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Territorial Top-level Administrators : Adaptability is Primordial Territorial civil service is a good example of the seemingly unavoidable slipping from a career system — as it continues to exist in its more or less pristine form in France today — to the job system found in the majority of neighbouring countries. This is particularly true as concerns the career management of top-level territorial administrators, if only because their jobs as directors are more and more subject to local and regional political changes. Furthermore, administrative directors as a whole must deal with increasingly diverse tasks. The high criteria of competitive examinations along with the specialized training, dispensed in part by the École nationale d’administration, will doubtless make it possible to face this challenge.