French Economic Policy Research Articles

French Economic and Monetary Policies in Francophone Africa:

Since granting independence to her former colonies (especially the countries in the West and Central Africa subregions), France has maintained tight economic, political, and to a great extent, social control over their internal and external affairs. These continued ties with France have become the subject of contentious debates (previously considered taboo) among scholars in recent times, evidenced in the development of activism in Africa and continental Europe where the former has been sensitized or radicalized about France’s exploitative approach to economic partnership. The economies of these African nations have suffered stagnation and retrogression in contrast to their non-French-influenced neighbors. This essay employs a literature review to assess the impact of French hegemony over these former colonies, therefore providing a cogent argument for the abolition of the monetary agreement in favor of a local currency, and cessation of political dependencies that also carry a negative stigma. Intellectuals and politicians have argued that the continued use of the CFA franc currency (a relic of colonialism with a different twist) is exploitative; recognized even by French politicians who have appealed to their government to employ moral and ethical considerations to desist from the persistent exploitation of Africa. Social movements have developed today in demanding that African nations still using this currency should withdraw from the agreements due to the severe negative effects on economic development.

The return of the state? France’s response to the financial and economic crisis

The 2008 financial meltdown prompted an apparent revival of the dirigiste or statist economic model in France, a country with a long tradition of state-led development. French President, Nicolas Sarkozy denounced laissez-faire capitalism, which he blamed for the crisis, and launched a series of industrial policy initiatives. Yet the reality of French actions fell well short of the statist rhetoric, with the government committing few financial resources to its signature industrial policy programs and displaying little capacity to steer business strategies. This article argues that France’s neostatist turn was largely checked by the legacies of shifts in French economic policy a quarter-century earlier. Specifically, the break with the dirigiste model in 1983 deprived French authorities of many of the institutions and instruments associated with state-led development, while the massive expansion of social and labor market programs that eased the movement away from dirigisme left the government without the fiscal capacity to launch expensive new promotional policies. The broader lesson is that a country’s response to crisis is shaped by long-term structural factors, not just short-term political calculations, and that there are important institutional and fiscal prerequisites for statist revival, even when neoliberalism is widely believed to have failed.

French Institutions, Innovation, and Growth

After a long period of catch-up growth that began after the Second World War, France has now reached a technological frontier in many sectors of its economy. Why is it then that the French economy ranks so low in various rankings of the world’s most innovative economies? Why is it so difficult for France and its economic agents to transform the output of its world-class scientific talent and fundamental research – of which it is a net exporter – into industrial applications that can fuel economic growth?We believe that France has reached a turning point and that there is today a substantial risk that the “institutions” (as defined by Nobel Prize winning economist Douglass North) of the French economy, which have remained stuck in the past, no longer serve the needs of a modern economy whose growth will depend on its ability to innovate. In order to promote innovation and economic growth in the future, France will need to equip itself with the institutions that will enable the country to cross the technological frontier that many of its economic actors have already reached. Unfortunately, French law as well as French economic policy have too often been captive to politicians that have been navigating France – without a clear compass – through the waves of a rapidly changing global economy. This has created legal uncertainty and a lack of adaptation of the French institutions to the challenges of this changing global economy, both of which are stripping French law of its potential to become a vector for growth and to assume the role of a facilitator in an innovation-based economy. Without any doubt, the reform of Frances’ institutions is one of the greatest challenges the country is facing today. However, only few are aware of the importance of this challenge.In this paper, we outline six basic findings on the state of the French economy and its institutions, as defined by Douglass North – finding, which will enable us to present proposals that will contribute to transform French law into a tool ready to serve a French economy facing the innovations and technological challenges of tomorrow.

Can the new French economic policy be successful?

In early 2013, the French economy, like many other EU economies, faces tough challenges. French GDP is 9 per cent below the level it would have reached had it continued to grow at its pre-crisis trend. France has committed to cut the public deficit to 3 per cent in 2013 and 0 per cent in 2017 which would imply dramatic public spending cuts and fiscal tightening, reducing GDP growth even further. France has to choose between strengthening its specificity, its social model and its State-interventionist tradition, and imitating the best pupils of globalization in the world or in Europe by implementing liberal or social-liberal strategies. The paper deals with the French government strategy since the 2012 presidential elections and tries to assess its chances of success. In many areas – fiscal strategy, social issues, banking and industrial policies – there is a significant risk that the announced proactive strategy will be replaced by policies accepting the constraints imposed by European institutions and financial markets.

