Georges Sorel, Critical Observer of the French Railway System

"Freed from his professional duty to maintain confidentiality from 1892 onwards, Sorel gave us, through various reading reports and personal notes, his more or less elaborate analysis of and critical point of view on the institutional side of the French railway system. Instead of picking a side in the major political debate of his time regarding the state purchase of railway lines, he raged against the customary transgressions of the law by an almighty bureaucratic administration; he hoped that the intervention of a new player in the system, in the form of the “expert”, would guaranty a more democratic way of functioning within institutions."