Is France falling over?

In his slim, controversial book (La France qui tombe), French historian and economist Nicolas Baverez proclaims the economic and political decline of his homeland. Not surprisingly, French politicians of all stripes are taking requisite offence. The left, which governed the country from 1997 to 2002, faces accusations that it contributed to the decline through misguided social ‘‘innovations’’, such as the 35-hour work week, introduced precisely as global economic norms demand higher worker productivity. And the right, currently in power, remains paralysed by fear of social protest and does not dare implement the reforms needed to invigorate the economy. Critics have lampooned and caricatured Baverez’s arguments, whereas commentators in newspapers such as Le Monde have done little more than highlight the author’s factual errors. (For example, France’s private sector is generally considered far more competitive than the author suggests.) Nevertheless, La France qui tombe (France Is Falling Over) is the subject du jour among the social elite as well as France’s popular classes. Indeed, such mournful, soul-searching books are also popular in Germany these days — a regional phenomenon that The Economist calls European “declinism”…

In the international arena, the author contends that France remains frozen in a Cold War mindset. French leaders perceived the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the attacks of September 11, 2001, less as revolutionary events than as the mere continuation of 20th-century geopolitics, with al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden usurping the role of the Soviet Union. Baverez worries that if France clings to its feisty stubbornness on the global stage — evinced by its opposition to the United States during the war in Iraq — its leeway for diplomatic action will narrow dramatically…

In 2002, a similar book galvanised the French public by announcing the demise of another rich, powerful nation. French historian Emmanuel Todd’s After the Empire: An Essay on the Breakdown of the American System argued that the economic and military might of the United States was crumbling. But today, Baverez challenges French thinkers to look within and realise that their nuclear deterrent, the overvalued euro, and the reform stalemate in the public sector are undermining the nation’s standing in a rapidly changing global environment. Trapped in its statist model, Baverez contends, France is stagnating by refusing to open its eyes.

Excerpted from an article by Eric Le Boucher in the January/February issue of ‘Foreign Policy’