‘Decline or Renewal’: France and the Hoffmann Paradigm

Abstract

Students of French politics often puzzle over why a country that has experienced deep economic and social change over the past quarter-century should find it so difficult to enact political reforms. Some find the explanation in the fact that globalization and Europeanization have reduced the power of national government in ways that are especially important in countries where statist traditions once supported large-scale economic and social interventions. But the gap between a dynamic society and a stalemate politics is hardly a new one for France. Fifty years ago, at the end of the Fourth Republic, the French also despaired of their government and of their chances of reforming it. The advent to power of General de Gaulle opened a period of transformation in which changes that had long been in the works in the economy and society could break through. Today again, even with leadership of a less heroic stripe, change at the top might have a similarly liberating effect.