France in Crisis
Welfare, Inequality, and Globalization since 1980

Timothy Smith argues that the French economy and society is in crisis and that globalization is not to blame.

Timothy B. Smith (Author)

9780521605205, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 November 2004

310 pages, 25 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

'… a forthright and challenging intervention. … it performs one vitally important task: it highlights the absence of a genuine counter-programme to those offered by neoliberal apologists - and challenges the Left to devise one as a matter of urgency.' New Left Review

France is in crisis. In this provocative account, Timothy Smith argues that the French economic and social model is collapsing inward on itself, the result of good intentions, bad policies, and vested interests who employ the rhetoric of 'solidarity' to prevent change. French social policy is not redistributive; indeed, Smith argues, the majority of 'social' spending serves to strengthen existing inequalities. He shows how politicians, intellectuals and labor leaders have invoked the specter of 'globalization' to explain homegrown problems and delay reform. Professor Smith makes frequent comparisons with the USA, UK, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany and the Netherlands and argues that change need not follow the inegalitarian US or British paths but instead can lead to a more equal society. Written in a lively style, this is an unusual blend of history, policy analysis, economics and political commentary and will be indispensable reading for anyone seeking to understand France's malaise.

Preface
1. The misunderstood French welfare state
2. Corporatist welfare states: the residue of the past, or the wave of the future?
3. The 'treason of the intellectuals': globalization as the big excuse for France's economic and social problems
4. France's break with socialism
5. Persisting inequalities
6. The protected people
7. The excluded: immigrants, youth, women
8. The French exception
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Economics [KC], European history [HBJD]