THE ‘REFLECTIVE CAPACITY’ OF PROFESSIONS CONFRONTED BY INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION: The case of the French architectural profession Open Access

This paper is devoted to the regulation of architectural activity in Europe and especially in France and to the ways architects manage this regulation. The globalization of this activity has generated a strong consciousness that supranational regulation is necessary, both among architects’ professional associations and in governments. One of the main difficulties is the differences in the division of labour from one country to another. But European regulation supposes that national states will implement the directives into national law. France is an example of the lightest possible adaptation. This is all the more surprising as the architectural profession in France is characterized by structural weaknesses to resist international competition and as the administration is willing to help it adapt to this competition. The history of trade unionism and the structure of representation explain some of the difficulties because of a particular trait of the architectural profession: what I call a weak ‘reflective capacity’. The paper is partly devoted to defining this notion and showing its relevance for the sociological analysis of professions. This weakness encourages individual strategies of adaptation to increasing international competition, without the professional associations and their representatives being able to control these strategies and their consequences for the profession. This demonstrates that the various sources of regulation are not exclusive and must be studied together so as to understand their interrelations.

Very few professions, if any, avoid pressures for the homogenization of their regulatory codes and of their practice at the European level. Sector-related and general directives have created formal conditions for increasing competition in the EU.¹ Architects, who are a regulated profession in most of the EU Member States, are no exception. But professions in various countries are unevenly prepared to face such pressures: some of them manage to strongly influence aspects of the process which are significant to them; others fail to do so. The purpose of this article is to show how the concept of ‘reflective capacity’ could assist in examinations about the variations and differences between professional groups in this respect. The ‘reflective capacity’ of a profession can be defined as its ability to react as a coherent collective actor to external changes despite the diverse reactions of its parts, members and segments (Bucher and Strauss 1961), in order to respond to decisions crucial for the future. The ‘reflective capacity’ is a potential we can study only when there is a strong external pressure and the need to respond collectively. The utility of this concept will be illustrated by the case of the French architectural profession.

The architectural profession in France well-illustrates what ‘reflective capacity’ is. Europeanization is an important issue. Architectural firms are much smaller in France than in general in northern Europe: most consist of less than five people, whereas big firms are common in northern Europe (Haumont 1999). As a consequence, in France the division of labour is less rationalized and architectural design is often still organized on a craft model. In other countries large firms supply their clients with various services, including law expertise and technical expertise, which enable tailor-made turnkey buildings to be constructed, but most French firms, focused more on architectural design, do not provide the same variety of services. The main traits of the architectural profession in France are very different from the Anglo-Saxon model to which the European profession converges, and this hinders French architects in competition with the larger firms, especially as the demand for variety of services is more and more frequent.

This gap between the architectural profession in France and in the rest of Europe puts pressure on the French to adapt. It might be expected that the French architectural profession would be committed to seeking ways to narrowing the gap. However, recent attempts to reform the profession do not indicate this. The last attempt, between 1998 and 2002, was a total failure and the law remained unchanged. The French Ministry of Culture, responsible for architecture, began the initiative and led the reform process. The main trade-unions and several famous architects, fully aware of the necessity to adapt, had committed themselves to change but it will be shown that they did not have the support of the profession as a whole. This failure is the last of a series of blockages: from time to time, voices are heard that vainly insist on the necessity to adapt French structures to the international competition.² The research question is how can we explain this recurrent difficulty to build up a collective answer to the competition of Anglo-Saxon firms – and to have such an answer legally formalized? The concept of ‘reflective capacity’ will be used in the explanation.

This paper includes four sections. The first section explains the regulation of the architects, profession at the European level. The second section focuses on France and on the failure of the attempted reforms and a tentative explanation is proposed. In the third section the concept of ‘reflective capacity’ and its application to French architects is explained. Finally, the consequences of this weak reflective capacity are considered. French architects’ individual strategies to adapt to the situation are illustrated and the consequences for the profession as a whole are suggested.

