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The French state in the international economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

John Zysman
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Extract

The French state bureaucracy, able partially to shelter itself from Parliament and to influence the industrial sector directly, has been able to protect national interests in an economically interdependent world. It struck a regional bargain that committed agriculture to the European Community and in effect provided a German subsidy to French farmers. It mediated between the national and international market to promote industrial modernization and force a restructuring of critical industrial sectors. It has grown increasingly sophisticated in its dealings with multinational companies. Early efforts to insist on purely French operations have been abandoned, permitting the state to negotiate more effectively with the multinationals and obtain substantive rather than symbolic goods. These policies have cushioned agriculture's transition into an industrial world and helped pressure a previously protected industry to modernize. Finally, the state has played trader, trying directly to market French goods and assure payment for imports in package trade deals. The French have not been able to impose their own rules on monetary and energy matters. Yet their efforts suggest that a nation-state can use administrative or domestic economic resources to reduce its vulnerability to international developments, though it cannot of course escape from the system.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 839 - 877
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1977

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References

1 Critical industry as used here is a political, not an economic, label, reflecting the state's priorities, not inherent economic values. In an important sense the traditional and modern sectors in French industry are political, not economic, facts, depending on legislative and bureaucratic definitions as much as on any industrial or market logic. For an elaborate analysis of such a phenomenon see Suzanne Berger, “Why Traditional Classes Survive,” (unpublished paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

2 Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

3 Tilly, Charles, “Food Supply and Public Order in Modern Europe,” in Tilly, , ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

4 See in particular Kindleberger, Charles, The World in Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

5 Keohane, Robert O., and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977), p. 13Google Scholar.

6 Part of this section, particularly the notion of the institutional structure in the economy and the description of the state bureaucracy, and part of section III, particularly the discussion of three cases of industrial intervention, draw heavily from Zysman, John, Political Strategies for Industrial Order: Market State and Industry in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

7 Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

8 La Palombara, Joseph, Italy: The Politics of Planning (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.

9 Suleiman, Ezra, Politics, Power and Bureaucracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid.

11 Vernon, Raymond, Big Business and the State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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13 McArthur, John H., and Scott, Bruce R., Industrial Planning in France (Boston: Harvard University Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, 1969)Google Scholar.

14 For a discussion of French growth that focuses on the new mentality created by new men and institutions, see Kindleberger's, Charles article, “The Post-War Resurgence of the French Economy,” in Hoffman, Stanley et al. , In Search of France: The Economy, Society, and Political System in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963)Google Scholar. See also Cohen, Stephen, Modern Capitalist Planning: The French Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)Google Scholar. Recent memoirs of Monnet, Jean, Memoires (Paris: Fayard, 1976)Google Scholar, and Laine, Francois Bloch, Profession Fonctionaire (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1976)Google Scholar add substantially to our understanding.

15 The American literature on integration certainly maintained a vision of the European Community as a bold new venture, a view that is no longer shared by the Europeans or the authors themselves.

16 One can find evidence for these views both in the logic of the choices and in contemporary and current interpretations of the period.

17 This argument is developed in Zysman, Chapter 3.

18 This is not to say that the administrative elite of the Fourth Republic suddenly was transformed into a political bureaucracy in the Fifth. Not at all. Simply the form of political involvement changed as the focus of political authority shifted from parliament to the executive.

19 See Hoffmann, Stanley, “De Gaulle's Foreign Policy: The State and the Play, The Power and the Glory,” in Decline or Renewal: France Since the 1930's (New York: Viking Press, 1974)Google ScholarPubMed.

20 Strange, Susan, “International Monetary Relations,” in Vol. 2 of International Economic Relations of the Western World 1959–71, Andrew Shonfeld, ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

21 Haberer, Yves, Les Fonctions du Trésor et la Politique Financiere (Paris: Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris 1975–1976)Google Scholar.

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23 Giscard's own policies as President have down-played the open role of the state in reorganizing French industry, but there is no reason to argue he would have opposed the 1960s policy of expansion and reorganization. It is unclear whether he was replaced because of his economic philosophy, his previous deflationary policy, or some other political issue.

24 Military Balance 1976–1977 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1976)Google Scholar.

25 This general argument is based on a reading of policy documents analyzing industrial organization and industrial strategy. It is elaborated in Chapter 5 of Political Strategies.

26 Ibid., Chapters 3 and 7.

27 See, for example,de Montbrial, Thierry, Le Désordre Economique Mondiale (Paris: Seuil, 1974)Google Scholar.

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30 L'Expansion (November, 1976): 203.

31 Laulan, Yves, Le Physiologie de la France (Paris: Cujas, 1976), p. 97Google Scholar.

32 Eck, pp. 135–200.

33 Haberer, pp. 193–99.

34 These statistics are from Green, , and Bacon, Robert and Eltis, Walter, Britain's Economic Problem (London: Macmillan Press, 1976), p. 2Google Scholar.

35 Mr. H. Aujac, former director of the BIPE, has advanced precisely this argument, which parallels my conclusion based on an analysis of the electronics industry.

36 OECD, Income Distribution in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 07 1976)Google ScholarPubMed. The controversial section is by Malcolm Sawyer.