Premium
‘Reflecting the diversity of the French population’: birth and development of a fuzzy concept
Author(s) -
Calvès Gwénaële
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
international social science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.237
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1468-2451
pISSN - 0020-8701
DOI - 10.1111/j.0020-8701.2005.00539.x
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , diversity (politics) , context (archaeology) , population , sociology , theme (computing) , dimension (graph theory) , civil servants , ethnic group , public service , civil service , service (business) , political science , politics , public administration , social science , law , economics , economy , geography , operating system , demography , mathematics , archaeology , computer science , pure mathematics
While “reflecting the diversity of the French population” is currently an objective to which political parties, television channels, large corporations and higher education establishments subscribe, it was first formulated with respect to the national civil service. In this context, the theme is inseparable from an imported, specifically American model of “representative bureaucracy”, the import of which was itself determined by pragmatic considerations related to the peculiar problems faced by two institutions: the Army and the national police service. However, when one extends the objective of “diversity” to all public servants while simultaneously emphasising, in more or less explicit fashion, the ‘ethnic’ dimension of diversity, one encounters, in France, insuperable sociological and legal difficulties.