“For Bavarez, France is threatened with becoming a museum diplomatically and a transit center economically. To do anything about it, it must revive itself internally first, getting away from what he calls its ’social statist model.’ To advance, it must end the dominant role of a ’public sector placed outside of any constraint requiring productivity or competitiveness.’

Is this code for privatisation and deregulation ?

Also, let’s follow the money…
Who pays Bavarez’s salary ?
Would they benefit in the solutions that he proposes ?

Making France into a whipping post is becoming something of an international sport so it’s worth staking out a qualified defence least the French come to appear a nation of irrationals, which looks at odds with its distinguished national history of achievement in higher mathematics. At least some of those who came to be regarded as embodying the very essence of the French establishment, like Delors, came from humble origins. Whatever else, its education institutions have provided a genuinely meritocratic escalator of a kind.

As mentioned before, France’s tradition of statism has deep historic roots going back at least to Colbert and Mercantilism, at the time of Louis XIV, through Napoleon’s Continental System. The critique of this from the Anglo-Saxon tradition is fairly familiar territory - starting with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) - but for all that the French economy now does have impressive productivity per HOUR worked, even by American standards, as this entirely independent source documents: Tables 1 and 2 in Mary O’Mahony and Willem de Boer on Britain’s Relative Productivity Performance (2002) at: http://www.niesr.ac.uk/research/BRPP02.pdf

It just happens that the French prefer to take out the benefits of high productivity through longer holidays, shorter working weeks, earlier retirement, and a higher unemployment rate and lower employment rate compared with America - or Britain. However, that choice is not inherently irrational. Average life expectancy is longer in France than in America despite a substantially high total spending rate on healthcare in America, public and private combined. There are those who live to work and those who work to live.

Nor was opposition to the Iraq war irrational. It is a mistake to believe that the position of France’s government on the Iraq war is unique or even unusual in Europe. By many reports, polls show most Europeans hold similar opinions even in countries where governments have supported the war with forces or just cheering on the side-lines. The notion that only the benighted French in Europe opposed the war is just comforting propaganda issued by the Bush administration. Besides, with a muslim population of 5m+ in a total of 60m, the French government was probably mindful of the potential threat to internal security had it supported the war.

What perhaps most irritates other Europeans is the habit French governments have of agreeing to and even cheering on new EU rules and then ignoring or breaching the rules, very likely elevating the violation into a new categorical imperative. In the French perspective, it seems rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise. But then that can be a supremely rational position to take if you can keep getting away with it.

Pity the link to the IHT is not correct.

@Patrick “Who pays Bavarez’s salary ?” Make an accusation or don’t speak. I don’t know mr Bavarez so in your comments I see only an insinuation.

@Bob. “In the French perspective, it seems rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise. But then that can be a supremely rational position to take if you can keep getting away with it.” And that’s your way of defending France?
I’m against France-bashing as much as I am against US-bashing. The present French government however causes annoyances to say the least.
The attitude towards the EU-members to be on Iraq were very arrogant. I opposed the attack on Iraq too (more specifically going to war without enough worldwide support) but I regret strongly the fact that the alternative approach was a very poor one.
Although I don’t agree with Zalm’s critics on France’s deficit in relation to the SGP I am irritated on a regular basis by the arrogance of the French government on European issues. But it’s not just the French government; it’s not even just governments of the bigger EU-countries it’s the governments in general.
On this I can repeat my comment on another post: governmentleaders use divergence of views in Europe to get support in their own country.
“For the renewal of democratic politics in general in my opinion it’s necessary that the role of political parties is diminished in favor of independent politicians. To avoid populism and demagogy it’s crucial that the voting system is changed toward more indirect elections.
For a sound future of European politics it’s vital that regions and interest groups speak out and debate with likeminded as well as opposing groups in the rest of Europe independent from their government leaders.”

On “Besides, with a muslim population of 5m+ in a total of 60m, the French government was probably mindful of the potential threat to internal security had it supported the war.”
If this was an important argument for Chirac he should be accused of cowardice (saving Markku the trouble).

“The present French government however causes annoyances to say the least.”

As long as any French government cares about the will of its population, it will cause this kind of annoyances. Well in fact it does not matter for it to be French…

If you think France has been arrogant, you do not know what is arrogance. Look at Aznar…

DSW

Frans,
As a Franco-American living in the U.S., I don’t know Bavarez either.