Adapting The Liberal Lover : Mediterranean Commerce, Political Economy, and Theatrical Form under Richelieu

In the 1630s and 1640s, Cardinal Richelieu transformed the Parisian theater into an arm of the state. Through the institution of the Academie Francaise, patronage of his circle of Cinq Auteurs, oversight of critical treatises to discipline dramatic aesthetics, and establishment of laws to police the playhouse, the minister ensured that the theater would be to the state, (1) a means of inculcating French subjects in the morals and political values that would foster the regime's stability. (2) Richelieu's role as supreme patron and censor of works performed on the French stage in these decades has informed a vast corpus of critical work uncovering the political ideologies conveyed in individual plays. (3) While these efforts have focused on topics such as kingship, sovereignty, Machiavellianism versus traditional noble values, and the formation of ideals of Frenchness little attention has thus far been devoted to the theater's engagement with economic policy. This is surprising given Richelieu's well-documented commitment to strengthening the French state's fiscal profile. (4) Scholarship on the English theater of the same period, by contrast, has produced a wealth of analyses of the transmission of economic values through the theater. (5) How should we interpret this apparent silence of the French stage on the subject of trade and commerce? Was it a taboo topic, disruptive to emerging classicist poetics? Or is it a lacuna in modern criticism rather than in seventeenth-century dramatic writing, possibly the result of a sense on the part of scholars that mercantile concerns had no place among elevated classical values? To explore these questions, I aim with this essay to illustrate one case in which the theater did serve as an arena for thinking through the cultural, moral, and economic implications of changes in French trading strategies in the mid-1630s. During the same theatrical season in which Corneille's Le Cid sparked a furor over moral and aesthetic standards for vraisemblance and bienseance, two French dramatists proposed theatrical adaptations of another Spanish source--Cervantes' exemplary novella El amante liberal--which addressed themes of Mediterranean commerce, religious conflict, loss, and redemption. (6) The plays, both entitled L'Amant liberal, have been largely written out of French literary history, in part because they are admittedly less than stellar examples of the period's dramatic achievements, but also because they belong to the much-maligned genre of tragicomedy, (7) and because they were authored by two playwrights (Georges de Scudery and Guyon Guerin de Bouscal) whose reputations have been eclipsed in Corneille's overpowering shadow. From this place of marginality, however, the plays reveal quite a bit about the anxieties surrounding France's renewed efforts to encourage their merchants to replenish the state's coffers by engaging in Mediterranean trade. The intersection between theatrical concerns and commercial matters in these two plays demonstrates how the theater attempted to negotiate and disseminate relatively new economic theories as well as the cultural and moral values that would support them. Mediterranean topics were a staple of French theater and fiction in the early part of the seventeenth century. (8) The Renaissance rediscovery of the so-called Byzantine novel popularized stories of shipwreck and captivity set in the southern coast of the sea and supplied the plots for countless tragicomedies in France in the early part of the seventeenth century. Traditionally, the subgenre's popularity has been explained in terms of its prestigious classical heritage or its appealingly episodic structure. (9) While these aspects surely played an important role in its success, it is also possible to view the preference for this type of story in a more materialist light. The familiar narrative of Mediterranean romance served as a useful frame for reconceptualizing questions of cultural and religious identity during a period of increased exchange between France and the Islamic Mediterranean following Richelieu's adjustments to French economic policy. …

From the Dirigiste State to the Social Anaesthesia State: French Economic Policy in the Longue Durée

This article analyses the evolution of French economic and social policy over the past 50 years. The key shift occurred in the 1980s, when France largely abandoned its state-led or dirigiste model of economic modernisation. As part of this shift, state authorities expanded social and labour market programmes in order to pacify and demobilise the potential victims of economic liberalisation. The transformation of the dirigiste state into what I term the ‘social anaesthesia state’ enabled French firms to reorganise on a more market-rational basis, but also sent state spending soaring and dampened labour force participation. The challenge for French reformers, including President Sarkozy, is to prune the social anaesthesia state and make it more employment-friendly without triggering widespread social protest and hardship.