During the past decade, European regulation has taken new forms. EU authorities have promoted ‘soft law’ procedures to deal with issues in the jurisdictional competency of national states and for which states and people are reluctant to accept supranational directives. The Open Method of Coordination, elaborated in Lisbon in 2000 and which included originally employment, social policies and environmental issues, illustrates this new method of regulation (Jacobsson 2004). More recently, a new Directive on the recognition of professional qualifications adopted by the European Parliament (European Parliament directive 2005/36) increased the scope of supranational professional associations to propose amendments to the frames of practice of professions (see Le Bianic and Svensson in this issue).

But the recent Directive on Services, often referred to as Bolkestein Directive (European Council and Parliament Directive 2006/123), shows that these new forms of regulation have not replaced the older ‘top-down’ approaches. As a political philosopher Pierre Manent put it in a recent book (Manent 2006), some fields of the regulative activity of Europe are still dominated by general principles of governance, i.e., rules thought as universal and which apply indistinctly both to all EU Member States and potentially to all professional groups and occupations. Two general principles of European regulation need to be explained, before considering how these apply to the architectural profession. The first is the free movement of people. The second is free competition for the supply of services. These appear as early as in the Treaty of Rome, Article 3(c):

The main regulations affecting the field of architecture still illustrate these 50-year-old principles. Between 1985 and 2005, several directives were adopted to promote the construction of an integrated European market. A directive of 10 June 1985³ dealt with the free movement of architects. As both the title of ‘architect’ and the right to practice as an architect are restricted by law and linked to specific qualifications in most EU Member States, the mutual recognition of national qualifications was necessary to allow practice overseas. Article 2 stipulates that:This directive is the only one exclusively devoted to architecture. The history of its drawing up assists in the understanding of some of the profession's difficulties.⁴ Architects’ representatives in several EU Member States met in 1959 to work on a project of European regulation. It took nearly 30 years to get formulated, showing that the agreement had been difficult. Moreover, the text barely changed anything to the practice of architecture in Europe. Its application resulted in struggle between architects and engineers who, in some countries, are allowed to design projects. Altogether, architects succeeded in maintaining their positions.

But the process revealed the profession's inability to give a definition of what architecture consisted of. Criteria had to be chosen before determining which specific qualifications would be recognized and which would not. On the one hand, four years of training was required. But in most countries, the training already lasted five or even six years: the European specification had effect only in the rare cases where architects were faced with competition from much shorter trained technicians. On the other hand a list of competences was drawn up. But this list was too wide to give any useful picture of what architectural design actually consisted of. Nothing was done to bring closer together the training in countries which emphasized technical competences and countries which emphasized creativity. Therefore, this regulation remained mainly formal: architects could work overseas more easily than before, but the nationally distinctive features of architectural training were fully preserved.

Several other regulations also affected architects directly, even if not exclusively. The main examples are considered next. The directive of 18 June 1992 on service contracts dealt with the obstacles to free competition between suppliers of a wide range of services (Council Directive 92/50/EEC). In architecture, the main effect was to generate open competition and to make competition anonymous. In some countries, and especially in France, competition had been organized on a different basis. Architects competing for publicly funded projects were invited to make oral presentations of their proposals before a commission which would select one of them. The competition was therefore not anonymous but a debate on proposals was possible. French architects were committed to this system and were convinced that anonymity would result in more superficial judgements about proposals.⁵ However, in a general directive, where architects were grouped with engineers, computer services, and other activities, architects were too weak to promote their opinion.

A directive on services of December 12th, 2006 (European Parliament and Council Directive 2006/123) generalized a former attempt to open contracts for public services to effective Community-wide competition to contracts for services delivered to private clients. It is the most recent top-down element of European law which concerned architects. Its main requirement was that:

Together, these directives on architects, on public services and on services, have created the formal conditions for an effective Community-wide competition between architects. In addition, the Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999⁶ aimed to promote European convergence of national higher education systems. French architectural students and teachers tried first to resist. But once again, had to adapt to avoid isolation, despite some perceived undesirable consequences: for example, the length of the training, constrained by the ‘Licence, Master, and Doctorate’ frame, had implications for the professional socialization of architectural students in firms. Other directives may concern some architects but will have less general effect on the profession. For instance, the recent Directive of 7th September 2005, aimed at consolidating and modernizing the rules which regulate the recognition of professional qualifications (European Parliament Directive 2005/36), is likely to affect architects only in very exceptional cases.

