Welfare offices usually attract negative descriptions of bureaucracy with their queues, routines, and impersonal nature. Are they anonymous machines or the locus of neutral service relationships? Showing how people experience state public administration, The Bureaucrat and the Poor provides a realistic view of French welfare policies, institutions and reforms and, in doing so, dispels both of these myths.

Contents: Foreword, Steven Maynard-Moody; Preface to the English edition; Introduction; Part I The Social Conditions of the Administrative Relationship: The public; Organising face-to-face encounters; An unequal relationship; Administrative exchanges, normative exchanges. Part II The Agent's Two Bodies: The post and the role of the agent; On becoming an agent; The agents as individuals; Facing misery; Managing social inequality; The agent's separate identities. Part III Questioning the Institutional Order: Flaws in the system; Putting up with the institution; The return of the repressed individual; Adapting the institution; Appendices; Indexes.

Vincent Dubois is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University of Strasbourg, France.