Is Reform Possible in France?

I don't lose much sleep worrying over France's future, I assume France will find its way when it's ready to do so and there are plenty of other things to keep me awake at night. But France is a passionate subject for many people as a symbol of the choice
some countries make to trade equity and security for efficiency, or as a symbol of some other great battle of ideas, and pessimism exists about France's future in some quarters.

Is the assumption that France will find its way warranted? Here's an analysis of Frances ability and desire to to roll with the punches. The author, Raphaël Hadas-Lebel, "is a member of the Conseil d’Etat and Professor at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris":

Is France Unreformable?, by Raphaël Hadas-Lebel, Project Syndicate: It all begun a year ago with the French “No” in the referendum on the European Constitution. It continued last fall with the wave of violence in the suburbs. Now, France has again brought itself ... attention with weeks of street demonstrations against the “contract of first employment” (CFE) proposed ... to address high youth unemployment.

These three sets of events, different as they are, together illustrate several deep-seated characteristics of social life in France. First, France has found it difficult to adjust to the demands of globalization. Beyond ordinary dissatisfaction with economic problems, the failed referendum in May 2005 expressed the rejection by an important part of the French electorate of ... the primacy of economic competition.

In a similar vein, last fall’s explosion of violence in the suburbs reflected the frustrations of ... young people facing the grim prospects that a modern economy offers to those who lack proper training and education. The young are also at the center of the most recent protests, but this time, the disaffected include all strata of French youth, including university graduates. ... [T]hey ... refus[e] to accept a precarious life outside the French model of job security that their parents enjoyed in the context of a profoundly different economy.

There is something very French about all this..., the need for greater labor-market flexibility seems to have been accepted more easily in most other countries. In Spain, under a socialist government, roughly one-third of wage earners are working on temporary contracts; the percentage is even higher for the young. In Italy, greater employment flexibility was introduced ... in 1997, and further strengthened ...[in] 2003.

In Germany too, the coalition agreement ... includes a provision that extends from six months to two years the trial period during which an employee can be dismissed without explanation ... In all these European countries, the new employment laws seem to be accepted as inevitable.

In France, by contrast, the statist tradition – which, as Tocqueville so aptly observed, harks back to the Ancien Régime, and which is equally shared today by both the Gaullist and socialist ideologies – is strongly linked to a marked distaste toward the strictures of economic liberalism. Since the French Revolution, the imperative of equality has often triumphed over the concern for liberty. As a result, the French are enamored with the welfare state in all its manifestations.

Not even the obvious failures of the French social model in today’s environment ... have diminished its public prestige. It would be much more logical to take inspiration instead from the Scandinavian model of “flexisecurity,” ...

So is France unreformable? Certainly not. The country has been transformed profoundly in the recent decades. Whether it is the breakup of public monopolies, such as electricity, gas, telecommunications, and even the post office, or ... pension reform, France has changed much more than is commonly believed. This is particularly true with respect to French companies, which have remarkably adapted to ... international competition.

But much remains to be done: the entire educational system, up through the university level, requires serious reform, and many taboos regarding employment rules, social security, and the functioning of the state must be questioned. What the experience with the CFE shows is not that reform is impossible, but that it cannot be unilaterally imposed. Time must be taken for explanation, consultation, and negotiation. In a society like France, marked by uncertainty about the future and in great need of having its self-confidence restored, the time taken to build consensus and create legitimacy for further reforms will certainly be well spent.