When Rationalisation of Bureaucracy De-rationalizes Laws and Legislatures: ‘Monster Bills’ in France
Résumé
The last decade has seen the development of the so-called ‘monster bills’ in France, that is too say remarkably long laws, putting together heterogeneous elements. Among the notorious examples of them, we investigate the ‘Grenelle laws’ aiming at protecting the environment field (2009) and the ‘Macron Law’ aiming at liberalizing the economy (2015). The development of these laws is interpreted as resulting from two factors: a. the willingness of the executive power to send a diversity of messages to a diversity of audiences through visible legislation, b. pressures from bureaucracies of state departments cyclically willing to promote their reforms in a context of limited access to the legislatures’ agenda. The paper presents this process as well as it consequences for the functioning of the parliament in terms of work-overload, lobbying and MPs influence. The paper supports the view that the inner-logic of rationalization within the State paradoxically lead to de-rationalize the legislative procedure, i.e. a greater complexity and legal as well as political uncertainty in the passing of such bills.