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Posted Sunday, April 14, 2002; 15.05GMT
Part of the nostalgia is for the kind of old-fashioned ideological
battle that animates the French spirit. Instead the country is getting
a sobering taste of centrist campaigning, to which many of its European
partners have long since adjusted. "In France people still have the
idea that you have to declare for the right or the left," says Henrik
Uterwedde, deputy director of the German-French Institute in Ludwigsburg,
Germany. "But it's not about socialism or freedom anymore, but rather
what are the most intelligent policies to keep the social balance."
The two main parties are straining to highlight differences that so
far leave much of the French electorate uninspired. Having launched
a platform that he characterized as "not socialist," Jospin has reacted
to a late dip in the polls by calling himself "the candidate of social
progress," promising both new tax cuts of more than 113 billion and
to balance the budget by 2004. Chirac has pledged 130 billion in tax
relief, aimed primarily at the middle class and at corporations, and
is in less of a hurry to balance the books. Both candidates want to
preserve France's pay-as-you-go pension system and expand tax-sheltered
savings plans to include more private employees. Chirac goes further
in promoting pension funds "à la française." Chirac
wants to make the law on the 35-hour week more flexible, but he isn't
going to reverse it. "That would mean a general strike, which would
cost us more than the 35-hour week does," admits his campaign spokesman,
Jérôme Peyrat. "It's a bad thing, but it's done."
The differences between the two main platforms are small, but their
camps feel compelled to pump them up with philosophical cant. "We're
the party of De Tocqueville, who believed that individuals are responsible
for their own acts," says Philippe Douste-Blazy, mayor of Toulouse
and an important ally of Jacques Chirac. "The Socialists are the party
of Sartre, who put responsibility on society." The distinction is
debatable, but it's an apt example of how to leave the public wondering
what you're talking about.
Whoever wins on May 5 will face a France disenchanted with the status
quo. Here are three key issues — plus some prescriptions for
injecting them into the political debate — that neither main
candidate seems willing to tackle head-on.
The State
The French are famously attached to — and rightfully proud of
— public services provided by the state. But it doesn't take
a neo-liberal Anglo-Saxon to point out that the state rules in many
areas that other actors could master just fine. "France unfortunately
needs laws to do things that other countries manage to negotiate,"
says prominent Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Finance
Minister. "That's a weakness." And it feeds a vicious circle. Take
France's fractious unions. Split into five confederations that together
claim only 9% of the workforce as members, the unions could never
have negotiated the 35-hour work week on their own. Yet they are so
weak because for decades the French government has extended collective
bargaining agreements to non-union employees. Thus French workers
see little advantage in being union members, since the state will
make sure they do fine.
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