Neoliberalism, Institutional Change and the Welfare State: The Case of Britain and France

Neoliberal turn in economic policy involved an attack on the welfare state in some countries but not in others. This article provides an institutionalist explanation of the causes of this variation through a comparative analysis of the transformation of British and French economic policy from the end of the Second World War through the end of the 1980s. The author shows that in both nations the transition to neoliberalism accompanied the economic crisis that took place in the 1970s. However, consistent with the differences in the way the two countries came to diagnose the nature of their respective crises; the policy manifestations of neoliberalism remained different in each. In Britain, where the crisis was diagnosed as one of Keynesianism, neoliberalism emerged as a radical antiKeynesian movement that sought to dismantle major Keynesian institutions and policies.In this context, the welfare state, a fundamental Keynesian institution, was identified as a part of the ‘problem,’ and became subject to the neoliberal ‘solution.’ On the other hand, in France, where the crisis was perceived to reside in the declining competitiveness of the dirigiste policies, the neoliberal reorganization of the economy focused on industrial policy. The welfare state was not associated with the problems of dirigisme, and remained largely resilient. Through this analysis, the author attempts to develop a general theory of the relationship between neoliberalism and national policies and provide insights into the process through which paradigmatic ideas such as neoliberalism translate into concrete policy preferences in different national contexts. Data for this study come from a combination of content analysis of major government documents concerning the economy and social policy, political party election manifestos, opinion papers, OECD statistics and secondary literature.

Permanences et Ruptures de la Politique Économique de la France vis-à-vis de l'Afrique sub-Saharienne

Over the cold war period, French economic policy towards sub-Saharan Africa reflected the importance which Paris attached to this region. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, however, Africa lost much of its economic and strategic significance, and France moved some way towards normalising its relations with this continent. Yet France never completed this process and has recently begun to accord greater priority to a part of the world which has been marked by conflict, terrorist activity, and tensions over oil supplies. This article will examine and explain continuities and changes in French economic policy over the global era. It will argue that Franco-African economic relations have not been subject to any major overhaul and will attribute this relative continuity to the complexity of the policy-making process. It will note, however, that important changes have taken place and will explain these in terms of Africa's increasing economic marginalisation and shifts in the wider European and global context.

Changes in French Economic Policy and European Integration since the mid-1980s : France and the EU Facing Globalization(PAPERS READ AT THE AUTUMN CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUM, 2001:Policy Dimensions of Neo-Liberalism)

Changes in French Economic Policy and European Integration since the mid-1980s : France and the EU Facing Globalization(PAPERS READ AT THE AUTUMN CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUM, 2001:Policy Dimensions of Neo-Liberalism)

French foreign economic policy

(1998). French foreign economic policy. The International Spectator: Vol. 33, Nation and Integration in Italy and Europe, pp. 101-120.

French autonomy and the European Union

This article considers the changing nature of France's relationship with the EC/EU. It looks at how France's ability to define the shape and direction of integration for much of the postwar period has been eroded since the implementation of the Single European Act, and how German unification has altered the balance of power within the Franco‐German alliance, so precipitating a crisis in France about ‘Europe’. Though the impact of the EU has often been exaggerated, the consequences of European action have been significant, contributing to the change in French economic policy and the transformation of the capacities of the French state.

Les Apories de la Politique Économique a L'Époque Des Marchés Financiers

On n'a pas suffisamment pris la mesure des mutations qu'a induites sur la politique économique son plongement dans le contexte d'une finance internationale totalement déréglementée. Certes la contrainte d'exposition permanente de la politique économique aux jugements des marchés financiers et les reculs de souveraineté qui en sont la conséquence sont maintenant de mieux en mieux identifiés. Mais le préjudice que la finance porte à la politique économique est autrement plus profond. C'est son exercice même qui se trouve fondamentalement perturbé. Or au coeur de ce trouble qui gît dans la relation nouée entre la politique économique et la finance, il y a d'abord la question de savoir comment se constitue la norme de la « bonne politique économique ».

Rhétorique de l'expertise. Le cas de l'économie

This article shows how around the political discourse of the state an expert economic rhetoric was originally elaborated under a statistical form. Statistics enable through the large numbers law to objectivize the future while giving the expert discourse a mythical or augural sense. At the same time, this rhetoric is looking for its authority in an economic science, particularly over the short period 1945-1973. The analysis of the French economic policy discourse suggests that this discourse -torn between disturbing «stylized facts » and the denial of science -must, beyond the market theory, look for other reassuring notions.

Introduction: Old France In New Europe?

