100

Based on the case-study of the appointment process of new leaders in the newly nationalized banking sector in 1982, this article challenges existing results on elite change under the Mitterrand socialist government. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative methods, we show that elite change in the public financial sector was both segmented and discontinuous. We explain these complex reorganizations by the logics of bargaining which characterized the appointment process. By exploring the complex relationships between political change, elite change and policy change in 1982, we show that the immediate effects of political change in government should not be overlooked by social scientific research.