Administration

The French Revolution’s Napoleonic settlement

By 1804, France had reached a contingent Napoleonic settlement: feudal privilege remained dismantled and law and administration became more uniform, but the capacity to initiate and execute policy gathered under a hereditary ruler, appointed prefects, police, and war. That settlement emerged through conflict among revolutionary factions, popular movements, armies, colonial insurgents, women organizers, property holders, and officials—and it reversed as well as preserved revolutionary possibilities.

Why did repeated attempts to defend popular sovereignty leave, by 1804, a hereditary executive with more usable administrative authority than any revolutionary assembly?

Administrative Behavior

A decision about opening a municipal street gives Herbert Simon a more demanding unit of administration than the organization chart: a sequence of choices in which facts, values, authority, and limited attention meet. Administrative Behavior replaced universal management maxims with an inquiry into decision premises, then became contested over whether its science of means could keep democratic values and unequal power in view.