Apart from the sector-related Directive of 10th June 1985, the general directives which affect architects’ services were drawn up without any specific consideration of actual architectural practice. The principles which govern European regulation of the architectural profession are mainly from outside the profession itself. Architects, who form a small professional group, could hardly insist on supplements dealing with their own case. But the formal conditions now exist for European competition between architects. Even if actual cross-border activity is not yet very high, this puts pressure on architects, especially in France where the competition from Anglo-Saxon firms is increasing.

As in other countries such as the United Kingdom (Marsh and Rhodes 1992) ‘policy networks’ play an important role in the elaboration of public policies in France (Jobert and Muller 1987). Most specialized departments in the government are devoted to defend the interests of a segment of the society: a profession, a field of activity, and so on. Instead of applying general policies from above, administrations find their legitimacy in defending the interests of the professions they are responsible for. Of course, there are conflicts and these departments sometimes have to set reasonable limits to the demands of the profession, but, most often, the departments seek to avoid conflicts and to satisfy the demands of the group they work with and for.

There have been many attempts to reform the law on the architectural profession, and more precisely its training (Champy 2001). Each time, the reform was co-designed by the Ministry of Culture devoted to architecture and by representatives of the profession. The normal procedure to prepare a reform is to set up ‘think-tanks’, where architects are most numerous, so that the specificity of architectural practice can be included. This co-designed regulation has produced benefits for architects: for example the 1977 bill on architecture gave them a market shelter stronger than in many other countries, even if it excluded small projects and the renovations of old buildings for which other professionals and entrepreneurs can compete with architects (Champy 2006). But state regulation of architectural practice is no longer efficient, and there has been no significant recent action to prepare the profession for increasing European competition. The inefficiency of the architectural policy network will be examined by studying an attempt to reform the French architectural profession, in order to strengthen it for European competition.

The discussions for this reform began in September 1998 on the State's initiative. This initiative was strongly influenced by the issue of the Europeanization of architectural practice. The general purpose of the reform was to reinforce the architectural profession in both interprofessional and international competition. Some central proposals were aimed at narrowing the structural gap between professional structures in France and in other European countries, in order to give French architects better facilities to provide a wide range of services and to meet new expectations. The study of this attempt at reform can help understanding of the position of French architects facing pressures to adapt their practice to European standards.

The drawing up of the proposals illustrates the relationships between the state and the professions in France. Four think-tanks were established to propose solutions to problems that had been identified through year-long discussions with the professional representatives.⁷ Until the summer 1999, the debate took place mainly among architects.⁸ The representatives of the trade-unions and of the main professional associations were given opportunities to debate what they wanted for their profession. Each think tank wrote a report. The four reports, dozens of texts written by architects and a synthesis of the debates were gathered in a collective book edited by the administrative director in charge of architecture in the ministry (Barré 2001). The best strategy to gain the support of the government and the Parliament was constantly discussed, and the administration showed that the success of the law was its main issue.

The next year of the process (summer 1999 to summer 2000) was devoted to involving new people, widening the issue and making more precise proposals. New actors were invited to a workshop in September 1999. On that occasion, several famous architects expressed their support for the reform, and the representatives of landscape designers and decorators joined the process. The idea had emerged that the bill could also give new protections to these professionals. The purpose was both to gain allies against the oppositions expected (especially from engineers) and to make the draft bill look less motivated by the interests of a single profession. Also, as the Prime Minister Lionel Jospin would be the main left-wing candidate for the presidential election in 2002, a general bill on the quality of life and the built environment was perceived as a plus for his election campaigns, especially as the ecologists were necessary but unreliable allies.

