May Weberian Bureaucracies Be Instruments of Change in Non-democratic Regimes? the Case of the 18th Century French ‘bureau Du Commerce’
Abstract: This article explores the decision-making process of a small French agency that was in charge of the regulation of the supply side of the proto-industrial part of the economy in the 18th century France, characterized by absolutist monarchy. The question we ask, is whether, against the odds, its rules and procedures endowed the Bureau du Commerce with a capacity to act as an agent of change, or whether its de jure constitution was de facto overwhelmed by the pressure of a thoroughly rent-seeking environment. We analyze the case of the distribution of privileges, i.e. individual franchises and rents, to private entrepreneurs. Policy implementation responded to a bottom-up process whereby each applicant sent his demand to the Bureau in Paris, which then investigated the case and decided whether or not to support him. Thanks to well-kept archives, we have been able to code the 535 individual applications that were received and processed between 1700 and 1791. We identified the conclusions reached, the parties and experts involved in each case, and the qualitative arguments leveraged by each of them. We show that decisions issued by the Bureau are correlated to the positions expressed by the key voices in the deliberation process (for or against each submission) and by the substantive arguments that they raised within the procedure. Broad or impersonal criteria that shaped the distribution of rents to private manufacturers can thus be observed ex post. The fact that they remain stable for a long period characterized by multiple rulers and substantial political changes suggests that the mix of hierarchic division of labor, information gathering, and collegial deliberation actually supported a rather consistent and impersonal development policy despite the absolutist monarchy that ruled at that time.