INTRODUCTION: OLD FRANCE IN NEW EUROPE? By David P. Calleo Xaken together, our six essays furnish a good look at France's present situationandprospects. My taskhere isnotto summarizethem, sincethey are lively, rich in substance and well worth reading in their entirety. Rather it is to pick out their main themes and discuss their collective implications for FranceandEurope. Benoîtd'Aboville leads offwith asparkling surveyofthe majorpolitical and foreign policy issues that nowconfrontthe French. Many of these issues, he notes, were catalyzed by the referendum on Maastricht. Thanks to its debate, French political elites and the public at large are keenly aware ofhow much andhow rapidly the European and international environments arechanging, and how vital it is torespondcorrectly tothem. The most substantialreexaminationofforeignanddefensepoliciessincetheearly 1970s is well underway. Reexamination of European questions is particularly searching, d'Aboville observes, since it involves the deepest issues ofnational identity and interest. Howcan national states use Europeto adapttoaglobaleconomy thatchallengestheirtraditionalrole? Whatis"therelationshipbetweentherole ofthe nation and the functioning ofits democracy, on the one hand, and the Europeanprocess, on the other[?] How will the nation's 'civic space' relate to the functional role of a confederal Europe?"( 18) "Will what the individual gains as aconsumerbe paid forby what he loses as acitizen?"(19) These are the issues that "will continue to dominate the French political scene."(19) Amongotherconsequences, "fi]twill nolongerbesufficienttopresentEurope as aprocess in the making. A clearerdefinition ofgoals and ambitions on the world scene will be necessary."(26) Naturally, the debate is affected by dramatic events that reveal Europe's shortcomings—monetary turbulence, the Yugoslav crisis, or transatlantic trade and security disputes. D'Aboville 4 SAIS REVIEW gives his own trenchant analysis ofthese issues and their effects in France. TheproblemsofthefrancwithintheEuropeanMonetarySystem(EMS), he notes, can be blamed not on basic French economic policy, but on the recession combined with the difficulties the Germans have encountered in their reunification. But, the French political establishment continues to support thefrancfort—in the interest, it is thought, of Europe as well as of France. TotheFrench, Europe's feebleperformanceintheYugoslavcrisislends new urgency to the need to clarify the responsibilities and structures of the European Community (EC), the Western European Union (WEU), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the United Nations(UN). ItalsomakesimperativethereformoftheNorthAtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO) "in order to create a proper framework for a renewed American commitment, despite a lower level of U.S. forces and shifting priorities in U.S. policy."(23) The French believe that NATO's reform is necessary "to save it, not eliminate it... a position that has not been clearly understood in the United States."(23) A settlement on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) seemsanotherurgentneed. Butitmustbe"trulycomprehensive,balancedand durable."(24) Itmustcover "the entire gamutofissues agreed on atPuntedel Este in 1986"; "European farmers must not be the only ones making concessions "; and the Americans must not expect to nullify piecemeal and by unilateral action resultsthey donotlike.(24) BeyondtheGATT's immediate issues are two basic problems: access to European and American markets of products "from countries like China, with very low salaries and weak social protection,"(24) and "the problem of monetary instability between the main trading blocs."(24) Concerning the former, Europe sees "maintain[ing] a stablesocialandculturalframeworkasanintegralpartofanywell-thought-out approach to economic development."(25) Europe's societal model "is probably more relevant and exportable to the United States than are the idiosyncraticpracticesoftheJapanese ."(25) Onthelatter, "[i]tisquiteabsurdtofocus exclusively on tariffs as impediments torational specialization throughtrade, when floatingcurrenciesregularlychangetransatlanticpricesbytentotwenty percent or more."(24) D'Aboville concludes by noting critical differences between American and European perspectives on continental nation-building. Europe is not a United States in the making. It will remain a plural union ofdiverse states, boundtogether, amongotherthings, by the will andthe needtoplay aroleon theinternationalscene. AredefinitionofEurope'spartnershipwiththeUnited OLD FRANCE IN NEW EUROPE? 5 States is "vitally important and increasingly urgent."(27) Old transatlantic quarrels aregrowing obsolescent, particularly since America "is itselfrenewing its own sense ofnational identity and purpose."(27) With Patrick McCarthy's essay, we turn from high politics to a magisterial examination of the inner state of the French body politic. McCarthy begins by reviewing various fashionable analyses of France's "political malaise," analyses that assume some "indigenous crisis" in French public life.(29) He takes adifferent view. The...

