ABSTRACT
Mendras argued that the structure of French society had been overhauled during the post-war period in a manner just as radical as that following the 1789 French Revolution. The optimistic school argue that France, like many other advanced industrialised states, has moved towards a happy state of social harmony and prosperity, with the growth of an affluent middle class. Unlike the peasantry, whose ancestry was ancient, the lineage of French industrial working class was far more recent. The French welfare model is an institutional hybrid that emerged in a sedimentary manner in response to social challenges. After a brief presentation of the structure of the French economy, this chapter considers the legacy of dirigisme, the core feature of the orthodox French model as identified in the varieties of capitalism literature. It describes the change in economic direction since the 1980s. The chapter concludes by highlighting underlying continuities in the practice of French economic management.
