Is France ungovernable?

Its economy is sick, its people refuse to accept much-needed reforms, there are riots on the streets, government ministers are at each others’ throats and Chirac sits brooding in the Elysée Palace like a lame-duck president. Allister Heath, economics editor of The Business, asks: Is France ungovernable?

So Charles de Gaulle was right after all. In a devastatingly frank speech in 1961, he warned that “any country with three hundred different kinds of cheese is ungovernable”. Forty-five years later, as France braces itself for a fresh day of disruption on Tuesday when opponents of reform take to the streets again, De Gaulle’s successors are rediscovering that the French are simply not prepared to accept change, however necessary.

This latest row has been triggered by a proposed easy hire-and-fire employment contract for the under-26 year olds, a desperate attempt by the French government to reduce the current sky-high level of youth unemployment. But this particular law is merely an excuse: any attempt to reform France’s failing welfare state would have met the same response.

Flights and trains will be cancelled, schoolchildren sent home and industry hit by strikes as France’s noisy majority continues to refuse to accept any change to the post-1960s welfare state settlement that many economists believe to be responsible for France’s slow economic, social and cultural decline. The result will be more chaos, economic loss and violence, further tarnishing France’s reputation among international investors and tourists...

UPDATE: Over at MaxSpeak, Tom Walker (aka the 'Sandwichman') takes issue with "cookie-cutter 'libertarian' think-tank clone" Allister Heath's assertion that the lump of labour fallacy is at the heart of the matter.

See also HillBlogger's somewhat histrionic post Why the Brits will never understand the French, and the comments underneath.

 

Comments

[bsetser]

The evidence that France's economy is sick? Financial markets,up. housing up. Domestic demand growth = faster than the eurozone average. Per capita income growth over past 10 years -- faster than Germany or italy. I agree that the source of France's recent growth (housing and related consumption boom) gives cause for concern, but i also find some of the (anglo-saxon) analysis on France's economy overly simplistic. Remember, in Germany structural reforms, no matter how necessary, have led growth to stall as households started to save more/ consume less, creating a drag that not even Germany's rather stellar export performance could overcome.

[Zilch]

if anything, the economy is not doing bad in fact, but french society is being ripped apart in 3 at present, with public sector workers protected by abusive trade union, qualified workers in good job in those french companies that have managed globalisation, and the rest of the population, stuck in the middle with low paying jobs or employement and an rising living cost and grim prospects.

This The Business article is a little provocative however.

[a de brux]

I could give a plethora of answers to the question but would rather not delve in the matter because the Brits (including Mr Heath of Business on line.com) must not be phlegmatic and must do a bit of homework if they really would like to know.

I'd rather tackle why the Brits and, quite incidenteally, Business on line.com prefer to ask an impertinent question that they could very well answer if only they are not too busy being cheeky. I propose to do so in my blog in a way that even the most biased critique can understand the reason for the British attitude towards the French.

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