THIS TIME WE WERE SURE NATIONALISM WOULD WORK:

No Globalization, Please – We Are French!: Populist posturing comes head to head with Chirac's stealth globalization (Patrick Sabatier, 28 March 2006, YaleGlobal)

A look behind the headlines shows that the discontent goes much deeper than mere revolt against a law that allows for easy firing of young employees. The French government, which has engaged in stealth globalization while espousing populist anti-globalization rhetoric, has been caught in its own trap. By creating two Frances – one of insiders who enjoy the fruits of globalization and state protection and another of have-nots – the government of President Jacques Chirac has set the stage for the explosive protests.

Sure, the demonstrations began against the proposed law allowing easy hiring and firing for workers under the age of 26, during their first two years of employment, without reason. Foreign analysts quickly concluded that the roots of this resistance rest in a French refusal to adapt to the iron rules of globalization by abandoning an overgenerous social safety net and adopting labor rules similar to those prevalent in the US, the UK and other liberal countries.

This analysis overlooks the fact that the failures of the French political system drive these demonstrations as much as this particular legislation. The labor law has been a mere spark setting fire to a combustible political landscape. The present explosion resulted from the collision between a weak economy with endemically high unemployment and the terminal illness of a paternalist Gaullist regime built in the nationalist 1960s, whose standard-bearers are President Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.

In recent years, France increasingly acts as a citadel besieged by the evil forces of globalization. The word itself has become a synonym for loss of jobs, lower wages, and harsher working conditions, all attributed to unfair competition from countries in the developing world, where unionization, social laws, and even basic democratic rights are unknown or systematically ignored, and where wages are abysmally low. These fears fueled French voters' resounding rejection of the EU Constitution. The EU has become, for many of the French, a Trojan horse for increased and unfair job competition from the new Eastern European members of the union, epitomized by the specter of the “Polish plumber,” supposedly allowed to steal work from French craftsmen because of the lower wages and minimal social rules in his native country, added to a loss of social protections because of Brussels-mandated deregulations and privatizations.

Those fears of globalization have paradoxically been fueled not only by the Left, whose ideology traditionally emphasizes social rights, public services and the regulating role of the national state, but also by the supposedly pro-business Right.

What could be less paradoxical than Nationalism destroying an economy and leading to violent social divisions?

The paradoxical thing is how many Americans seem to want to ape the French model of nativism, protectionism, and isolationism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2006 12:00 AM