4 - Skinny Politics

Summary

Chapter 4 analyzes the institutional factors fueling the contestation of economic liberalization. The dirigiste model was rooted in the premise that top-down governance, free of interference by interest groups, offered the best way to modernize the country. The institutions of the Fifth Republic reinforced this exclusionary orientation by centralizing power in the executive. While France’s top-down or “skinny” approach may be effective when governments are extending popular new benefits, it is problematic when they are trying to avoid blame for unpopular measures, as is generally the case with economic liberalization, since with concentrated power comes concentrated accountability. Despite this problem, Chapter 4 shows that French authorities have refused to break with skinny politics. In the late 1990s, the “social refoundation” tried to shift reform away from the contested political arena to negotiations among the social partners but was blocked by governments of left and right alike. Finally, through analyses of liberalizing initiatives during Chirac’s second presidency and the case of French pension reform, Chapter 4 shows that skinny politics almost invariably triggers popular contestation and, even when successful, tends to yield half-measures that antagonize the populace without fixing the fiscal and economic problems that motivated action in the first place.