This volume provides information about the structures and composition of the higher civil service and its position in the political structure through a comparative analysis of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Greece, Denmark and Sweden. The book explores how higher civil service has developed in the light of the massive changes in European societies in the past 30 years. Changes include the size of the top level of the civil service, the growing social diversity of its ranks and well as the tendency to recruit from outside the civil service. The book also examines how wider social changes, such as the democratization of education, the growth of interest groups, and the increasing importance of the European Union impact on the higher levels of bureaucracy producing similar patterns of change throughout Europe.