Welfare Elites as Custodians of State Policies

Abstract

Our elite approach highlighted, with a series of portraits, the change in the social background and career paths of the first generation of welfare elites that adopted the role of custodians of state policies in the social security sector. Most of them came from the Cour des comptes. They developed their career paths by circulating at the top of power (the Directorate of Social Security, the National Health Insurance Fund, and ministerial cabinets). They were strongly connected to each other reinforced the community spirit around the new programmatic orientation and the reform of the governance of social security. They had a common vision of the need to move toward a system of universal coverage increasingly financed by taxes and controlled by Parliament.