After one more year of work, three actions were proposed: reform of the three involved professions’ formal jurisdictions, reform of the law on architectural firms and their assets, and reform of the professional associations. Those in charge of the process in the ministry, fully conscious that a reform benefiting only architects would be vulnerable to opponents’ lobbying in the Parliament, had changed the project into a more ambitious and appealing law on the quality of the built environment. But the interests of architects were strictly preserved. The new protections given to other professions were never given at their cost. On the one hand, these new protections would be shared with architects. On the other hand, those professionals would not be given access to the specific market shelter architects had had since the 1977 bill. The only difference with the former law was the sheltering of a new jurisdiction, which would benefit both architects and their new allies. The precise limits of the new formal jurisdiction had still to be defined.

The actions under consideration to strengthen the firms for international competition were also cautiously respectful of the institutional devices that secure architects’ independence. The ministry proposed to simplify the rules defining the conditions to open the financial assets of firms to the capital of non architects. Non architects would now be able to be majority shareholders of firms where architects would also possess some shares. But this majority would have no consequence on the effective control of decisions, which the architects would keep. The architects’ strong attachment to their independence had been taken into account.

The third proposal would have important consequences on the process. The ministry proposed that a Conseil Supérieur de l'Architecture (Authority for Architecture) should be founded. It would be allocated large financial resources and devoted to defending both the public interest in the field of architecture and the architects’ interests. The main purpose was to give the State a reliable partner for its action.

The years 2000–2002 constitute a more confused period. The preparation of the bill proceeded slowly. It suffered from a series of hazards: conflict between the Minister of Culture and the administrative director in charge of architecture on another issue (the reform of the training); the resignation of the former; then the resignation of the latter. However, the project was ready in 2002 and the new Minister of Culture presented it to the Cabinet. But the spring presidential and general elections stopped the process and the project was never presented to Parliament.

This story shows that the reforms had a lot of advantages. Architects agreed that something had to be done. The State, taking the initiative, gave them an opportunity to discuss solutions and to find an agreement. This agreement seemed very likely because trade-unions representatives, associations and some famous and respected architects were involved in the process and agreed on the directions to be taken. It seemed possible to interest the government in this law, and it could be of interest in a forthcoming election campaign to a candidate who needed an achievement concerning the quality of life and environment. In the competition with the structures in which the architects from other EU Member States work, allies had been found among professionals against whom architects usually had to defend their jurisdiction. However, the project failed.

It is necessary to distinguish the immediate explanation of the failure and deeper ones. The presidential and general elections of 2002, which brought a new majority, stopped the reform. But this contingent event is not a sufficient explanation. The bill was close to completion as early as August 2000 and the draft bill was formally written in April 2001. Why was it delayed until the elections of the spring 2002? During this period, the Ministry of Culture was aware of the deadline and did its best to work as fast as possible. The main obstacle to a parliamentary vote was the lack of explicit and strong support from the main trade-union of architects, the UNSFA. Despite the personal support of their representatives, the most powerful trade-union never publicly supported the project. Instead more radical actions were demanded, such as the widening of the architects’ legal shelter to all buildings (currently limited to constructions of more than 170 square metres). The failure of the project can be explained only by understanding why this union did not support a project its leaders considered not only acceptable but also necessary and urgent.

There has always been opposition to the reforms among architects themselves. In general, all union leaders were for the reform but their grassroots members were divided into opponents and supporters. The recurrent debates inside UNSFA show that two factors kept architects from supporting the reform, despite the general agreement that something should be done: working in a small firm and never having had any responsibilities in the trade-union. These obstacles to personal support for the reform generated a gap between the members of the unions and their representatives. Architects who hold posts in the union are usually heads of large firms which are able to sustain the economic costs of union commitment. Moreover, this commitment and the political, interprofessional and international interactions it involves, alter the architects’ approach to their profession's interests.

The gap between leaders’ and grassroots members’ positions is not unique to architects. But in other professions, representatives have managed to promote reforms in advance on what the members of the union would accept (Karpik 1995). Comparing the relationships within medical associations in France and Germany, Hassenteufel (1997) shows that the common causes publicly defended by professionals are the result of work of the representatives to build up the common position despite the inevitable conflicts of interests between the profession's various segments. The representatives do not represent the different positions of the grassroots members before any collective work; rather they help divergent positions to converge towards a compromise which will allow the group to present itself united to its audiences.

