Fitoussi, Jean-Paul

Laurent, Eloi

English

Research Papers in Economics

French connection  by Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Éloi Laurent 
The Guardian 16 juin 2007 
 
Nicolas Sarkozy has been given a difficult mandate by a record turnout of voters - to 
return égalité and fraternité to France. 
 
One puzzling and often overlooked feature of the France that elected Nicolas 
Sarkozy as its new president - and that is now poised to give his political allies a 
powerful parliamentary mandate - is its mix of private optimism and public pessimism.  
 
Consider this: France claims to have the highest birth-rate in the European Union 
(just under two children per woman), even ahead of booming Ireland. Of course, that 
rate alone is not enough to sustain France's current population, but it's far stronger 
than its European neighbours and almost equal to that of the US.  
 
Yet, despite this, Eurobarometer polls repeatedly show that the French are the most 
pessimistic of all Europeans when it comes to their country's future. How can it be 
that people who are so negative about their common future as a nation go about 
confidently building their private futures within their families?  
 
Indeed, strained by decades of governmental failure to curb massive unemployment, 
the French are nowadays often perceived as having retired from the political sphere 
to concentrate on their lives and leisure. Museums, gardening, clubs of all sorts are 
blossoming in today's France. Private associations, it seems, have picked up where 
political parties and trade unions have left off.  
 
But if the French have turned their backs on the public sphere, how are we to make 
sense of the record-high participation in the recent presidential election, when more 
than 85% of turned out to vote in both rounds? How do we explain the passion 
aroused by the campaign and by Sarkozy himself, including the massive affirmation 
he received in the parliamentary election?  
 
Political fervour, it seems, has not vanished in the land of Rousseau and Danton. So 
the truth must lie elsewhere: the French are not hopeless about politics; they are 
simply waiting for a genuine leader.  
 
As a matter of fact, a case can be made that the French will never come to believe 
that the state lacks power, globalisation or no globalisation. The French still expect 
greater things from their government than from an integrated Europe or the 
boundless world.  
 
Yes, the French are incorrigible lovers of the welfare state (they are not the only 
ones). And Sarkozy seems to understand this instinctively. His agenda appears to 
aim at domestic liberalisation - moving beyond the 35-hour week, ending the special 
pension regimes accorded to particular professions, increasing incentives to work 
and gain wealth.  
 
But it also seeks protection from the dizzying effects of globalisation, which probably 
will mean strong support for the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, scepticism toward further trade liberalisation and the will to improve European Union's economic 
government.  
 
Nevertheless, precisely because they care about the future of their numerous 
children, the French are much more amenable to some wise reforms than most 
commentators (and politicians) generally assume. Secondary and higher education 
are rightly near the top of the agenda list of the new government. But so are 
measures aimed at harnessing the state to efforts to encourage entrepreneurship 
and boost economic dynamism such as public guarantees for housing and start-ups, 
and fiscal rebate for investment in small enterprises.  
 
France is also in desperate need of a reality check on the nature of its current cultural 
diversity. And no one should forget that, despite his campaign rhetoric and his 
apparent unpopularity with many immigrants, Sarkozy himself is an immigrant's son 
who favours bold affirmative action policies. Besides, the nomination of a woman with 
a north-African accent as minister of justice made that clear from the start.  
 
Most French understand that their public spaces - the labour market, the workplace, 
housing, and educational institutions - are corroded by discrimination. France's 
impoverished suburbs, the notorious banlieues, make the ideal of fraternité sound 
like an insult on top of an injury. There is no greater task for Sarkozy than to open, 
from the inside, all doors to the offspring of others who, like his father, immigrated to 
France.  
 
So make no mistake about it. Nicolas Sarkozy has not been elected to adapt France 
to an elusive globalisation. His mandate is much more demanding: he must reconcile 
France's public interests with its private passions.  
 
In cooperation with Project Syndicate, 2007. 
 
 

French connection.

http://spire.sciences-po.fr/hdl:/2441/3683/resources/guardian16-06-07.pdf

French connection.

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