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The Redistributive Role of Government: Economic Regulation in Old Régime France and England
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Journal Article
The Redistributive Role of Government: Economic Regulation in Old Régime France and England
1991
Overview
The lobbying activities of private groups had an important redistributive influence on national economic policies in both England and France; however, the different organization of government in the two nations gave a particular shape and structure to the redistributive character of national politics. In England, Parliament's role in the legislative process made gaining economic concessions from the government long and difficult. During the eighteenth century, the English government's role was increasingly limited to adjudicating the claims of influential but conflicting groups. In France, by contrast, the government's economic decisions were neither subject to parliamentary scrutiny nor to open public discussion. Whereas the rules of the redistributional game in eighteenth-century England were increasingly public knowledge, the administrative and political process that allowed the French government to pursue its mercantilist programs was private. Furthermore, the rules changed according to ministerial whim. As one historian put it, public law was a forbidden domain, “a mystery reserved to the king and his ministers,” permitting select members of privileged clans, rather than broadly defined interest groups, to enjoy the benefits of government patronage. Although the creation of sophisticated interests and competitive lobbies allowed the English Parliament to provide special favors to particular industries during the eighteenth century, unlike the French executive, neither Parliament nor the English executive had the discretionary authority to distribute monopoly rents to particular ministerial or royal favorites. In England the government's distribution of spoils followed procedures more open to the English political elite as a whole; still, corruption was more pervasive in English public administration than in France, where executive supervision of central government agents was more comprehensive.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press,Cambridge Univ. Press
