Based on interviews with dozens of public officials in France and a unique biographical database of more than 200 civil-servants-turned-corporate-lawyers, The Neoliberal Republic explores how the always-blurred boundary between public service and private interests has been critically compromised, enabling the transformation of the regulatory state into either an ineffectual bystander or an active collaborator in the privatization of public welfare. The cumulative effect of these developments, the authors reveal, undermines democratic citizenship and the capacity to imagine the public good.
Antoine Vauchez is a CNRS Research Professor at Université Paris 1–Sorbonne and a Permanent Visiting Professor at the iCourts research center at the University of Copenhagen. He is a coauthor of How to Democratize Europe.
Pierre France is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Université Paris 1–Sorbonne.