The chapter examines how the size and diversity of the migrant population shaped economic outcomes in western Poland using statistical analysis. It shows that when state institutions were extractive, the composition of the migrant population played no role in shaping economic performance. Once institutions became more inclusive, however, municipalities settled by more regionally diverse populations registered higher incomes and entrepreneurship rates. The chapter then rules out a series of alternative explanations for these findings.

Chapter 5 applies the argument of this book to the beginning of the Macron presidency. Initially, Macron implemented a series of liberalizing reforms, notably of taxation, collective bargaining, and the national railways, often over the opposition of strikers and demonstrators. However, after just eighteen months in office, simmering resentment erupted into the so-called yellow vest protests, a movement against higher gasoline taxes that spiraled into a broader contestation of the government itself. Chapter 5 shows that both the social anesthesia state and skinny politics contributed to the yellow vest movement. In a context of scarce fiscal resources due to the social anesthesia state, Macron’s desire to bolster French business through tax cuts while reducing France’s budget deficit necessarily entailed tax increases and cutbacks in public and social services for the general population. Further fueling contestation, Macron adopted an extreme form of skinny politics, disdaining negotiations with political elites and the social partners, and imposing reforms from above. The combination of unpopular reform, much of it liberal in nature, and skinny politics sparked the yellow vest protests. In the end, the yellow vests forced Macron to backtrack from his agenda, sent his approval ratings plummeting, and weakened his capacity to govern.

Chapter 1 shows that economic liberalization is contested in France in multiple ways. Liberalizing reforms are routinely met with strikes and demonstrations; they are often defeated by protest movements; and, in some cases, the leaders who launch such reforms lose their capacity to govern or subsequent elections as a result. The chapter demonstrates that economic liberalization – as measured by indices of fiscal policy, labor market policy, and business competition – has made less headway in France than in the leading European political economies. It also demonstrates that this limited liberalization is not the byproduct of a well-functioning alternative to the liberal economic model. Chapter 1 presents and critiques three explanations of French resistance and contestation of economic liberalization, centered on economic culture, political leadership, and the character of the welfare regime respectively. It then presents the central argument of the book, which is that the pervasive contestation of economic liberalization in France can be traced to the policy, party-political, and institutional legacies of France’s postwar statist or dirigiste economic model. Although the dirigiste model was largely dismantled decades ago, the legacies of this model continue to shape the politics of economic liberalization in the present day.

Chapter 6 analyzes Macron’s attempt to rebound from the yellow vest protests. On the one hand, signaling a shift in governance, Macron launched two initiatives, the Grand National Debate (GDN) and the Citizens’ Climate Convention (CCC), that offered an opportunity for ordinary citizens to voice their concerns and preferences. In the case of the CCC, 150 citizens were given the chance to craft legislative and regulatory reforms that Macron pledged to implement. Both initiatives were popular, revealing a strong desire among the French to be listened to and participate in key decisions affecting their lives. On the other hand, rather than serving as a template for a new agenda and mode of governance, the GDN and CCC remained isolated exceptions. In all other matters, Macron continued as before, pursuing an unpopular liberal economic agenda via top-down, skinny methods. Chapter 6 uses Macron’s two most important initiatives during this period, a tightening of unemployment benefits and eligibility conditions along with an overhaul of the pension system that included a controversial increase in the retirement age for many workers, to demonstrate the continuity of Macron’s agenda and approach to governing. Both reforms triggered significant contestation, and the pension reform was ultimately abandoned.

Chapter 8 teases out some of the broader theoretical lessons of the French case. The chapter distills the effects of dirigiste legacies in France into a general set of hypotheses about the sources of contestation of liberalization and shows how these hypotheses might apply to East Asia and Latin America. Chapter 8 also probes ways in which governments might diminish contestation by improving the process and substance of liberalization: the process, by moving away from skinny governance and enlarging the circle of participants to include an array of stakeholders; the substance, by ceasing to equate economic liberalization with giveaways to companies and the affluent and making more of an effort to ensure an equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of liberal reform. Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the links between France’s contested liberalization and the rise of illiberal populist parties. If Anglo-American neoliberalism is widely blamed for surging populist movements, French resistance to liberalization has likewise failed to keep populists at bay. For this reason, finding a version of economic liberalization that is fair, inclusive, and widely accepted is critical, not only for limiting contestation, but also for protecting the health and well-being of French democracy.

Why have some minority regions experienced more unrest than others and in more volatile ways in China’s reform era? Why have ethnic mobilization and violence occurred only in the two outer peripheral regions, Tibet and Xinjiang? This study examines these puzzles from the perspective of China’s twofold transition from empire to a modern nation state. That is, the integration of frontier regions into a nation state with predominantly ethnic Han Chinese. The first transition was from empire to the autonomous system in the socialist era. The second transition was from the socialist era (1949–78) to the reform era (1978–present).

This chapter continues with the argument that the built-in tensions of the autonomous system, or centralization and ethnicization, have intensified in the reform era, fueling key sources of ethnic strife in the TAR and Xinjiang. The driving force has been the state’s developmentalism as strategies of development and integration. Here centralization is manifested in top-down developmental models, either state economy or market expansion, while ethnicization is manifested in more state aid and preferential economic policies as well as their ethnicizing consequences. In the TAR’s case, state subsidies have sustained an “affirmative action” economy, resulting in dependency and questionable viability. In Xinjiang’s case, the undoing of the socialist economy has left behind ethnic members whose ascriptive endowments disadvantage them in the marketplace, resulting in ethnically based grievances. In both cases, developmentalism has pitted local minorities against inland migrants, fueling ethnic conflict. As remedies, the state resorts to aid programs, thus intensifying central drives as well as ethnic prerogatives.