THE STALLED SOCIETY

A brief book by a French sociologist who could have made his point even briefer. Crozier admires the flexibility of American administrative structures, as opposed to the caste-ridden French system of elites who do the thinking while trammeled subordinates have little chance for competition, innovation, or ""upward mobility."" The petite bourgeoisie, he urges, must be given better ""career prospects"" and a sounder education to that end. . .the May Days of 1968 were largely created by their frustrations. Crozier obviously has some biting things to say about French bureaucratic conservatism and the anarchic outbursts that consequently become the only route to change, but he takes the bureaucracies as a self-contained realm, without plumbing the French political economy as a whole. Hence the book remains a mere fugue on the subject of the mandarin-dirigiste syndrome and the need for democratization: ""Progress does not stand still."" The book essentially ends where it began.