Nation Building and School Expansion under the Fragile French State

Abstract

How efficacious are central political actors in building local institutions that help to rationalize the nation-state? In an earlier article, we showed that policies emanating from the Parisian state fueled construction of French secondary schools, spurred local demand for education, and reinforced class distinctions following the Third Republic (1870). Primary school enrollments, however, rose long before the fragile central state gained prominent institutional strength. Wefind that spending by local village councils, rather than central government action or changing economic demands, was consistently associated with the spread of primary schooling. The emerging strength of heretofore fragile states may be rooted more in their capacity to capture, rather than to create, local institutions and to mediate competing local demands, thereby advancing central-state formation. The French state is held high to exemplify central political agencies that exercise strength and relative autonomy illustrated by its capacity to mediate local demands and build formal institutions. Historically these institutions, such as mass schooling, built the necessary consciousness and economic linkages that served to integrate the nation-state. Was is not the village school that turned peasants into Frenchmen (Weber 1976)? Until recently, studies of the central state's involvement in constructing schools focused either on Napoleon's regime or on the formal policies of the Third Republic (Prost 1968; Thabault 1971). Along this line, we demonstrated earlier the discrete state policy effects on secondary school expansion following the Third Republic, operating well into the twentieth century (Gamier, Hage & Fuller 1989). Yet the Parisian state is * We are indebted to Chip Melvin for his fine computing assistance. William Cohen, Indiana University, generously shared his unpublished historical material on French towns. Richard Rubinson provided thoughtful comments on earlier drafts. Financial supportfor this project has comefrom the National Science Foundation and University of Marylandm An earlier version was presented at the 1990 meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington D.C. Address correspondence to Bruce Fuller, School of Education, Appian Way, Cambridge, MA