French Politics

Besancenot to Bayrou or Bust

2009-12-06T14:20:00.004-05:00

As is well-known, Ségolène Royal would like to build a broad-based coalition on the left stretching, as she has put it, from "Besancenot to Bayrou." The alliteration works, but further details of how this might be accomplished have been slow to materialize. A couple of days ago she proposed an alliance with MoDem in the first round of the regionals. The PS (Hamon, Hollande) has now rejected this idea: no surprise there.

The strategy, though never very plausible, actually made more sense in 2007 than it does now. At the time, the "anybody but Sarkozy" sentiment was still high, polls showed Bayrou ahead of Ségo as a blocking candidate, and he had yet to make the disastrous showing in the European elections that has left him damaged goods. Then the abortive grand bargain between rounds 1 and 2 ("I'll make you prime minister if you back my presidency") failed to come off and thus did not turn Ségo into the John Quincy Adams of her generation and Bayrou into the Henry Clay.

The B2B strategy remains, and could be revived after the PS has chosen a candidate, but for the regionals it's a nonstarter. And anyway, the force to contend with for now is the Greens, not MoDem. A Green alliance would be healthier for the PS: it would force it to clarify its policy stance on several major issues. With MoDem, the prospect of agreement on the issues is always overshadowed by the prime mover in the relationship: tout sauf Sarkozy.

Will the Real France Please Step Forward?

2009-12-06T08:53:00.001-05:00

From Rue89:

"Le grand débat sur l'identité nationale, lancé par Eric Besson, n'est pas seulement rejeté par la gauche. A droite, de plus en plus de voix s'élèvent contre ce coup politique, au point que Nicolas Sarkozy donne l'impression de s'être retiré du débat."

But:

"Quant au porte-parole de l'UMP, Frédéric Lefebvre, il s'est à nouveau distingué de ses collègues en prenant la défense du maire de Gussainville :

« Je ne partage pas les propos qu'il a tenus, mais en même temps, ce que je veux dire, c'est qu'il est maire d'une commune de 40 habitants. Il y a beaucoup de petits villages comme ça qui font la France. Il y a une
inquiétude en France. Ce que je n'aime pas, c'est la manière dont tout le monde lui tombe dessus. » "

How Unshockable Are the French?

2009-12-06T08:06:00.002-05:00

Asked and answered. I'm not so sure. What makes these kinds of scandal so damaging elsewhere is the amplification and repetition by the tabloids and cable stations. The French media are on the whole more deferential to politicians. But perhaps that is changing as well, as Bernard Girard believes. And for some transgressions, there is no tolerance.

A Stupendous (and Absurd) Statistic

2009-12-05T15:09:00.004-05:00

If you think things are bad in France, try Britain, which, according to Le Nouvel Obs, has achieved a mathematically unprecedented level of distress:

Ruinées par la chute de l'immobilier, qui donne souvent à leur maison une valeur inférieure à leur dette, rendues enragées par l'écart croissant entre leur niveau de vie et celui des super-riches épargnés par la crise, alors que 60% de la population vit au-dessous du revenu médian, les classes moyennes se rebiffent.

Since by definition 50% of any population is below the median and 50% above, one has to conclude that things have gone really haywire ~~in Britain~~ at Le Nouvel Obs (h/t Arthur Charpentier).

Marks on Flu Vaccinations

2009-12-05T14:44:00.004-05:00

This is a guest post from my friend Harry Marks, who teaches the history of medecine at Johns Hopkins. Harry writes:

I was intrigued by the "H1NI vaccination" thread of a few days ago. There has not been a lot written, to my knowledge, either about the development of vaccination policy in France, or about anti-vaccination attitudes historically (in contrast to places likes Germany/UK/India where the story--for smallpox at least--has been well done. That said, I was able to find some data specifically on influenza vaccination over the past decade. As the attached graphic suggests, France was in the low-middling range of vaccination rates in the early part of the decade. While Germany and the UK dominate in the rankings (upwards of 30% in recent years), France has moved away from Spain and Italy and is now roughly average. The study (Infection, 2009, 37: 390-400) also offers some intriguing but a bit ambiguous data about why people in different countries get vaccinated against the flu. In Germany and the UK, upwards of 3/4 report "advice from the family physician" as one of the most influential motives, whereas in France, that figure is 32%, far the lowest. Whether that means that French physicians don't push vaccination, or whether it means that the advice of their physicians is not a strong motivator, is not clear from the article. In any case, before we make a special case of the H1N1 campaign, we probably ought to compare it to the customary rates of influenza vaccination. (click on graph to enlarge)

