ABSTRACT
The endemic and open conflict model, while usefully underlining an important aspect of State-group relations, suffers on six main counts.
• Extra-institutional means have often been wholly ineffective in forcing concessions. The OAS, for example, only succeeded in accelerating Algerian independence. The assassins of Action Directe are behind bars. The truckers’ strike of October 1997, or the mouvement des sans-papiers, calling for the granting of residence permits to several hundred thousand immigrants who had lost their right to residence in France after restrictive reforms to immigration legislation by right-wing governments, or protests by the unemployed in winter 1997-98, produced only small concessions. The short-term victories of farmers, fishermen, steel workers and small traders have done little or nothing to halt the longer-term decline of all these groups: in less than half a century, for example, the agricultural sector has shrunk from a quarter of the working population to a twentieth.
