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The Sarkozy Effect France’S New Presidential Dynamic J.G Politics & Diplomacy The Sarkozy Effect France’s New Presidential Dynamic J.G. Shields Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign was predicated on the J.G. Shields is an associate professor of need for change in France, for a break—“une rupture”—with the French Studies at the past. His election as president of the French Republic on 6 University of Warwick in England. He is the first May 2007 ushered in the promise of a new era. Sarkozy’s pres- holder of the American idency follows those of the Socialist François Mitterrand Political Science Associ- ation's Stanley Hoff- (1981-95) and the neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), mann Award (2007) for who together occupied France’s highest political office for his writing on French more than a quarter-century. Whereas Mitterrand and Chirac politics. bowed out in their seventies, Sarkozy comes to office aged only fifty-two. For the first time, the French Fifth Republic has a president born after the Second World War, as well as a presi- dent of direct immigrant descent.1 Sarkozy’s emphatic victory, with 53 percent of the run-off vote against the Socialist Ségolène Royal, gave him a clear mandate for reform. The near-record turnout of 84 percent for both rounds of the election reflected the public demand for change. The legislative elections of June 2007, which assured a strong majority in the National Assembly for Sarkozy’s centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), cleared the way for implementing his agenda over the next five years.2 This article examines the political context within which Sarkozy was elected to power, the main proposals of his presidential program, the challenges before him, and his prospects for bringing real change to a France that is all too evidently in need of reform. Winter/Spring 2008 [103] THE SARKOZY EFFECT The context. Three major events outpouring of anger was provoked by the marked the second presidential term of accidental death of two teenage boys flee- Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac. ing the police in the Paris commune of The first was that Chirac won his second Clichy-sous-Bois, but it expressed a term against the leader of France’s far- much wider revolt against the failure of right Front National (FN), Jean-Marie the French Republic to honor its con- Le Pen.3 The unprecedented appearance tract of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” with of a far-right candidate in the presiden- France’s largely ghettoized immigrant tial run-off was but the latest indicator of communities and urban underclass. a political disaffection that had grown The above sequence of events present- more pronounced through the 1990s. ed many symptoms of the ills besetting The threat of Le Pen reaching the run- France in the run-up to the 2007 elec- off again hung like a specter over the tions. While the years following the liber- presidential campaign of 2007. ation of 1945 had favored economic Another defining event of growth and increased prosperity, those Chirac’s second presidential term was after the oil crises of the 1970s had been France’s vote against the European characterized by economic recession, Union (EU) constitutional treaty in the industrial restructuring, rising unem- May 2005 referendum. Drafted by a ployment, worsening crime, and the dif- convention under former French Presi- ficulties of integrating large immigrant dent Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the treaty communities. Elected to implement was designed to give new impetus to the change, French governments were often process of European integration. It was a impeded from doing so—then punished cause personally espoused by Chirac and for not having done so. In all six legisla- massively supported by the National tive elections between 1978 and 2007, Assembly and the Senate. The disparity the governing majority was overturned, For the moment Sarkozy has brought a new dynamic to the presidency. between 90 percent parliamentary sup- while a succession of twelve prime minis- port and the 55 percent of French voters ters and their governments outdid one who rejected the treaty in the referendum another in unpopularity.4 highlighted the gulf between France’s Campaigning for election in 1995, governing elite and its citizens, many of Jacques Chirac lamented the “monarchi- whom saw the treaty as institutionalizing cal drift” of a Mitterrand presidency an unbridled economic liberalism across which, he charged, had neglected the the EU. needs of the French people, leaving the The third and most dramatic event of country “in a state of social emergency.”5 Chirac’s fin de règne was the outbreak of Then, throughout his own quasi- extensive urban rioting in Autumn 2005 monarchical presidency, Chirac failed by youths of mainly North African ori- on his promises to heal the “fracture sociale” gin, prompting the declaration of a caused by high unemployment and national state of emergency. This violent socio-economic inequalities.6 When [104] Georgetown Journal of