Compromise on La Taxe Pro

2009-12-05T10:33:00.003-05:00

The government and the Senate have struck a compromise on the reform of la taxe professionnelle. This tax will be replaced by une contribution économique territoriale, which will be assessed on corporate real estate on value added but will be lighter than the taxe pro by some 4.3 billion euros. How will the shortfall be made up? Doesn't the new ~~tax~~, er, make that contribution, perpetuate the negative economic effects of the old?

Since the elimination of the TP was to have been the compensation to businesses for accepting the carbon tax, will they feel betrayed? Will the mayors (who are strongly represented in the Senate and who strongly opposed the repeal of the TP) be satisfied with the new compromise?

Many questions, few answers.

Mignon Leaving Elysee

2009-12-05T07:52:00.001-05:00

Emmanuelle Mignon, Sarkozy's dircab at the Elysée and one of the brains behind his election campaign, is leaving her job.

Obama Will Come to the Dance

2009-12-05T07:43:00.004-05:00

President Obama has changed his plans and will return to Copenhagen for the final round of negotiations on the environment. President Sarkozy says that he's pleased, although he's been a having a good time as the world's point man on ecopolitics, whereas Obama will now upstage him. Sarko might take this amiss, since Obama's actual greenhouse gas reduction proposal is disappointing, and the French have in fact taken more effective action on this issue. But if anyone knows that symbolism can trump substance, it's Sarkozy. Perhaps he'll be pleased that Obama has learned this lesson. He can even take credit for it if he wishes.

Sarkozy's statement:

Le président français, Nicolas Sarkozy, a immédiatement accueilli cette annonce "avec beaucoup de satisfaction", jugeant que cette décision "témoigne de l'importance accordée par les Etats-Unis au succès de cette conférence sur le climat".

UMP Caught With Pants Down

2009-12-05T07:23:00.003-05:00

Pour son clip, l'UMP achète les vidéos d'une agence US
by zap-tele

The UMP has done it again. (h/t MYOS)

Discretion

2009-12-04T20:43:00.000-05:00

Esther Benbassa (h/t Susan Emanuel):

Avec son obsession des minarets, la Suisse n'innove guère. Jusqu'à la Révolution, en France, les juifs n'étaient autorisés à construire une synagogue qu'à condition qu'elle ne soit pas visible de l'extérieur et que le culte ne s'entende pas au dehors.

Yet Another Le Pen

2009-12-04T10:47:00.001-05:00

Granddaughter Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, age 19, launches her political career.

Is the Vampire Dead?

2009-12-04T05:28:00.004-05:00

Even those disappointed by the outcome of the 2007 presidential election could console themselves with one thing: Sarkozy had killed off the Front National. Or so went the conventional wisdom: by co-opting its favorite themes, xenophobia and insecurity, he had brought errant voters back into the fold of the respectable right. Even I allowed myself to believe this, although even at the time the logic seemed a bit peculiar: does one really discredit an ideology by adopting it? I suppose the idea was that the sulfurous issues would be buried by the avalanche of less questionable reforms with which they became associated.

But now it seems that the FN may be making a comeback. It isn't just the government's loss of control of the identity debate. It isn't just the Swiss vote on the minarets. It isn't just one UMP mayor's allusion to the ten million idlers who are supposedly living at the expense of la France qui se lève tôt. And it isn't just Marine Le Pen's clever exploitation of Frédéric Mitterrand's nomination. I think the source of the uneasiness lies much deeper. It's a reaction to the crisis and to the sense that at the midpoint of the Sarkozy presidency, not much has changed at the grass roots and it seems unlikely that much will change. So the old worries about decline, stagnation, and helplessness are resurfacing. In the midst of economic distress, workers' anxiety has not translated itself into working-class militancy, and the left has not managed to articulate a persuasive alternative to current policy. So what remains but the old demons? And against them the left seems to feel that it must raise the ghosts of once-vital ideals: in this editorial Laurent Joffrin manages to conjure up Valmy, the Commune, Jean Jaurès, and Jean Moulin in the space of a single sentence.

