The French Malaise

The Roots of France’s Inability to Self-Govern

Introductory Note: The following is mostly a (long) political commentary, but I hope there are also analytical points worth interest for non-French readers.

Yesterday, following French Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s budget attempt to pass the social security budget at the national assembly without a vote (the now infamous 49.3 article of the Constitution), a “motion de censure” (imperfectly translated as “vote of no confidence” in general) has been passed, thanks to the conjunction of the votes of the left coalition (the “Nouveau Front Populaire”) and the far-right Rassemblement National. 288 votes were required for the motion to pass and in the end, it received 331 votes. The immediate consequence is that the budget proposal is rejected and Barnier’s government is forced to resign, a resignation that should be effective as I’m writing these lines. That makes Barnier’s government the shortest-lived of the Fifth Republic (3 months) and also means that, for the first time in decades, no budget proposal will be approved before the end of the year. France is not the U.S. and, in principle, no shutdown is expected. This year’s budget will be automatically reconducted on a monthly basis until a new budget is approved. This saves France from being completely blocked, but in light of the budget deficit, this will not be sustainable for long.

A mix of astonishment and fatality mostly prevails in the French media and, arguably, in the French population today. This is probably the most serious political crisis in France since the 1960s, with no obvious way out of it in the near future. It started with Emmanuel Macron’s unconsidered “dissolution” of the French national assembly following the European elections in June. The resulting snap elections lead to a restructuring of the assembly without any majority, even after eventual coalition formations. The appointment of Barnier’s government has been a drama in itself, taking almost as much time as the government remained in office. From the start, it was clear that Barnier’s government was vulnerable and would not last long, as it needed the votes of the Rassemblement National to pass laws and remain in office. Circumstances, both political and judiciary (with Marine Le Pen’s trial for misuse of European funds from the European Parliament) precipitated its fall.

The “French Malaise” as seen by Chat GPT

How did we get there, besides the sequence of events I’ve just recalled? I think France, both as a political community and an economy, is cursed by three major and deeply anchored structural weaknesses. The first is the quality of its political personnel. Today’s three main political figures, each leading one of the three major political blocks, are Macron, Le Pen, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon. There is no doubt that Macron is smart, brilliant, and charismatic enough for the job. His skyrocketing ascension between 2015, when he was virtually unknown, and 2017 when he was elected is the definite proof of this, if needed. I sincerely think that he came with fresh ideas and a genuine political vision (an “ideology” in the non-pejorative sense) that, in many ways was promising. Looking back over the past 7 years, the French economy has improved on many counts and, for a while, France was the main political force in the EU thanks to Macron’s leadership. Also, despite all the criticisms received, I think France has relatively managed well the COVID crisis. However, Macron has also demonstrated many times his lack of political foresight and understanding. He’s fully responsible for the yellow vest crisis, being unable to understand that the use of a perfectly reasonable economic tool (a Pigouvian tax) may backfire in the context of increased socioeconomic inequalities. On foreign and diplomatic affairs, his views have been constantly unstable especially since the start of the Ukraine war, creating worries among European partners and undermining France’s credibility. Finally, his catastrophic decision to dissolve the national assembly in June 2024 demonstrates that he has lost any ability to understand the moving French political landscape and the expectations of part of the French population. Macron’s resignation would only add to the already prevailing chaos and, in this sense, calls for it are irresponsible. But it is pretty clear that he is no longer in capacity to effectively govern the country.

Things are not better with Mélenchon and Le Pen. It is crystal clear that both of them have seized the opportunity provided by the discussions around the budget to pursue their presidential ambitions. They both have a clear interest that Macron resigns before 2027. Nothing else matters to them. Mélenchon’s political life is slowly but surely going towards its end. He’s one of the most controversial French political figures, including in his own camp. It’s highly probable that in 2027 he will be put in minority in the Left coalition and unable to gather a unanimous support around him, the only chance for a left candidate to win. Mélenchon is so desperate that he has explicitly (as witnessed by filmed conversations captured by French media) decided to put all his hope by focusing on selective parts of the French population that traditionally don’t vote (especially people from the “banlieux”), disregarding completely the rest of the electorate. In the process, he and his followers have adopted explicitly antisemitic views. The rest of the NFP crew is hardly better. Mélenchon’s followers at La France Insoumise have developed similar antisemitic views and their behavior in the assemblée national since several years has largely contributed to normalize the permanent chaos there. The rest of the coalition (the ecologists, the socialists) is essentially made of second-tier political personnel who, for electoral reasons, are scared to dissent too explicitly from the radicality of La France Insoumise.

One problem of the left coalition is that their economic views are nowadays barely distinguishable from those of the far-right. If there is something to concede to Le Pen, it is her ability to transform her party by adopting less controversial views about, for instance, the EU and endorsing an essentially leftist economic platforms that, if demagogic, please a large part of the electorate. Of course, her views on immigration remain in line with the party’s tradition but here, again, they fit well with the progressively changing judgments of a large part of the electorate on this matter.[1] But as for Mélenchon, Le Pen’s motivation is largely self-interested. She’s indeed on the verge of being forbidden to apply to political functions for several years if she is considered guilty in her trial about the misuse of European funds. In case Macron resigns in the coming weeks, it would be virtually impossible for the judge to pronounce such an interdiction, in light of the popular pressure. Besides, Le Pen has proven on many occasions that her understanding of many issues, especially economic ones, is weak. Even more worrying, the cast around her is essentially made of nobodies to whom you would not want to give so much political power to affect your daily life. Arguably, the RN has been trying hard to improve this state of affairs over the years, but judging from the profiles of many candidates at the last snap elections (some whom have been elected), they are still far from there.

