ABSTRACT
Vivien Schmidt’s account of relations between business and government in France since the 1970s contrasts two styles of policy-making under the Fifth Republic. The ‘heroic’ style, he argues, has typically been used by governments making economic and industrial policy: with a long tradition of dirigisme behind them to justify their interventions, and a determination to achieve quite radical goals – modernisation under de Gaulle and Pompidou, reinforced State control in the early Mitterrand years – governments formulated policy with minimal input from interest groups. Groups were eventually allowed their say, but only at the implementation stage. In other policy areas, on the other hand (Schmidt mentions education, centre-periphery relations and agriculture), a more ‘everyday’ style prevails. Groups (teachers’ unions, local elected officials, farmers’ unions) are involved in the formulation as well as the implementation of policy. Their blocking power may make certain reforms impossible. Schmidt’s dichotomy should not be taken rigidly; policy-making has not always been ‘heroic’ in economic and industrial affairs, nor always ‘everyday’ in other areas. It should, on the other hand, be valued for two insights. First, although policy formulation without groups may be possible on occasion in France, policy implementation is not. Second, while French governments may have a capacity for ‘heroic’ action – and thus a greater independence than suggested by the pluralist model – the French State cannot be ‘heroic’ in everything all of the time; it must decide in which areas (if any) this mode is most appropriate, because it can never ignore all groups.