What is noticeable in the case of architects, therefore, is the lack of such progress toward a collective position despite the multiple assets of the reform. The analysis of the debate inside the main trade-union, shows that the discussions and the arguments hardly changed in four years. Noticeably, the majority of the grassroots members’ local representatives claimed that architectural design should be reserved to architects for any building, whatever its size, and that no compromise should be offered to competitors, seen as usurpers. The national leaders argued that this position would have obvious counterproductive effects: such an action would generate powerful opposition to the bill and would result in significant economic disruption. It was unrealistic therefore and they insisted on supporting the project as stated in order to obtain the advantages. But these claims had no effect on the position of their grassroots members.

A democratic way to stop the opposition would have been to organize a vote on the reform. But, surprisingly, this procedure was not used to arrive at a decision. Debates inside UNSFA lasted as long as the reform process, because the only possible way to make a decision was to reach a consensus, thought as more legitimate. A consensus, however, even if only apparent, supposes that people stop expressing their opposition (Urfalino 2006). But this never happened. Moreover, despite agreement with the ministry, this union never passed over the opposition of its grassroots by publicly supporting the project.

‘Reflective capacity’ can be operationally defined as the capacity a professional group, or any other social group confronting crucial issues, has to surmount its internal divisions, cultural divides and conflicts of interests between its members, in order to constitute itself as a collective actor, to build up a common response to these issues, and to urge the public and the State to defend its interests, or at least those of the majority or of the most powerful segments. Reflective capacity is therefore a potential which remains undisclosed until the group faces changes in its environment which are important for it and its members. The trend toward a more integrated European labour market for architects and the French architects’ weaknesses in international competition constituted a real pressure for change.

This ‘reflective capacity’ has very strong connections with representation, defined by Weber (1998: 292): ‘The primary fact underlying representation is that the action of certain members of an organization, the “representatives”, is considered binding on the others or accepted by them as legitimate and obligatory’. The capacity to be represented is a crucial part of reflective capacity and evidence of it. However ‘reflective capacity’ is wider than ‘representative capacity’ since it also implies the ability of some professionals to work on the profession to produce changes in opinions, knowledge, and preferences of the group's members, solidarity and unity.

The relevance of the concept of ‘reflective capacity’ is in the first place theoretical. It connects the individual actions of the professionals, the characteristics of the profession as a whole and the relationships between the profession and its environment. Reflective capacity is strength to adapt to external evolutions. This concept enables both the study of profession as a collective actor characterized by autonomy of thought and action, and, in order to avoid reification, to take into account the fact that a collective entity exists as an actor only if some of its members do the work to build it as such. Reflective capacity can be understood only by distinguishing the profession as an entity with a history, a culture, etc., which comes first and the profession as a collective actor, which comes second. Individual actions take place in-between. This concept helps us to go beyond the opposition of the whole and the parts by thinking the emergence of the whole despite the divergence of and competition from the parts. Reflective capacity has to be activated by some members (very likely the representatives), but these members can do this work only if the profession as a collective entity has qualities that allow it: reflective capacity is a property of the profession, not of its members. This concept is therefore both holistic and fully compatible with Weber's methodological individualism: the profession comes first as a specific entity characterized by its own properties (among which is reflective capacity), but it needs the action of individual actors to be built up as a collective actor. Of course, the actions of the profession have recursive effects on its reflective capacity and therefore on the probability that the profession will be able to behave collectively again in the future.

