The Failure of French Industrial Policy

Abstract

France, for a century, thought of herself as a great industrial nation. This country not only saw a source of prosperity and quality jobs for its citizens but also always considered technological autonomy and industrial power as an attribute of sovereignty. For the classical economist, deindustrialization is a fact of development: the more economies grow and become more sophisticated, the more they produce and consume services, and the more industrial activities migrate to emerging countries. However, in France, the attachment to industry and to an active industrial policy remained strong even as the country gradually embarked on European construction and had to respond to globalization and new technological waves. France has long successfully pursued an industrial policy of major projects. European integration, the ever closer union, the development of regulatory authorities for competition, and state aids led France to dismantle its public intervention apparatus. The introduction of the euro further deprived France of its devaluation power to correct relative competitiveness losses. Thus, France is a pure case of a voluntarist country subjected to the test of globalization intermediated by the European Union whose long-term effects on deindustrialization can be judged.

The political economy of French industrial policymaking

“…Compared to its neighbours, France has seen its manufacturing base shrink dramatically since the 1980s (Minovez 2019 ; Buigues and Cohen 2020 ). In 2019, it represented only 10% of GDP, against 30% at the end of the 1970s and 15% in 2008.…”

“…This questioning is highly relevant in France, where a renewal of industrial policy and recurrent changes in the policymaking process have been observed since 2008 (Klebaner and Assogba 2018 ; Buigues and Cohen 2020 ; Voy-Gillis and Lluansi 2020 ). As in the UK, France’s manufacturing base has been shrinking since the 1980s (Minovez 2019 ).…”

Policing the (migrant) crisis: Stuart Hall and the defence of whiteness

“…In Germany, the fall in industrial employment has been slower than in Britain, but has more than halved since the 1970s (Tomlinson, 2017). In France, there has been a similar decline in the GDP share of the manufacturing industry (Buigues and Cohen, 2020). Throughout Europe, workers have moreover endured a major fall in the real value of their wages over the last decades (Hopkin, 2017: 470).…”