The lack of competency of the French political personnel is a genuine problem but it’s not the only one that accounts for what I call the “French malaise.” Troubles also come from the French people. The Economist has an article today that bluntly points out one of the causes of the malaise:

“The underlying problem is that most French voters are unwilling to face economic reality. Like other ageing European countries facing competition from America and Asia, France is spending unsustainably. This year its budget deficit is forecast to exceed 6% of GDP. Mr Barnier, at Mr Macron’s behest, was trying to fix that. His package of €40bn ($42bn) in spending cuts and €20bn in tax rises would have brought the shortfall down, though only by a percentage point or so. Even that was too much for the irresponsible right and left, which would rather chase power by fanning popular discontent.”

A large majority of the French population just refuses (or is unable) to understand that structural economic and demographic transformations against which hardly anything can be done, call for budgetary efforts that will involve, one way or another, reduced spending (and therefore transferring part of the domain covered by the “service public” to the private sector) or increased taxation. The views of the French people on these matters are just inconsistent. On the one hand, a large majority asks for tightened conditions on immigration but, on the other, refuse to work longer or to see their pensions decreased. It doesn’t require a PhD in economics to understand that immigration is the best way (and arguably, the only) to lessen the demographic pressure on our socialized pension system. French people want to maintain their “service public” (though it underperforms in many domains, starting with education and higher education), but refuse to tax inheritance more, while it is largely accepted that inheritance is largely responsible for the growth of wealth inequalities that French so dislike. Of course, the left will respond that there is an obvious solution: tax the rich! There is arguably room to improve the effectiveness of the tax system for very high incomes and more should be done on that. However, believing that it will solve the structural issues I mentioned above is wishful thinking. Besides the fact that the very rich would relatively easily escape a large part of the higher fiscal pressure, the tax-to-GDP ratio is still above 43%. It’s fairly high comparatively speaking (it was on average 34% in the world, 38% in Germany, 43% in Denmark, and 25% in the U.S. in 2023, according to OECD.) This is not bad per se, but this strongly suggests that if your only solution to structural issues is to raise an already high tax rate, that means that you lack imagination or refuse to see the harsh reality.

Now, I’m not pretending that there is a one-best-way on economic matters and, even if there were one, I’ve no clue which. What is clear however is that it is hard to give any credibility to a party that claims that we can afford to cancel the pension reform and allow people to retire earlier than everybody else in the world. But this is what the (far) right and the left are defending. Anyway, I think that the French malaise has an even deeper cause. I would almost qualify this cause “cultural,” though the word may be imprecise. In general, I would say that the French are misguidedly conservative, not in the usual sense of conservative but in the sense of being nostalgic for a (partially dreamed) past and wanting to preserve or return to it. I see it from close enough in higher education. French public universities are currently facing a very serious budgetary crisis related to national budgetary problems. While the French higher education system has been engaged, against the will of the majority of the academic world, in a march toward deregulation (giving more strategic and budgetary autonomy to universities) over the past 20 years, resistance to this liberalization is still very strong. We are currently in the worst of the two worlds: universities increasingly have to search for their own funding resources, but there is a taboo to raise the money where it is, i.e., from those who benefit from higher education. Fair enough, the configuration of French higher education makes it more complicated than elsewhere because, basically, students going to public universities are relatively poor compared to students going to private institutions. But that only proves that the French dual system doesn’t work, and this is not new. As far as I can tell, many of my colleagues who are refusing the evolution toward a more deregulated system don’t have anything else to propose than to go more than two decades backward. However, I can tell you that French public universities at that time were awful, wasting public money without monitoring the quality of the education (or research) service and subject to the pathetic despotism of a small bunch of academics with local power (“les mandarins”).

You also see French conservatism at play in the way French people are proud of their culture (the infamous French “exception culturelle”) and language. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. It’s probably great to be proud of one’s cultural heritage. But it becomes a hindrance when this pride turns into a stubborn attachment to old-fashioned states of affairs and a refusal to widen your horizon by looking elsewhere at how things are done. This may sound anecdotal, but at school, I remember having read almost exclusively French literature. Most of the history classes were focused on French history. I’ve no clue whether this is still the case today, but many generations have been raised with the implicit idea that anything worth knowing is French. I don’t deny that my country has a glorious history. After all, the Enlightenment is partly French – though many (most?) French ignore that the Enlightenment also happened elsewhere. It has been a major economic and cultural force for several centuries. This past is over, however. I don’t need to argue for this because, according to a recent poll, more than 80% of French people judge that their country is declining. That’s proof that the French can be wise. France is declining demographically, economically, and culturally. We are not the only ones. France like all Western countries shows the signs of decadence documented by Ross Douthat in his book The Decadent Society.[2] We are especially not the only ones in Europe. The whole continent is declining by all relevant standards. There is no historical iron law. There is no certainty that this process is irreversible. All we can say is that it will not be overturned over the foreseeable horizon.

To end this decidedly somber essay on a more positive note, I would say that we should not be too affected by the perspective that our society is declining. We may cherish the past and regret that some of our traditions are slowly decaying. But in the meantime, we can also look forward and gain inspiration from others’ successes. We can learn from others’ culture, history, and institutions. We can borrow and adapt what we find appealing elsewhere. For that, we need to raise our heads and look forward, instead of mourning our old ways of life.

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[1] On this, another French politician and former President bears a large responsibility in having largely contributed to normalize quasi-racist views in the public debate.

[2] Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success (New York: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster, 2020).