The concept of reflective capacity is also empirically useful in understanding historical evolutions which concern both the State and professions. The State represents the civil society. But the meaning of ‘represent’ has changed (Gauchet 1998). The representation of civil society by the State used to include a capacity to impose a direction. But in our ‘societies of individuals’ where the public authorities are less and less recognized and respected, it now implies the representation of the diversity of positions in the civil society, with respect for all of them and with very little ability to impose a direction by choosing between the various points of view which compete. This evolution has consequences for policy networks: the State cannot support any action if it does not also have the support (at least apparent) of the profession as a whole. It cannot impose a solution when it is faced by an irreducible diversity of positions on a topic. The unity of the profession becomes a prerequisite of State action therefore. And as the State is less and less able to act without the support of professions, the work of representation the State used to do (in the old meaning) has to be done by the professions, so that the State is confronted with a reduced diversity of positions. This makes the ‘representative capacity’ of professions all the more crucial for their future.

Is it possible to explain the strength or weakness of a profession's reflective capacity? Three complementary ways to answer this question will be suggested. First, a research program on professions could seek to identify factors which favour or handicap the reflective capacity of a professional group. These variables are potentially very numerous and four examples will be suggested. Second, these variables can be explained historically and this will be demonstrated. Finally, another way to deal with the question is to propose a more general explanation for the evolution of reflective capacity and this is proposed.

Variables which have an influence on reflective capacity can be economic, cultural, social, institutional and juridical and four examples are given. (i) Economically, the more people are facing difficulties, the more difficult it is for them to detach from their present situation to prepare their future (Elias 1987). The UNSFA example shows that architects whose economic situation is poor reacted in a more emotional way than others to the prospects of change. (ii) Culturally, common values, a common vision of the core of the activity, an agreement on the way to defend this core, all these aspects increase the capacity for debate inside the profession. Even if measurement is not easy, it is notable that architects are unable to agree on a definition of their work. Arguments abound about teaching or about what is acceptable or not as architectural practice. The individualism of architects also hinders solidarity and ability to compromise. (iii) As regards law, the monopoly given by the 1977 bill on architecture seems also to be an obstacle to building an agreement inside the profession. It protects architects only in a narrow market (30 percent of design work), but it gives some of them the illusion that their problems could be solved by strengthening this monopoly. This explains why some members of UNSFA would not compromise and instead asked for new and extended protections. Jurisdictional protection plus economic weakness is perhaps the worst combination for reflective capacity. (iv) The morphology of representation also constitutes a crucial variable. Seven associations were invited by the Ministry of Culture to participate in the reform process studied here: the Order, two unions (one left-wing, the Syndicat de l'architecture; the other, UNSFA, more right-wing), and four cultural associations.⁹ UNSFA was the main union and its support was necessary before any presentation of the project to Parliament. But in 1998, when consultations for the reform began, UNSFA was in crisis: membership decreased and the financial consequences were dramatic. For instance, the staff feared that the office location would have to be given up. This resulted in a vicious circle: the number of employees decreased, putting more and more pressure on the architects who worked voluntarily for the union, and this discouraged such voluntary work. The representatives could not sustain the reform without the agreement of their grassroots members as new departures would have endangered the trade-union. The competition with the other professional organizations was therefore a source of weakness.

All these factors have historical origins. The comparison with 1977, when UNSFA, the Order and the government managed to build a legal shelter, shows that the reflective capacity had declined. The history of the representative organizations’ morphology is important here. UNSFA was founded in 1969 by uniting several unions organized on different bases. During the 1970s, UNSFA was powerful and had a significant influence both on the preparation of the 1977 bill on architecture and on the elections for the Order's board. Then two problems occurred. First, UNSFA was weakened by its own successes in the elections as its best executives left one after the other to join the Order's staff. This was all the more threatening in that, since World War II, the Order had kept a mission of representation for the profession.¹⁰ As UNSFA itself felt weakened, it asked that the representation of the profession be clarified. The Union proposed that it would represent the profession. The Order, to which all architects had to be members to practice, would concentrate on other missions. The Order refused such a narrowing of its influence. This resulted in a long conflict between the two most powerful professional associations. During the debate about the reform, the ministerial project to found a Conseil Supérieur de l'Architecture, which would compete with the existing representation of architects and further weaken UNSFA, regenerated this already long-lasting conflict. A second source of competition and conflict over representation appeared in the 1980s. In 1977, a group of left-wing architects founded the Syndicat de l'Architecture. After President Mitterrand's election in 1981, this young union became more influential. It continued to develop slowly and when the debate for the reform began, it lobbied to be recognized as representative by the ministry. Its invitation to take part in the debate was a step in that direction and a new threat for UNSFA's position. Finally, the Mouvement des Architectes, also left-wing and founded more recently, added yet another threat.