It's pitiful, really. And it's not Eric Besson's fault. He was just the Zeitgeist's useful idiot.

Credit Where No Credit Is Due

2009-12-04T05:16:00.002-05:00

I wish the Shanghai rankings would just disappear. Sarkozy's ludicrous misuse of them is only the latest of reasons. But there are many others. The president has said that French universities suffer from a lack of evaluation of their results. If this is an example of how he proposes to use evaluation, taking credit for infinitesimal improvements in a dubious ranking for which his reform cannot in any case have been responsible, he would do better to roll dice.

Two Ways to Discuss Identity Politics

2009-12-03T14:24:00.003-05:00

The Dutch way (Ian Buruma reports in The New Yorker, not free).
The French way (dissected by Libé political correspondents).

Parité in the Boardroom

2009-12-03T08:47:00.004-05:00

The parité law has worked so fantastically well in the political sphere that the pols now want to impose it on the corporate sphere. Half of all board seats in French corporations will have to be filled by women by 2015 if the UMP has its way. One suspects yet another of the brilliant divide-and-conquer maneuvers that Sarkozy has used so effectively against the left. Who could be against apple pie and motherhood? Why, the republican egalitarians of the Unreconstructed Left of course! Everything to women as individuals, nothing to women as a gender, some latter day Clermont-Tonnerre* might intone. Jean-François Copé, who sees the fairest présidentiable of them all in the mirror every morning when he shaves, seems prepared to volunteer for the role of Defender of Womanhood, however, so the fair sex need not despair at the prospect of being held hostage by Jean-Pierre Chevènement.

* It was Clermont-Tonnerre who said in 1791 "il faut tout refuser aux Juifs comme Nation et tout leur accorder comme individus."

The Flu Fiasco

2009-12-03T08:09:00.002-05:00

Charles Bremner reports on Sarko's wrath at the way flu vaccinations have been handled. I wrote earlier about the strange French reluctance to be vaccinated. But now the predictable has happened: reports of numerous deaths from swine flu have sent millions of people flocking to previously empty government inoculation centers. The army and medical students have been pressed into service to help meet the demand, but health minister Roselyne Bachelot refuses to authorize private practitioners to handle the overflow. Why? Because the state would have to reimburse them at the tune of 20 to 30 euros per injection. You can do the math.

What a mess.

Titillating Denial

2009-12-03T08:02:00.003-05:00

There's nothing like a denial to accredit a rumor ...

Move over, Tiger Woods! But here's a question for M. Gattegno: Were you in the bathroom with Sarko and DSK? Did you hear the exchange? If not, where did you get your information? If it came from the Elysée, well, then, doesn't it lend credence to Strauss-Kahn's charges? Surely it didn't come from DSK. What are you practicing, anyway: le journalisme du caniveau ou le journalisme des chiottes?

University Reform

2009-12-03T07:38:00.002-05:00

Bruno Cousin and Michèle Lamont offer a thoughtful reflection on French university reform. Their bottom line:

In our view, fixing the current flaws in the French system does not merely demand organisational reforms, including giving academics more time to evaluate the research of colleagues and candidates properly. It may also require French academics to think long and hard about their own cynicism and fatalism concerning their ability to make judgments about quality that would not be driven by cronyism or particularism, and that would honour their own expertise and connoisseurship.

Not that proper governmental reform is not needed, but sometimes blaming the Government may be an easy way out. Above all, it is increasingly a very ineffectual way of tackling a substantial part of the problem. A little more collaborative thinking and a little less cynicism among both academics and administrators - if at all possible - may very well help French universities find a way out of the crisis. And it will help the French academic and research community to become, once again, much more than the sum of its parts.

The French Are Coming!

2009-12-03T06:44:00.003-05:00

... and all Britain is up in arms. "A gutter populism unworthy of a great country" is the way some in the City see President Sarkozy's disobliging remarks about the UK being the "big loser" in the dickering over EU commission nominations. To hear the French tell it, placing Barnier in his new job as regulator of the markets will transform capitalism forever. A new day has dawned, and the British are reeling.

But let's keep things in perspective. The City is still the City, and the EU is still only the EU. How many battalions has Mr. Van Rompuy?

