Alexandre Moatti
In France, the country’s economic and political elite are largely drawn from a handful of "grandes corps" : the Corps des Mines, the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées, the Inspection des Finances, the Conseil d’Etat and the Cour des Comptes. And yet, despite the fact that half of all CAC 40 executives and three out of every four French presidents over the past thirty years have come from these quintessential production centers of French technocracy, they remain largely unknown to the public.
Alexandre Moatti’s first-hand knowledge of the grand corps system and its abuses provides a committed critique of the system, both historically and systemically. He meticulously deciphers the career logics that inform the trajectories of the members of these corps, and their damaging effects on both public policy-making and the functioning of the private sector. Above all, he shows that the rise to power of these large bodies has been accompanied by a collapse in the ethics of the State, a situation that has led not only to a loss of social cohesion in France, but also to a gradual decline in democracy.
