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Republication, copying or redistribution by any means is expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of The Economist The Economist October 28th 2006 A survey of France 1 The art of the impossible Also in this section Insider and outsiders By trying to protect jobs and welfare benets, France has created a two-class society. Page 3 Lessons from the campus In higher education, a free-for-all does not work. Page 5 Reforming the unreformable Some of France’s big companies have shown the way. Page 7 Minority report The trouble with integration. Page 9 Beyond these shores France’s foreign relations need a rethink. Page 11 Where there’s a will Next year’s elections oer France the chance A morose France has fallen behind its competitors. But there is of a fresh start. But which candidate to vote for? Page 13 nothing inevitable about its decline, argues Sophie Pedder: all it needs is political will OMETHING seems very wrong with The country was paralysed by a sense of S this country. Once the very model of terminal decline. The mainstream left was a modern major powerstable, rich and beholden to its militants, union friends smugit appears beset now by political and class warriors. Politicians were preoc- and economic instability and by civil un- cupied by the distribution of wealth, not rest and disorder. One observer has even its creation. Strikes were as crippling as taken to calling it ‘the sick man of Europe’. taxes. Industrial jobs were going to lower- Hardly a month passes without the ap- cost countries and academic brains to pearance of a new book or learned article America. Britain was uncomfortable on the decline and imminent demise of a about its place in the world. once proud country. Now it is France’s turn. The country is Alarmist talk about France has become gripped by a belief in its own decline. It commonplace. Home-grown titles such as sees itself as a victim of globalisation, re- France in Freefall, Gallic Illusions and garding markets as a threat and prots as France’s Malheur crowd the book- suspicious. It has a short working week, shelves. Politicians hold seminars with ti- militant unions and high unemployment. tles such as The Origins of the French Dis- The opposition Socialist Party, in its ocial ease. Declinism has become a school of programme for next spring’s presidential thought. Pessimism prevails. Fully four- and parliamentary elections, pledges to re- fths of the French tell pollsters that they nationalise the electricity utility, raise the think things are getting worse. minimum wage, enforce the 35-hour week An audio interview with the author is at But the opening quotation, seemingly more vigorously and reverse tax cuts. www.economist.com/audio so apt for morose France today, is not Moreover, the creed of anti-liberalism about that country at all. It was written in and anti-globalisation is shared by both A list of sources can be found online 1979 by Isaac Kramnick, an American po- left and right. The centre-right government www.economist.com/surveys litical scientist, and refers to Britain. of Dominique de Villepin is irredeemably The 1970s were Britain’s decade of self- protectionist, fending o foreign predators A country brieng on France is at doubt, not so unlike the rst decade of the at every turn. The president, Jacques Chi- www.economist.com/france 21st century is turning out to be for France. rac, a Gaullist descendant, has called liber-1 2 A survey of France The Economist October 28th 2006 2 alism a greater menace for Europe than 5% bigger (even though the two countries’ come untenable: too many bureaucrats, communism. France is troubled by its di- populations are much the same). Back in supported by too many taxes, impose too minished voice in the world and fretful the late 1970s it was the other way round: many rules in too many overlapping orga- about immigration at home. Fear of the British economy was only three-quar- nisations. Despite all this eort, there is lit- change is pervasive. ters the size of the French one. Over the tle sign that the public sector in France is Just as Britain battled through its winter past 25 years, in terms of GDP per head at any more ecient than in other rich coun- of discontent in 1978-79, when rubbish current exchange rates, the French have tries. French public spending accounts for went uncollected, school gates unopened dropped from seventh place in the world 54% of GDP, compared with an OECD av- and ambulances undriven, France has to 17th. Even allowing for things France erage of 41% (see chart 1 on the next page). fought its way through a series of social does well, such as health care and welfare, One in four French workers is employed upheavals in the past 18 months. First, its the 2005 United Nations Human Develop- by the public sector. Public debt amounts electorate revolted over the European Un- ment Index ranked it 16th, down from to 66% of GDP, compared with 42% in Brit- ion in May 2005, rejecting a new constitu- eighth in 1990. The French feel the slippage ain, and over the past ten years has grown tion for the European project that its own keenly. Polls show that loss of purchasing faster in France than in any other EU-15 countrymen co-founded. Next, its multi- power is one of their top concerns. country. The baby-boom generation is ethnic underclass revolted against exclu- Second, France’s heavily planned econ- leaving behind a poisoned legacy: as the ti- sion, with 20 consecutive nights of rioting omy has reached its limits. In the past, the tle of a recent book puts it, Our Children in nearly 300 banlieues across the country, French dirigiste model, which relies on a Will Hate Us. forcing the government to declare a state strong centralised state in the pre-revolu- of emergency. Most recently, its students tionary tradition established by Jean-Bap- Too top down and unions revolted against insecurity, tiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s nance minister, Moreover, in such a hierarchical system holding countrywide strikes, university served the country well. It speeded up re- people too often expect solutions to be sit-ins and protest marches to contest a construction after the second world war. It provided from the top. For example, plan to make it easier to hire and re the delivered the trente glorieuses, or 30 years whereas Google was devised by two grad- under-26s. of post-war prosperity. And it laid the uate students at Stanford University, a ri- Some historians trace this turbulence val search engine with the unpronounce- and ery rejectionism back to the collec- able name Quaero was ordered by the tive spirit of the 1789 revolution and the French government from, among others, French fondness for the drama of con- two big French companies, Thomson and frontation (as in 1830, 1848 and 1968). Oth- France Telecom. CNN was founded by Ted ers suggest that these events are symptoms Turner, an American entrepreneur in At- of a dysfunctional democratic system in lanta; a new French challenger to the cable which the street is a more ecient theatre television network, France 24, which is of protest than parliament. due to start broadcasting shortly, was in- Popular malaise has certainly been vented by Mr Chirac and is nanced with simmering for a while. Since 1978 the government money. French have not re-elected an incumbent The problems have been building up government. They have gone through 12 for some time. Thirty years ago, Alain Pey- prime ministers when over the same per- rette predicted that the mal françaises- iod Britain and Germany have each had a sentially, a bureaucratic mentalitywould mere four heads of government. When the stie creativity and innovation and en- far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen was voted into trench resistance to change. Another critic the 2002 presidential run-o against Presi- wrote in 1994 of a France suering from a dent Chirac, it was an early distress signal. more profound sickness than anybody That vote was partly against immigration, ground for the rapid transformation of the then imagined: a heavy and inert state a theme the National Front leader has long economy into an industrial powerhouse. machinery that, if unreformed, would exploited. But it was also a protest against Even today, elements of dirigiste plan- block the evolution of society. The pre- what the republican French, with a dis- ning have helped to set France up for the scient author? Mr Chirac. arming nod to elitism, call the political modern age. Its high-speed TGV train net- Even so, politicians have consistently class: the cosy governing caste in Paris. In work reaches into new corners each year: failed to explain to the citizens why the that election, 35% of the votes went to the to Strasbourg in 2007, from Lyon to Turin country cannot aord to go on as before. political extremes or protest parties on the by 2018, with projects to extend lines to This is the third source of French electoral left and right. The message to mainstream Bordeaux, Rennes and Perpignan. As dissatisfaction. Instead of making the case politicians was plain: we’ve had enough Thierry Breton, the nance minister, for change, successive politicians have pre- of your empty promises. points out, France’s early decision to invest ferred to blame, and thus to discredit, out- in nuclear energy, which accounts for 78% side forcesusually Europe, America or Three reasons for gloom of its electricity production, has turned a globalisation.