Political power, technology, and total war: Two French views

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Du groupe

De Jouvenel Bertrand. Du groupe. In: Revue française de science politique, 5ᵉ année, n°1, 1955. pp. 49-62

Prise en compte dans la comptabilité nationale des services rendus à titre gratuit, des nuisances et des prélèvements sur la nature

The treatment of gratuitous services, wasted assets and use of natural resources in the national accounts. The two texts reproduced here : the proposal of M. Bertrand de Jouvenel and the report of the National Accounts Departments — were submitted to the Commission des Comptes in May, 1968. They should be regarded as a review of the problems raised by the limitation of the field of National Accounts solely to economic phenomena « which can be measured in money ». Offering, as they do, a coherent, but not exhaustive, picture of the economy, the National Accounts should be completed by other indicators, otherwise they would lead to erroneous choices. The article by M. Bertrand de Jouvenel shows the practical consequences of this limitation, which is a handicap to long term studies : — gross domestic production does not include services rendered gratuitously, and therefore the development of such services is « discredited » byt he National Accounts in favour of market activities ; — wasted assets are not shown as an adverse flow, which puts a premium on the lack of public spirit ; — the use of natural resources is shown in the accounts at the cost of exploitation, which gives a false picture of the economic process. The author proposes that these subjects should be studied by National Accountants. In their reply, the National Accounts Departments first examine the difficulties of integrating the production of collective services, wasted assets and the use of natural resources in the accounts. They report the attempts made by national accounts experts to measure these phenomena in the absence of a market price ; various estimates have been proposed ; they are based either on the analogy of non-market transactions with certain transactions in the market sector, or on the study of market prices. National accounts experts in all countries have been driven to conventions on these subjects. National accounts conventionally enlarged do not provide all economic transactors — and especially the Central Government — with all the elements needed to take the economic decisions relevant to their task. We are thus led to look for indicators parallel to the national accounts, but integrated with them on the level of concepts and nomenclature for the production of general government, the availabilities of natural resources and the limitations on the possible uses of the public property. In the second part of the report, the authors describe the main lines of development of this research, and, in particular, the stages envisaged for the definition of a function of the production of general government.De Jouvenel Bertrand. Prise en compte dans la comptabilité nationale des services rendus à titre gratuit, des nuisances et des prélèvements sur la nature. In: Etudes et conjoncture - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, n°8, 1968 (23ᵉ année). pp. 69-84

L'essence de la politique

De Jouvenel Bertrand. L'essence de la politique. In: Revue française de science politique, 2ᵉ année, n°4, 1952. pp. 641-652

Du Principat

De Jouvenel Bertrand. Du Principat. In: Revue française de science politique, 14ᵉ année, n°6, 1964. pp. 1053-1086

Théorie politique pure

De Jouvenel Bertrand. Théorie politique pure. In: Revue française de science politique, 11ᵉ année, n°2, 1961. pp. 364-379

Une représentation didactique du problème de la croissance en équilibre

de Jouvenel Bertrand. Une représentation didactique du problème de la croissance en équilibre. In: Revue économique, volume 10, n°6, 1959. pp. 947-951