Policy transformation and the shaping of a social group: the case of the French Welfare Elite

The first study combining methods from the sociology of elites (positional, reputational, relational and decisional) and from policy studies (discourse and process analysis), which led to the elaboration of the programmatic action framework (Hornung, Bandelow, 2018), pinpointed the key role of a programmatic elite, composed of specialized senior civil servant, in the reforms of the French Welfare State, especially for health insurance, since the 1980’s (Genieys, Hassenteufel, 2015). In this paper we try to understand how the actors involved in this policy transformation constitute a social group, empirically studied in the long term (from the 1980’s to the current period) in three successive research programs. Five intertwined dimensions are analysed. The first one is the similarities of the trajectories of these different actors, who have the same educational background and career (most of them having studied at Sciences Po and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and then choose to specialize in the welfare policy administration). The second dimension is the density of interactions between these actors who share the same socialization and know well each other, with a transmission process through different generations. The third dimension is that they share a same policy change program base on the reinforcement (and the shaping) of state institutions in order to regulate more efficiently the healthcare system (cost containment) and to extend health insurance coverage (univeralization of the French health insurance system). After having successfully transformed the institutional organization of the French healthcare system between 1996 and 2009 (with three main reforms), these actors have been transformed in custodians of these institutions and more generally of the transformation path they have initiated and conducted. Their new role as custodians of a State policy (Genieys, 2010) has reinforced their identity. The fourth dimension investigated is the role of institutions in the shaping of a programmatic group. The French “Welfare Elite” is deeply linked to an administrative institution: the Social Security Directorate (DSS) where most of these policy actors have worked and got their specialized expertise on health insurance issues. In a dynamic perspective the decisional positions held by the leading actors of the programmatic group gave them also the opportunity to strengthen this administrative unit, especially with the yearly elaboration of the Social Security Finance law since the 1996 reform, in which they were strongly involved. The last dimension explored is the role of power conflicts with other groups in the structuration of a collective actor. In this paper we analyse how the strong link between the policy capacity of the French Welfare Elite and the DSS was challenged, in the context of the “Great Recession”, by the supervisory power given by the government to the Finance Ministry since 2007. Dealing strategically with the new supervisory role of the Finance Ministry, the specialized Welfare Elite was able to reinforce its policy role and its identity against other senior civil servants, during the financial crisis and afterwards.