Protests have been vocal, and in some cases, violent, with protestors burning effigies of French politicians and blocking roads and certain services. In Paris, workers have refused to collect garbage, which has been piling up on the streets for days, along with its sickening stench.
On Monday, Macron’s government narrowly survived two no-confidence votes. Unions have called for a massive nationwide day of protests on Thursday (March 23), Reuters reported.
The French penchant for protesting
The French are often perceived to have a penchant for protesting. While this stereotype might be slightly overblown, France boasts of a long history of anti-establishment social movements which have enjoyed a fair degree of success. Charles De Gaulle referred to it as his country’s “perpetual political effervescence”.
But certain data suggests that this perception might not be very accurate. Compared with other western democracies, especially in Europe, France does not statistically see a much greater number of protests. Neither are French citizens more agreeable to protests than their counterparts. However, while protest “might not be a uniquely French activity”, it remains “an important element of French culture and politics”, wrote political scientist Frank R Baumgartner.
Notably, Baumgartner adds, “some of its (protests’) forms in France are different than in other countries, and some types of protest appear to be more effective in France than in other countries”.
Political scientist Frank L Wilson, in ‘Political Demonstrations in France: Protest Politics Or Politics of Ritual?’, links this very visible image of a “protest society” to the colourful tactics used by demonstrators, their focus on Paris, and a firm anti-establishment position. To understand the unique culture of protest in France, one has to look back at the nation’s history.
Charivari and a “culture of retribution”
During the Middle Ages, a form of collective action known as ‘charivari’ was popular across many parts of Europe, including France, where both the word and the custom likely originated. The custom involved groups of young men surrounding people accused of having committed moral offences (for instance, having sex out of wedlock). They would then loudly bang pots and pans and shame the alleged offenders. Often, charivari would devolve into brutal retributive violence.
Over time, charivari started taking distinctly political tones, targeting figures such as corrupt officials or tax collectors. Thus, what used to be customs concerned with social transgression transformed into acts of political mobilisation, carrying with them both the raucousness as well as the violence of the charivari.
Historian William Beik writes that something that struck him while researching French urban history was what he called “a culture of retribution”. “Groups of relatively disenfranchised individuals from the middle to lower ranks of a local community, but lacking any formal institutional identity, would mobilise either spontaneously or after informal meetings and discussions, to attack an abuse of power by those in authority,” he writes.
The essence of traditions such as the charivari and the ‘culture of retribution’ can be found in today’s protests, often in more symbolic forms. For instance, during the current wave of protests, there have been multiple instances of effigy burnings of political leaders with “We beheaded Louis XVI and we can do it again with President Macron” being a common refrain.
The Revolution and the scepticism that followed
The French public guillotined Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, at the Place de la Concorde in Paris. This was a momentous occasion as the ‘public’ took power into its own hands, to remove a ruler seen as apathetic as well as to address systemic socio-economic problems. Crucially, the Revolution created French national consciousness as we know it, around the romantic ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
These ideals continue to be a central feature in France’s culture of protest with every protest eventually boiling down to citizens talking about upholding these ideals. At the same time, every perceived authoritarian figure also draws comparisons to Louis XVI.
Moreover, not only did the Revolution permanently cement the French public’s ‘anti-establishment’ credentials, what followed the Revolution also imbibed the populace with deep-lying cynicism that can be seen in France’s various intellectual traditions, all the way till de Beauvoir, Sartre and Foucault.
Unlike the idyllic utopia that the Revolution promised to bring, it brought instead the Jacobin Reign of Terror, Napoleon, and eventually, the strengthening of French capitalism and the modern nation-state. All this while the masses of France saw paltry improvements in their own lives. According to sociologist Charles Tilly, the gradual transformation of folk traditions such as the charivari to a cultural political protest has to be seen in this context. These traditions were kept alive in language that borrowed deeply from the intellectual currents surrounding the Revolution to respond to grievances that never quite went away.
France’s strong-weak unions
Today, the unique position of France’s extremely active unions explains the persistence of the nation’s protest culture, a Vox report suggests. Labour historian Stephan Sirot notes the paradoxical position of French unions. On one hand, France has the highest number of trade unions but on the other, it boasts among the lowest percentage of workers who are a part of the union, with the average number standing around 8 per cent of all workers (compared to 25 per cent in Europe).
“The political influence of French unions is abnormal,” Radu Vranceanu, research director at the Grande Ecole de Commerce in Paris, told Reuters. “It’s not at all in line with their capacity to mobilise people.”
These unions gain a lot of power not from their membership but from conditions (in the form of laws and rules) which are favourable to them. This makes them take extreme positions on anything they might have a disagreement with – they protest constantly lest their position be changed via executive fiat. On the part of the capitalist “management”, they too often begin negotiations in bad faith, starting off with an extreme, often untenable proposal before watering it down post the inevitable union protests.
“French unions must often stage radical action as a prerequisite for obtaining good faith negotiations that big unions in the UK and Germany are granted out of hand, out of management’s respect of their power,” political scientist Guy Groux told Time magazine.
The ritual of protest and the politics of ritual
Over time, protests have become an intrinsic part of France’s politics not as a way to shake the system but as a ritualised performance within it. “In France, contemporary political protests flow out of a rich history of contention that is full of drama and passion. Protest has become an important popular art in France,” Wilson wrote.
Major protests are near festive events with protesters often engaging in street dances and small gatherings in bars before and after the march. Yet the drama of France’s ritualised protests does not diminish their political value. Indeed much of the value, including strongly held stereotypes regarding protesting French persons, comes from the ritual of protest itself.
Wilson suggests that policymaking in response to protest events should not be the only measure of a protest’s efficacy. In fact, in France, protests usually crystallise over vetoing existing policies rather than proposing new ones (like we see currently with Macron’s Bill). Rather, the success of protests also lies in their ability to foster political consciousness, remind people of their power, and keep politicians inconvenienced and on their toes. In this, the ritualised theatrics of France’s protests play an all-important role.
A woman holds a placard depicting French President Emmanuel Macron sitting on garbage cans that reads, "king of trash", during a protest in Paris, Friday, March 17, 2023. (Photo: AP) 
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