The national representatives were fully convinced that the parts of the bill devoted to the new shelter and to the laws on firms were good for the profession and that the opportunity should be taken. They were also aware that claiming new protections only for architects would be unacceptable. But they could not publicly support the bill because they could not openly oppose this last demand, which was very popular among their members. Moreover the historical conflict with the Order, regenerated by the project to found a Conseil Supérieur de l'Architecture, prevented UNSFA from working with the Order. This made the leaders even more dependent on their grassroots and also jeopardized any chance of agreement. For all these reasons and despite their strong interest in the project, the leaders of the main trade-union did not support it publicly as the ministry required.

These explanations help to understand the problems of the profession, but there might be a deeper one. One hypothesis is that the decreasing of the architectural profession's reflective capacity illustrates a more general tendency. More and more professions, faced by the diversity of opinions and interests of their members, are experiencing the same problem as the State in their representational work. Individuals are no longer willing to sacrifice their interests for the benefit of the group. As Gauchet explained for the State, reflective capacity supposes that the ‘representatives represent as much the political sphere to the citizens [or to the grassroots of the trade-union in the present case] as they represent the citizens in the political sphere’ (Gauchet 1998: 154, translation Champy). That is what seems to be more and more difficult. This hypothesis would have to be tested by research on other professions. But it fits perfectly the data available about architects. In the case of the reform, the representatives of UNSFA could have used their knowledge and understanding of the situation by explaining to their grassroots the danger of a radical position for the profession. They sought to do so during long debates but failed, showing that, as the State, the staff of the profession ‘ceases to be an overhanging instance, a place apart and above where the collective existence is determined. It becomes really representative, if this means that it tends to turn into a space where the civil society [in our case the diversity of opinions of the grassroots] is represented, without any hierarchical superiority on it or any role of historical force any longer. Its legitimacy dwells only in the way it reverberates requisitions, interrogations, the difficulties of the common life’ (Ibid: 155) This explains how no agreement could be reached during the discussions inside UNSFA. It also helps to understand the recent division of the profession's representation. What has been changing since the beginning of the 80s is that, after years of unified representation, architects who do not agree with the general policies of their profession create new associations even if they are fully conscious that this could weaken their profession. Earlier, such actions preserved the unity of the group. But in Hirschman's words (1972), exit and voice have become more frequent and loyalty more precarious. In the case of professions, this evolution does not have the consequences Hirschman described: exit and voice do not help to improve the institutions’ position but rather hinder the development of any proposal.

The consequences of the French architectural profession's weak reflective capacity can be indicated. This profession is unable to adapt collectively to European competition by creating conditions which would help firms to get closer to the Anglo-Saxon model. But markets are very likely through economic selection to make what the law has failed to do; that is why the pressure on French firms is strong. More and more architects are individually aware that such an adaptation cannot be delayed and some of them are beginning to practice solutions which are still refused collectively.

The first adaptation has been the organization of firms. In France, architects are traditionally very attached to their formal and financial independence. The head of the firm, necessarily an architect, controls both the assets and the work of his subordinates. These controls are perceived as inseparable. But the limits of financial assets have consequences for the division of labour: firms are prevented from hiring non-architects trained to do the administrative work and to face the overwhelming bureaucratic demands of administrations (both as clients and as responsible for planning permission).