International Affairs SHIELDS Politics & Diplomacy labor-market or welfare reforms were ty, and exclusion. Nowhere is this dispar- attempted by his center-right premiers, ity more starkly illustrated than in the they were met with social and political treatment of France’s ethnic minorities, opposition. As Chirac’s would-be suc- drawn largely from North African immi- cessors rehearsed a new litany of electoral gration and often corralled in rundown promises in Spring 2007, many believed banlieues (outskirts) where unemployment, France to be a country in inexorable crime, and social alienation are rife. In decline. The term coined to describe this the name of a secular and theoretically pervasive mood of pessimism was “le colorblind state, French officialdom déclinisme,” and the growing number of refuses even to acknowledge the presence commentators articulating it even earned of a Muslim community estimated by their own neologism as “déclinologues.” some to be as high as six million, close to 10 percent of the population.8 It is a The challenge. In an unsparing principle deriving from the Revolution- assessment of France published in Octo- ary creeds of 1789 that all French citizens ber 2006, the Economist charted a persis- are indistinguishably French. No Euro- tently slow-growing economy and a pean country has been more resolute in faster-growing public debt as a share of refusing the “Anglo-Saxon model” of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than multiculturalism, effectively denying the that of any other EU-15 state.7 With its existence of its largely disadvantaged eth- bloated public sector, over-regulated nic minorities. labor market, high taxation, diminished In the judgment of its most severe purchasing power, low-ranking universi- (usually Anglo-Saxon) critics, the French ty sector, and intractable unemployment model has become a perverted expression of over 8 percent—over 20 percent of “good intentions, bad policies, and among those under 25—France was, vested interests,” which invoke the lan- despite many countervailing economic guage of solidarity to obstruct change.9 and social strengths, in danger of being While acknowledging the problems diagnosed “the sick man of Europe.” besetting the French Republic, let us keep Other depressing statistics recorded 3.7 a sense of proportion too. France is the million people living in poverty, 2.5 mil- Eurozone’s second largest, and by some lion on the minimum wage, and 2.4 mil- measures the world’s sixth largest, econ- lion unemployed. omy. The productivity of French workers These statistics can be read as an is high and the French healthcare system indictment of the failure by successive and public transit system remain the envy French governments since the 1970s to of foreign observers. Yet it is undeniable mold public policy to meet the changing that the workplace currently contains too social and economic realities. Developed many disincentives to work. Given the in a time of near-full employment, the social charges and rigidities of employ- French “social model” is ill-adapted ment contracts and the costs and com- today. Founded on a worthy notion of plexities of redundancy procedures, it is solidarity, it perpetuates an unbridgeable no surprise that employers often do not divide between those with secure jobs, recruit at all or hire temporary staff who pension rights, and special welfare privi- fall outside the protective employment leges, and those who live the daily realities regime. When, in the wake of the of unemployment, job insecurity, pover- Autumn 2005 riots, de Villepin’s gov- Winter/Spring 2008 [105] THE SARKOZY EFFECT ernment passed legislation making it eas- outside world. Sarkozy’s program set out ier to hire and fire young employees, it the vision of a recovery based on job and responded to the needs of one disadvan- wealth creation, cuts in labor-market taged section of youth. However, anoth- regulation and taxation, increased com- er section, students, fearing for their petitiveness, and reductions in the future job security, protested so vehe- national debt and trade deficit. He mently that the legislation was withdrawn argued for a smaller public sector, the at President Chirac’s urging. curbing of trade-union power, reforms Herein lies the essence of the chal- to higher education, and the rationaliz- lenge confronting France’s new presi- ing of the “social model.” Work and the dent: to dispel the egalitarian myths that reward for work lie at the heart of entrench existing inequalities and retard Sarkozy’s prescription, where reform of economic and social development on a the labor market and fiscal regime is number of levels. The challenge is also to paramount. “Travaillez plus pour gagner plus” renounce the discourse of denial in (“Work more to earn more”) became the which political leaders have too readily defining slogan of a campaign resonant taken refuge, blaming outside forces—the with terms—travail, effort, mérite—to rally “la European Commission or European France qui se lève tôt” (“the France that gets Central Bank (ECB), the International up early”).
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