"Une Eventualite Absolument Exclue": French Reluctance to Devalue, 1933-1936

Speaking of French gold and currency policy in 1930, John Maynard Keynes told the Macmillan Committee, Both in official and academic circles in France it is hardly an exaggeration to say that economic science is non-existent. French thought on these matters is two generations out of date.'1 Five years later, French thought might have been three and a half generations out of date by Keynes's accounting. In 1930 the French economy was benefiting from an undervalued franc, with industrial production increasing, no unemployment, and rising gold reserves, while the rest of the world slid deeper into depression. By 1935 the French economy was in a severe slump, seemingly immune to recovery despite a reviving international economy. The French government was committed to defense of the franc and to a price deflation which produced stagnation as economic activity contracted. At the same time, protectionist measures on behalf of French agriculture and industry helped render deflationary efforts ineffective.2 French tenacity in defending the 1928 franc Poincare was the most striking error in French economic policy during the Great Depression. Explanations have rightly focused on French currency experience in

Class and Socialist Politics in France

This article shows how the French Socialist Party's political practice, economic policies and socialist vision have been shaped by the Party's formulation and use of class concepts. It offers a Marxist critique of the Socialists' power-based understanding of class and shows how this allowed for economic policies to promote capitalist growth rather than transform the nature of class exploitation.

Les relations entre l'état et la banque de France depuis les années 1950

Relations between the State and the Bank of France since the 1950s, Jean Bouvier. Created under Bonaparte, nationalized in 1936, the Bank of France, unlike the German Bundesbank or the US Federal Reserve System, has always been tightly monitored by the State. Its governor is accountable to the Minister of the Economy and Finance. Its status, despite the compromise reached in 1973, makes it both a free institution and a public service. The conflicts between its managers and the government have had more effects than generally realized on French economic and monetary policies since the Liberation. At a time when greater autonomy is under consideration, the article sheds light on the rather secret and agitated history of the Bank of France.

What are the Distributional Consequences of the Socialist Government Policy in France?

AbstractDuring the past four years, French economic and social policy appears to have differed both from the policies followed previously in France and from those of the other industrialized countries. The difference can be judged from the goals pursued, the means used and the results obtained. One of the goals of the socialist government elected in May 1981 was to reduce income and wealth inequalities and to improve the well-being of the poor through an active social and tax policy. This goal was also a means, since these measures — along with an expansionary fiscal policy — were supposed to precipitate economic recovery and to reduce unemployment by stimulating consumption expenditures. Actual developments, however, led to quite a radical change in French macro-economic policy. The fight against inflation and the reduction of internal and external deficits since June 1982 and the search for industrial investment and competitiveness since 1983 have reoriented both social and tax policies.

French Economic Policies under the Socialist Government : Year III

In « The First Year of Socialist Government in France », we described the structural changes that followed the victory of the left in the French presidential and parliamentary elections. We also examined the macroeconomic imbalances created by an expansionist policy that involved increases in wages, in social benefits, and in public expenditures.

Ethical Aspects of Current French Economic Policies the French System of Planning

Given the not so cordial state of current Franco-American relations, I had best begin this paper with a repudiation of some of the possible implications of its title. I will not have the impertinence of a foreigner who, despite great admiration and greater affection for la France, would presume to hand down judgments upon her economic policies. Many and some of the most basic policies are so intimately part and parcel of French foreign policy and Gaullist ambitions for the Fifth Republic that a citizen of the United States, almost as a matter of principle, is incapable of thoroughly disinterested ethical analysis. Thus it would be inappropriate, if not unethical, for me to evaluate the French attitude toward British entry into the European Economic Community, apparent reluctance to grant significant tariff reductions under the Kennedy round, fear of domination from growing investments by U.S. Corporations, and so on. And, of course, it would also be improper to deal with the question of French aid to developing nations, even though that aid averaged above 2% of GNP from 1956 to 1961 and has only recently fallen to a level that is more than double the American effort.1 Similarly it would be unjustified interference in domestic affairs to comment upon the interesting and much discussed proposals for reform of the French business firm suggested by a distinguished public servant.2 And finally, even if it were possible to supress nationalistic bias, my personal value judgments might not be considered impartial inasmuch as they are akin to those of French citizens who are overly critical in a nation of critics. Active respect for another nation's policies and plan objectivity would seem to require a discreetly descriptive method, a tranquilizer in every sense of the word. Fortunately, however, there is one policy which the French themselves consider an exciting experiment, worthy of the new France and her revolutionary tradition?worthy, too, of imitation. It is almost certain that knowledgeable Frenchmen would object if an outsider were to confine himself to pallid description of their new institution of planning; rather his presentation should be in keeping with the stature of French planning which as now constituted is sufficiently developed to withstand easily most any adverse criticism.