Ministerial Cabinets of the Fourth Republic

Abstract

UNLIKE the bouquiniste who, when asked for a copy of a current French constitution, replied coldly that he did not deal in periodical literature, most commentators have tended to emphasize the legal and documentary approach to the study of French institutions. With the recent collapse of the Fourth Republic such a tendency is likely to be encouraged further, if only because the French themselves seem to have a marvelous faith in the power of the written word to remake their political machinery. For this reason a study of a political institution which has never figured in any written constitution of France, but which has had a remarkably durable existence for all that, is surely appropriate. Especially so now, because many other institutions with which it has associations, such as the Grands Corps de l'8tat (particularly the Council of State and the Court of Accounts) and the Finance and other inspectorates, are being more fully studied as well.' The institution in question here is the ministerial cabinet (cabinet ministiriel). This name is given to each group of official aides every member of the Government appoints to his own use. At this very moment it would be difficult to estimate the importance of these groups taken as a whole because their greatest development has been associated not with an authoritarian regime but with