Some architects have begun to separate the control of the work from the financial assets, using legal means. The most famous is Jean Nouvel. An architect since 1970, he worked freelance with various associates for years, until he created a new firm in 1994: Ateliers Jean Nouvel (AJN). Despite the name of the firm, the owner is not Jean Nouvel but Michel Pelissié. Jean Nouvel is an employee, but everything has been organized to help him to concentrate on its architectural work. Michel Pelissié manages the firm and leaves Nouvel totally free for his architectural design work. On this basis, AJN has become one of the largest French architectural firms: 140 people work for it in 13 countries. These people include architects, urban designers, landscape designers, industrial designers, decorators, model makers, and so on. The 2004 turnover reached 18 million euros. Because of its size, AJN is able to associate with large engineering firms to supply the turnkey buildings clients are asking for.

Jean Nouvel is a pioneer, but supported by his example, the idea is spreading among architects that work control and signature on the one hand and financial control on the other are not necessarily associated. Consequently, a new model of organization is emerging, better adapted to European competition than the former one. But this organization can only be marginal. It concerns only architects who have resources to negotiate their independence in a structure they will not control financially: they need to be famous and to have a very good network to bid for orders. But if new firms based on this model develop, they could soon weigh more economically than their number suggests and they will further contest the old model of independence which is still prevalent.¹¹

A second adaptation is also questioning the old model of organization and careers (based on freelance activity), but this time from a totally different segment of the profession. Young architects are more and more aware that independence often costs too much for the advantages it brings and look at wage-earning more positively. When competitions for public projects were organized in the 1980s, there was strong encouragement for young architects to try their luck (Champy 1998). At the same time, their careers as employees were blocked by the lack of future prospects within their firms and by the lack of recognition outside. Most of the young architects competed as soon as they had got their diploma, even earlier if they could.¹² Some of them succeeded, getting big orders before they were 30 and confirming to less lucky or less talented colleagues that the best prospects were associated with an early independence. But the economic circumstances of the 1990s revealed the very high cost and how risky their adventure had been.

Many students in architecture still believe that the best they can do to prepare their future consists in founding their own firm, trying to earn their livelihood, designing their own architecture and possibly becoming famous. But recent interviews with young architects in three schools of architecture show that some of them have drawn conclusions from their elders’ experience. Wage-earning is no longer regarded by all architects as dissatisfying: some young architects and students, and especially those who have also a good training in engineering, believe in a new model of career, based on steady activity and the social utility of their professionalism.

What effects will these individual strategies have on the profession as a whole? To what extent will they be able to provoke a significant change to its form? Strategies must be further studied before evaluating their impact precisely but it is possible already to argue that the profession is undergoing essential changes. As the new model of organization and careers is better adapted to European competition, the architects who choose this new model should benefit. Their success will not be automatic but their positions on average could improve. Symmetrically, the architects who do not adapt to competition should be penalized and their influence on the profession should decrease. If the profession as a whole cannot find a way to adapt to competition, then the few architects who already seek solutions compatible with the present law could benefit and play a significant role in the new definition of practices in their profession.

Sociological interest in the difficulties of the French architectural profession in adapting to the increasing pressure of European competition is two-fold. Firstly, understanding the sources of these difficulties has shown the importance of the profession's ‘reflective capacity’, or in this case its lack of such a capacity, for reasons linked to its history, the economic situation of the firms, and the nature of the activity which encourages individualism. The concept of reflective capacity enables the emergence of the profession as an actor to be examined despite the competition and divergence of its segments. It allows both comparisons between professions and research into the general evolution of these capacities. The hypothesis here is that professional associations face the same kind of changes as the State with the heterogeneity of societies: an increasing difficulty to surmount the divisions of the segments of the professions they should represent. Secondly, the dead-end in which professions find themselves as collective actors results in consideration of individual adaptations to the competition. These adaptations show that the study of public policies influencing the future of professions must be combined with a concern for individual strategies. The consequences in each country of European regulative actions depend first on the way policy networks manage to adapt to the challenge from the integrated European market for professions but when the weakness of the profession's reflective capacity prevents collective adaptation, then the effects of individual strategies in the market are likely to be decisive.

Florent Champy is a researcher in the National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris. Most of his past work has been on architects, studying their work and their relationships with the state and the markets. His research is now more generically devoted to the history of the sociology of the professions and the theoretical analysis of professional work.