational administration and the local political environment, and between different levels of educational administration. It is argued that prefectoral intervention and influence is slight and that potential problems in coordinating the implementation of policy are thereby avoided. Contact between local politicians and officials appears to concentrate heavily on interventions on behalf of particular individuals and has little impact on policy. Educational administrators feel no need of a ‘notable ‘ to manage local political activity. The authority of the Rector, at regional level, is not diminished either by the influence of local politicians or by internal bureaucratic obstruction, as a simple extension of Gremion's model to education would suggest. Throughout it is stressed that the educational system has its own pattern of inter‐bureaucratic and politico‐administrative relations and that general French models are therefore misleading if applied to this historically, very specific, policy arena.