Blog Post #2, Sasaki on Bureaucracy & State Capacity
WHERE DO GOOD GOVERNMENTS COME FROM?
Where do good governments come from? An age old question, it remains pressing today. In countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen multiple armed groups have been vying for political authority for years on end. The result: societies that lack a functioning state and, thus, societies wanting of security, infrastructure, and basic services.
Rich countries with seemingly strong states have difficulty implementing policies too sometimes. During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of unemployed individuals and small-business owners in the United States were unable to receive relief funds in a timely fashion due to administrative bottlenecks — local authorities were overwhelmed with requests and unable to handle them quickly. In short, figuring out the origins of a well-functioning government has significant implications for understanding politics today.
In a recent working paper I turn to history for insights — indeed, I go as far back as the seventeenth century. I focus on French history, in particular, because some scholars believe France had one of the first cases of a “modern” bureaucracy in pre-modern times. Here “modern” means a merit-based system in which officials are recruited and promoted based more on performance than personal connections.
The uniquely French office I study, called intendancy (the officials working there were called intendants), was innovative on several grounds. Whereas previously government offices could be purchased (a practice called venality), the king appointed the intendants. Whereas previously purchased offices were heritable, intendancy was not. Indeed, the king reserved the right to revoke the appointment at will. Also, recruitment was based much less on personal connections. The intendants were dispatched throughout French territory to team up with local officials and help them raise taxes and administer justice.
Historians argue that the intendants played a crucial role in consolidating the authority of the French state, but systematic research has not been widely done hitherto. My paper changes that: I compiled and analyzed a new dataset of 430 intendants observed from 1640 to 1789. The data includes not just biographical information like their date of birth and date of death, but also career-related information including where intendants were dispatched to and how long they served in a given place.
The dataset reveals a lot about the extent to which intendancy did or did not function as a “modern bureaucracy”. For example, the marriage data reveals that intendants forged dense networks of elite officials who served in the system over generations. I also find that although this proto-bureacracy was systematically used during by the French Crown during this period and there are discernible patterns regarding the duration of service and the age of appointment, there were no strictly enforced “rules” to speak of. My conclusion is that, yes, the intendant office had some modern looking attributes but was not terribly well run and its management did not improve dramatically over the 150-year period of observation.
This type of yeoman’s “basic research” on fundamental political questions can serve us well today. Social scientists still don’t have a solid answer for where a well-functioning government comes from backed by high-quality data. While a study on a single bureaucracy in 17th-century France may seem like esoterica to some folks–but hopefully not to the readers of this blog–it may provide a lot of insight into the origins of political development, a question that may only become more important over time.
