Abstract
This article reviews three attempts at pension restructuring in France: the 1993 Balladur Reform, the 1995 Juppe Plan and the 2003 Raffarin Reform. It argues that most academic accounts place undue emphasis on elite-level interaction in the policymaking process instead of focussing on the ways in which such interaction is decisively shaped by tensions within the labour movement. Specifically, trade-union leaders confront the government as members of the labour bureaucracy – a contradictory social stratum which seeks to reconcile the antagonistic interests of its working-class base with the exigencies of capital and the state. Insofar as it performed a social control function during socio-political crises threatening to derail pension reform, the labour bureaucracy acted in ways that are not easily explained by standard theoretical models.
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