Industrial Crisis and the Left: Adjustment Strategies in Socialist France and Spain

Abstract

What choices exist for governments ruled by left political parties as they confront global economic change, in particular basic shifts in industrial technology and production? This article addresses this question by comparing how recent Socialist governments in France and Spain have responded to adjustment crises in core industries facing declining markets and international competition. Our goal is to explain a surprising outcome. Faced with market failures in older industries such as steel and automobiles, both the Mitterrand and Gonzalez governments took measures that eliminated the jobs of thousands of workers who constituted an important base of Socialist support. What is striking is not the fact of job loss-after all, employment has declined in virtually all such industries in advanced industrial nations during the past two decades--but the scale and vigor of the cuts, a result that is all the more unexpected (and, indeed, ironic) in light of both governments' initial pledges to defend employment while transforming capitalism. To explain why these governments pursued a policy that apparently betrayed the ideological values and policy preferences of many of their supporters, I proceed in three steps. First, the following section frames the central dilemma that industrial adjustment poses for left governments and signals the significance of these two cases. Then I examine French and Spanish Socialist adjustment strategies since the early 1980s. The final section explains these strategies by considering two central issues in comparative political economy, the relative influence of international versus domestic factors and of the state versus society.