But per Paul Krugman (I believe) there are a number of economists that work for Washington D.C. thinktanks whose role is not economics per se, but in dressing up their sponsors’ ambitions in economically-plausible language and giving it the credibility of their academic credentials. It evidently pays better than a career in academia.

I am not making an accusation that this is the case, but I am open to the possibility that such is not strictly a U.S. phenomenom.

I am familiar with how public sector services and safeguards can be privatized and deregulated in the name of efficiency and productivity…

..And any economist worth his salt should know how uniformly lousy is the track record for such privatizations.

But Like I said, I am not making an accusation, I am more interested if somebody else here can address this concern one way or another.

“And any economist worth his salt should know how uniformly lousy is the track record for such privatizations.”

Oh really? Why don’t you provide us with some evidence for what seems to be a clearly nonsensical and unsupportable generalization? What exactly does “lousy” mean in your vocabulary?

“What exactly does “lousy” mean in your vocabulary?”

Careful here Abiola, maybe you got the wrong word, maybe you should be asking about ’uniformly’.

I guess Patrick might be thinking about the privatised part of the British railway system, which seems to have a very bad reputation across Europe. Now this reputation, like the bad reputation of the US public pensions system, may not be merited (?).

I could offer the examples of Telefonica in Spain, or France Telecom as examples of what seem to be pretty ’lousy’ privatisations. What do I mean by lousy, that they more-or-less rob the small investors in the stock markets, and then leverage their monopoly position to make everyone pay a second time for all their losses. Here we effectively have ’taxation without representation’.

Does this mean it is ’uniformly’ lousy, not at all. Privatisation in principle can be a very positive thing, but we are back to the same problem, if it is done ideologically (or opposed ideologically) we aren’t going to get the best result. What we need are services and industries that work, and this may mean here one solution works, and there another.

Enjoying the discussion - a quick note in re the link to the full article:

It looks like the Hairy Trib puts a cookie on my machine that lets me access the search results, but that also prevents me from reaching the original. If anyone knows how to get a better link from their archives, please let me know. I have the feeling this won’t be the last IHT article I will want to quote from.

To find this article, you can search for the author, John Vinocur, and select “For its intellectuals, France falters,” published on October 2, 2003.

Bob writes: “In the French perspective, it seems rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of the wise. But then that can be a supremely rational position to take if you can keep getting away with it.”

Yes, precisely. But is that any way to try to lead an ever closer union?

It seems a leadership method that will bring at best grudging acceptance but more likely will bring balancing coalitions.

Take the appointment of J-C Trichet to the second half of Wim Duisenberg’s term as president of the ECB. What is Trichet’s primary qualification? He is French. That’s it, an accident of birth. As it happens, he was by all reports quite decent as head of the Bank of France. Apart from judicial troubles that might have embarrassed a Chicago ward boss, much less a central banker, he was not obviously unfit for the post. But was he the best choice? We’ll never know because the debate was cut off because Trichet is French.

Objectively speaking, French influence has been eroding since the first expansion of the European communities. Some French leaders, such as Delors, have driven the European project forward by adapting to these changes. Chirac seems to be the most prominent example of a view of Europe (much less the world) stuck somewhere around 1964 - nascent European institutions with six members and Germany still metaphorically in sackcloth and ashes.

Reality is giving this view a rough treatment. In an EU-25, simply being French will not be sufficient qualification for important EU posts. Given the present French government’s treatment of the new members, simply being French may well be sufficient disqualification.

Edward,
’Does this mean it is ’uniformly’ lousy, not at all. Privatisation in principle can be a very positive thing’

In the absense of an actual counter-example, I stand by my statement.

However, you gave some good examples, but at the time I was actually thinking more about the Russian privatisations, and the privatisation of water monopolies in South America, and the privatisation of prisons that have occured in some U.S. States.

You might also want to read what Steve Gilliard has to say about Edison Schools (privatized schools):
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2003_09_21_stevegilliard_archive.html

“Edison demonstrates the flaws inherent in privatizating public services. The profit motive is not strong enough to make people do things they may not want to do. People forget the legacy of public service and the lengths that people will go to in living up to their responsibilities. It may seem like a way to cut costs and improve services, but that’s only in optimal situations.

The problem with private companies is that they have incentives to cut costs in ways government doesn’t. The implication is that government is both ineffiecent and corrupt and neither is necessarily true.”