The French Exception

Sophie Meunier

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2000

Summary:  Anti-Americanism and a stubborn Gaullist independence in foreign policy have often marked French political discourse. These traits are coming to the fore once again in France's wildly popular antiglobalization movement. Today, a complex mix of political, economic, and cultural reasons explains the French resistance to "Anglo-Saxon global capitalism." If sustained, France's stand could become a model for other countries seeking an alternative to the new, American-style world economy.

Sophie Meunier is Research Associate at the Center of International Studies and Lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Discourse on globalization has toughened since the end of the Cold War. In most democracies, capitalism's triumph led to a narrowing of ideological differences as politicians across the spectrum embraced the market. In France, this led first to consensus politics, the uneventful rule of cohabitation, and the adoption of what critics refer to as "la pensee unique" -- a uniform way of thinking about economic issues. But now, instead of acknowledging the "end of ideology," French intellectuals and politicians are entering a period of fertile ideological renewal. As a result, the political opposition has had to crystallize around a new cause: the relation between France and its borders.

Indeed, since last summer resistance to globalization has drawn support from all parts of civil society: farmers, labor groups, environmentalists, journalists, academics, and filmmakers. Even soccer players and coaches have demonstrated against the WTO and globalization to protest the advent of capitalism in sports management. Given such breadth of popular sentiment, French politicians have been forced to follow. The extremist parties have seized on the antiglobalization cause as the logical continuation of their traditional combat against free trade. And the mainstream parties have been unable to withstand the extraordinary appeal of this movement in public opinion.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac, who will likely run against each other in the 2002 presidential election, are both wooing the antiglobalization movement. Paradoxically, the socialist Jospin is pursuing the most ambitious program of privatization to date while preaching the necessity of regulating trade and railing against the excesses of the market. For his part, the Gaullist Chirac thunders about France's world role and the need for a head-to-head confrontation with the United States. This two-track attack, like Bove's antics, is widely acclaimed. In an October 1999 poll in L'Expansion, 60 percent of those surveyed said that globalization directly worsened social inequalities and threatened French identity -- even though 50 percent also claimed that globalization was responsible for economic growth.

Globalization's most direct political consequence has been the implosion and recomposition of the right. For more than a decade, France had three conservative parties: the economically liberal Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF), the Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), and the xenophobic National Front. But as the left increasingly adopted many of the right's traditional policies (like economic liberalism), conservatives found themselves in disarray. The right's politicians began to defect from the big parties and founded a multitude of small parties, ad hoc electoral lists, and opportunistic alliances. The global challenge now presents the big parties with an opportunity to reform along clear lines: those who accept globalization and those who do not. As a result, centrists and the UDF have finally embraced European integration and global economic liberalization. Meanwhile, globalization's opponents defected to the new "souverainiste" party -- the Rassemblement pour la France (RPF), created by Charles Pasqua in November 1999 -- with the goal of protecting France's sovereignty, values, and social cohesion. This leaves the Gaullist RPR in search of an identity and a mobilizing theme. As for the National Front, its strength might dwindle further as its less extremist voters flock to the RPF until only the hard core of xenophobic supporters is left.

Globalization could also spur an ideological renewal on the left. The Socialist Party has already embraced both European integration and globalization, albeit in a harnessed and controlled form. In October 1999, the socialist deputés recommended that the EU play a leading role in defending a "civilization model" that would respect economic, social, and cultural differences. Since then, Jospin has tried hard to distinguish himself from his European social-democrat counterparts, rejecting a Blairite "third way" of social liberalism in favor of a distinctly socialist approach to market economics. Other leftists have not been eager to embrace globalization at all. Jean-Pierre Chevènement's "Mouvement des Citoyens," for example, has developed a souverainiste message of the left that warns of losing national sovereignty, state centralism, and democratic accountability.

The Communist Party, meanwhile, has been ideologically galvanized. Denouncing market capitalism and American "totalitarianism" could give the Communists new adherents -- or at least stop the hemorrhage of their current supporters. Other alternative parties, such as the Greens, could also profit from antimarket discontent, as could nongovernmental organizations, which have traditionally been weak in French politics. New activist organizations, such as the Observatoire de la mondialisation, the Coordination pour le contrôle citoyen de l'OMC, and Attac (which counted more than 23,000 members in May) have already proved themselves players to be reckoned with, as was demonstrated by the Seattle mobilization.

HOMEGROWN

One crucial impact of globalization on French politics may well be the end of agricultural corporatism. Since World War II, French farmers have been united under the powerful Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d'Exploitants Agricoles (FNSEA), whose policy has long been to build up agricultural productivity and exports through the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the name of food self-sufficiency. The FNSEA has traditionally had direct ties to political leaders and a virtual monopoly on agricultural lobbying. The French got used to the FNSEA's protectionist ways. Whenever farmers disagreed with public policy, they took their violent protests to the streets until the government backed down. The public reluctantly went along, agreeing to pay astronomical subsidies to agriculture to preserve a rural way of life that the FNSEA pretended to defend. The FNSEA thus skillfully obtained government protection from external competition and made France the world's second-largest agricultural exporter, after the United States.

But the globalization debate is transforming the FNSEA's privileged political position. The French farmers who captured headlines in 1999 were not, for once, FNSEA supporters but members of the Confederation Paysanne (CP), a small organization with roots in the leftist movement of May 1968. The CP was created in 1987 to represent small farmers and challenge the FNSEA's industrialist agricultural policy. Bové and François Dufour, the CP's current leaders, insist on preserving the rural landscape and way of life in recognition of agriculture's "multifunctionality." The CP's actions during the summer of 1999 were therefore far different from the fnsea's usual corporatist violence. Bové and his followers revolted against food tampering from a cultural and a public-health perspective, portraying their cause as concerning not just farmers but society as a whole. This approach has won the CP support across the political spectrum, from the Greens to the right-wing souverainistes. The CP's appeal will likely continue to grow as the public becomes more aware of the extent of French agriculture's "industrialization," which has been publicized in recent food scares, and tires of the FNSEA's blackmail. If the CP establishes a durable alliance with consumers and environmentalists, it may deal a fatal blow to the FNSEA's monopoly. Since the CP advocates an end to trade-distorting export subsidies -- which only reinforce the industrialized nature of French agriculture -- it stands to radically transform the French position on cap and the prospects for an international agreement on agricultural subsidies.

L'EUROPE, C'EST MOI