Why Are Modern Bureaucracies Special? State Support to Private Firms in Early Eighteenth-Century France

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: heSam Universite; Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne; Universite Paris Cite; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite PSL; Universite Paris-Dauphine; Institut d'Etudes Politiques Paris (Sciences Po); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050717001061
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 1144-1176
• 关键词: centuries; commerce; POLITICS; HISTORY; 18th

摘要

The Bureau du Commerce allocated rights and rents to private entrepreneurs via a mix of hierarchical division of labor and peer-based collegial deliberation. This set-up reflected an attempt to maximize information and expertise, but also allowed for the recognition of private rights and social interests. The final decisions of the Bureau (for or against each demand), and the qualitative arguments brought forward during the procedure, are robust predictors of eventual decisions. We see this result as an indication that impersonal, rational and informed decision-making could be obtained even within a patrimonialist, rent-seeking State.