New School Politics

France: A time for a change?

Elizabeth | 29 03 2007

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France was once the country of change, of revolution, of new ideas. It hasn’t been so in a while now, but with the first round of Presidential elections coming up on May 6th, things could change in France for the first time in decades.

France has a semi-presidential government, with both an elected President and a selected Prime Minister. The defining characteristic of this government, however, is the concept of dirigisme. Dirigisme involves a high level of government involvement in the economy, and the French government has historically been very involved in the transportation and infrastructure sectors in France. Although the French government has been loosening its grip since the early 90’s, Socialist tendencies still abound in the French marketplace. For instance, there is a 35-hour workweek and employers have a very hard time firing employees. (Until recently, there was a fine for businesses who fired elderly workers.)

All these Socialistic restraints are slowing down the French economy. The GDP growth this past year was 2%, below the EU averager of 2.8%, and is expected to fall even further to 1.9% next year. The unemployment rate has been hovering just below 10%, which is high even for EU standards. Taxes are also far above the average EU values and certainly above anything one might expect to see in a laissez-faire economy. While dirigisme may have originally been an appropriate response to the massive stresses WWII placed on France, its population, and its economy, it is now outmoded and a serious threat to the continued growth of the French economy.

So where do the elections come in? The campaign has received a lot of American press because Segolene Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, is the first female candidate of a major French party in a national election. Royal’s economic program, which she outlined in the beginning of Februrary, calls for a return to the dirigisme of France’s past: an increase in minimum wages, a guarantee of a job or job training within six months of graduating university, and more government control of the transportation and infrastructure industries, which it has slowly been pulling out of. Marked by statements like “The unfettered rein of financial profit is intolerable for the general interest,” it is beyond clear that Royal’s program would only further the financial decline of France.

The second candidate is Francois Bayrou, a latecomer to the race. Although ridiculed internationally for being a farmer, his image has a lot of power in France, where “If you gave an average Frenchman the choice between a reforming president who would plug the country’s huge deficit and a good cheese, he would probably opt for the cheese” As a centrist, his policies fall somewhat to the right of Ms. Royal’s but still to the left of a free market. He has admonished those who advocate a bigger budget and plans to curtail spending, but has adopted the typical superstitious French view about globalisation. Bayrou seems a little too ridiculous in the States to have the makings of a French president, but at a time when France seems more plauged by disagreement than ever, Bayrou’s ability to make compromises is more appealing than ever.

And this is where the third contender, Nicholas Sarkozy, comes in. Previously the Minister of Finance, Sarkozy is running as the centrist UDP party candidate. Sarkozy is about as far right as they come in France: a free-marketeer and (gasp!) a friend of America. In fact, in Sarkozy’s autobiography, Témoignage (Testimony), Sarkozy says “If I had to choose, I feel closer to American society than to a lot of others around the world.” This friendliness towards the US and a penchant for criticizing France, including claiming that “France has been discouraging initiative and punishing success for the past 25 years,” does not seem to have hurt Sarkozy in the polls: He leads Royal 51% to 49% in the latest polls.

So if Sarkozy wins the election, what will that mean for France, and, eventually, for the US? Although Sarkozy is running as a free-marketeer, he seems unwilling to kill the sacred cow of welfare. Moreover, as the majority of French voters lean left, Sarkozy has pushed into Socialistic promises by the need for votes. For instance, he has proposed that the State will be a “strategist” in key industries, which sounds innocuous but, in reality, reeks of dirigisme. No matter his faults, there is no doubt that Sarkozy would do far better things for France than Bayrou or Royal. Both of the more leftist candidates seem to feel that more spending is the way to rid France of its enormous debt, which currently eats up 70% of the economy. A friend of the US would be a nice change in France, but it is doubtful that Sarkozy will risk angering his constituency by insituting a drastic policy change. While he has expressed wishes of becoming more friendly with Israel and dealing more harshly with China, it is likely that his wishes will stay just as those.

It is clear that Sarkozy is ready to change France; is France ready for Sarkozy?