The second configuration of reform deals with the development in the 1970s
of various legal measures seeking to provide citizens with new rights regar- ding transparency, access to information and protection of privacy. Whereas attempts at rationalizing government in the previous decade were characterized by a form of technocratic politics far removed from the public spotlight and confined to a handful of experts and senior civil servants in central ministries, the issue of bureaucratic reform in the 1970s becomes much more political and publicly visible. In the wake of May 1968, various calls were made in society to make the administration less opaque, authoritarian and anonymous. The primary goal of reform in that era was to democratize the bureaucracy by making it more user-friendly, more decentralized and open to citizen parti- cipation. This concern for citizens’ rights had the effect of blocking and delay- ing alternative reform projects pushed by other groups within the central state machinery, whose agenda focused more on issues of management and effici- ency. If the RCB policy had contributed to consolidate the organization and social recognition of public management as a field of expert knowledge, the ability of those acting as the bearers of such knowledge to shape policy was limited throughout the 1970s, thus explaining why managerialism emerged later in France than elsewhere. Another crucial factor accounting for France’s relative position as a ‘laggard’ was the election in the 1980s of Franc¸ois Mitterrand and the formation of a Socialist/Communist-led government, which took place while in other countries the New Right was taking power and when Thatcher and Reagan were beginning to implement NPM reforms.