Master of the Universe

2009-12-01T11:06:00.003-05:00

Charles Bremner's portrait of Sarkozy as master of ~~the universe~~ Europe. Well, measured against Gordon Brown, perhaps ...

Candidate, SWF, Seeks Voters 18-80

2009-12-01T10:29:00.003-05:00

Ségolène Royal is opening her Web site up for personal ads--la solidarité participative, she calls it. I hope she has someone who can monitor the posts more closely than Eric Besson is monitoring his site (see previous post). Otherwise, bravitude could quickly turn into téméritude, pour ne pas dire lubricitude.

Eric Besson's Web Site

2009-12-01T09:28:00.003-05:00

Bernard G calls attention to some offensive comments posted on Eric Besson's Web site. I will omit giving further publicity to the racist character of the comments. What strikes me, though, is the quality of the writing, which makes these posts self-discrediting. Consider, for example, the following: leurs opignons, signe instantatoires, auront nous, nos politiqes, magrébine, soit disant.

The racism is shocking enough, but O! the spelling! the grammar! Où sont les neiges d'antan?

See also this post of Bernard's on the Right's exploitation of the Swiss minaret vote.

Growing Up

2009-12-01T08:43:00.002-05:00

Willem Buiter, alas, feels he must grow up by accepting a job as CitiGroup's chief economist. Hence he is shutting down his excellent Maverecon blog:

Academics have no duty other than to state the truth as they see it - to ’speak truth to power’. This gives them the ability to be undiplomatic, blunt, tactless and outspoken in ways that are unacceptable in the wider world - the world of grown-ups.

The world of grown-ups? Are these the same grown-ups who invested in an indoor ski slope in a Dubai shopping mall? Or cavorted at the Plastix club "for the filthy rich and aesthetically perfect" (by its own account)? Sometimes the crassness, vulgarity, and sheer stupidity--nay, immorality--of the "grown-up world" just turns one's stomach. Prof. Buiter, I wonder how long you'll be able to stick it out. There are pleasures in remaining "undiplomatic, blunt, tactless, and outspoken."

Uncle Sam Wants Vous!

2009-11-30T14:28:00.003-05:00

Sarko finally got the long-awaited call from Obama, but perhaps not exactly the call he would have liked. Obama wants 1,500 more French troops in Afghanistan. This is not only a tall (perhaps impossible) order for the French militarily, it is a tough one for the French president politically. With regional elections ahead and a French public firmly against the war in Afghanistan, he stands to lose support if he helps out the American president, who hasn't exactly endeared himself to his French counterpart. But if he holds back, he strengthens the hand of those in the US, mainly on the right, who say that the Europeans, and most especially the French, are all talk and no action and that there is no point in seeking a more multilateral foreign policy--not an outcome that Sarkozy wants.

To be sure, consultation with allies doesn't seem to have ranked much higher on Obama's agenda than it did on Bush's when push came to shove. The US military does not like coordinating with foreign forces, hamstrung as they are by complex (and politically motivated) rules of engagement and hindered by different doctrines, incompatible equipment, and all the rest. Of course there is also a symbolic dimension to the commitment of forces to Afghanistan, and this is surely not lost on Sarkozy, who operates more in the realm of symbolism than of hardware in any case. But to an unusual degree the American request for aid this time may be operational as well as symbolic. Now that the commitment is made, and a timetable apparently set, boots on the ground count, if only to hold territory already cleared. So any foot-dragging by Sarkozy will only further sour relations.

As for what Sarkozy really thinks of Obama's decision, as opposed to the various calculations, electoral as well as military, that may figure in his response, only time will tell. If there's anything Sarko does not want, it's a commitment to a subaltern role in what could well turn out to be a protracted, costly, and unwinnable war.

Newsweek Attacks Sarkonomics

2009-11-30T11:18:00.003-05:00

Newsweek has published a long and very critical attack on Sarkozy's economics. Some of the charges are old--Sarko is really a Colbertist, not a neoliberal, he flies by the seat of his pants, etc.--and some are more on target than others. On the whole, I would describe the tone of the piece as, "You think state intervention in the economy looks good now, but wait until the bill comes due." Hence it might be better to read this as a veiled attack on American interventionism since the crisis than as a measured assessment of French policy, which has its strong points and its weak points. Still, this is unusually thorough coverage of French politics for an American newsweekly.