A comparative historical analysis of the development towards and reappraisal of a protected civil service in France, the UK, Germanic territories and the Netherlands in the 19th and early 20th centuries

Co-Authors: Gerrit S.A. Dijkstra (Leiden University) Frits M. van der Meer (Leiden University) In this paper we will examine in depth the transformation process leading to this increasing protection of civil servants in France, the UK, Germanic territories and The Netherlands in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We will be looking at similarities and differences in the national ‘paths’. A comparative historical analysis using a public sector bargain (PSB) perspective provides the necessary critical look at often too strongly defined national identities in shaping bureaucratic in this case civil service systems in particular at the higher hierarchical levels. In the next section we will go into this PSB angle in more depth. Raadschelders and Rutgers (1996) have argued that the relation between on the one hand defining civil servant rights and duties, and the maintenance of the rule of law on the other coincided with the transformation of civil servants seen as personal servants to a ruler or a ruling class into an instrument to help and assist in the development of the public interest and to thus enforce public decisions within the context of the rule of law. On the formal side of things, the need for able, skilled and professional officials did increase with the development of the Rechtsstaat, the expansion of government tasks and the growth of government intervention more particular to the latter decades of the 19th century. However, on the informal side this relative clear and linear development is much less present: the history of informal rights and obligations, protection and employer-employee relations have been much more complicated.