The French Way (57 page)

Given this dilemma, this study has examined how well, and with what consequences, the French measured up to their goals toward finding a French way toward modernity that did not simply imitate that of the Americans. America served as a foil to determine success at raising France's international status, defending and developing a vigorous national culture, advancing economic progress, and sustaining social solidarity—or attaining power and modernity the French way. In summation, this historian offers the following appraisal.

In international affairs France tried to balance between retaining the U.S. superpower as a close ally and asserting its independence. This desired equilibrium required continuous recalibration of transatlantic relations because the United States seemed to lurch from passivity to hyperactive interventionism. How well did France manage this balance during the fin de siècle, and at what price? If quarrels between Paris and Washington were frequent and sometimes serious, they never provoked a break in the alliance: the partnership survived. On many issues Washington and Paris were in general agreement and cooperated closely, as they did in the crisis over Euro missiles, the first Gulf War, and Kosovo. The search for independence and leverage within the Atlantic Alliance, however, rarely brought success when there were disagreements. The few triumphs came when the United States was at odds with its major allies or the international community as in the case of the Soviet pipeline, or when France was able to form a countervailing
coalition, usually from within the European Union, as it did in the dispute over the cultural exception. But trying to change Washington's mind usually brought frustration and disappointment for Paris. Pursuing its own policies and standing up to Uncle Sam probably enhanced self-esteem, but earned few victories. When the hyperpower said “no,” as it did in the dispute over NATO reform, Jacques Chirac was helpless. Then there were issues such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or the bombing of Libya, or the dollar exchange rate, or German reunification, or the negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, over Bosnia where the United States exercised its diplomatic muscle, bypassed French objections, and went its own way. And France paid a price for its recalcitrance and obstructionism. It raised mistrust in certain circles in Washington and made France appear as arrogant, self-interested, and uncooperative. And some French sparring with the United States was for naught. After more than four decades of trying to stand within, yet apart from, the Atlantic Alliance, France rejoined an “unreformed” NATO.

Meeting the American cultural challenge achieved mixed results. My assessment is limited to the specific encounters addressed in this study. If France could not hold back the tidal wave offin-de-siècle Americanization, in certain instances the dikes held. While French cinema lost some of its audience to Hollywood and accepted the need to adapt its productions, it did not succumb and remained a standout among the continental film industries. And French television, though inundated with American programs and films, was relatively better sheltered than other European networks. But survival of the audiovisual sector came at a price: quotas, costly and often misdirected subsidies, government regulations, quarrels with European partners, and open confrontations with the United States. Resisting American English, however, was a fiasco. Not only did government initiatives fail to stem the spread of the Anglo-Saxon linguistic intruder but the Ministry of Culture under Jacques Toubon earned almost universal ridicule. French students made American English their first choice of a foreign language, and French itself became populated with borrowed expressions. In the case of Disney,
McDonald's, and Coca-Cola, the Americans scored some successes but only within limits. Euro Disney represented a dramatic advance for a new form of American entertainment and leisure: the park attracted more visitors than the Louvre, and nearly half its entrants were natives. Yet it also triggered the renovation and expansion of French theme parks that, by identifying niches and adapting, found that they could compete with Disney. McDonald's, like Disney, gained a substantial market share so that by the millennium there were a thousand outlets, and its methods of operations, from food preparation to part-time labor, transformed the French fast food industry. Nevertheless, hamburgers won only a tiny share of restaurant meals and McDonald's had to adjust to please the natives. Coca-Cola also captured a large of share of its market and it, too, spawned imitators in the soft drink industry. But the Atlanta-based company could not conduct business as it pleased: the French government intervened to chasten the company for its marketing methods and limit its expansion. The Americans arrived, be it in the form of Euro Disney at Marne-la-Vallee, the local
epicerie
selling liters of Coke, the neighborhood Golden Arches,
Star Wars
on the silver screen,
La Roue de la fortune
on the television set, or a vocabulary studded with anglicisms like “e-mail,” but French ways survived. The cinema, television, restaurants, beverages, theme parks, and the language itself were not overwhelmed by Yankee imports. And one cannot measure the psychological comfort, the boost in self-esteem, gained by keeping America at bay, at keeping France French.

The record in competing with the Americans in economic performance while sustaining the French model ofsolidarity is commendable. France resisted the fad of Reaganomics as well as the Clinton administration's promotion of a globalized market, yet it shifted sufficiently toward the market and openness to stimulate economic growth while paying for the social charges of its generous welfare state. If American-style capitalism was rejected in principle, much of it was renamed and adapted (e.g.,
stock options a la française).
There was extensive privatization and deregulation, expansion of financial and stock markets, openness
to international trade, validation of entrepreneurship, acceptance of new forms of incentives for management, and promotion of strategic sectors including the construction of high-tech incubators like Sophia Antipolis. In social policy France maintained its commitment to solidarity while incrementally making adjustments—in pensions and health care, for example—to sustain its programs. When the government pushed too hard, however, as it did under Alain Juppe in 1995, resistance forced it to retreat. There were limits to the retrenchment of
letat providential
, even though much more needed to be done.

Economic performance in these decades, with one glaring exception, virtually matched that of the United States. A few numbers are revealing. Inflation, which had reached 13 percent in 1980-81, was brought under control, falling to 1.6 percent in 2000—a level half that of the United States. Productivity rates increased in these two decades so that they were virtually the same (3.4 percent) as those in the United States in 2000. The bilateral trade balance with America improved, especially during the late 1990s, bringing a surplus for France of almost $10 billion at the end of the decade while French direct investment in the United States rose rapidly in the 1980s and then doubled in the 1990s. As the new millennium dawned France was second only to the United Kingdom as a leading investor in the U.S. economy. Growth in gross domestic product was comparable in the 1980s (averaging 2.4 percent) but France fell behind in the early Chirac-Clinton years. Recovery followed in the late 1990s so that the two economies reached near parity at the new millennium.
⁴
The obvious blemish in this record was unemployment. The U.S. rate of joblessness peaked in 1982 at 9.7 percent and then, with some volatility, declined. Under the Clinton administration it moved sharply down, reaching a low of 4 percent in 2000. In contrast, France had a miserable record for the entire period: unemployment hovered around 10 percent and was still at 9.1 percent, or twice that of the United States, in 2000.

Such economic achievements came without jeopardizing republican solidarity that featured a high degree of social protection and a
relatively equitable distribution of income. Nor did the French sacrifice the defense of sectors that contributed to national identity, like agriculture or the cinema, and they continued to promote such dynamic industries as aero-space, nuclear energy, high-speed rail, and information technology. The French achieved a better balance between individual initiative or free enterprise and social protection than did the United States. But there was a price—most obviously the congealed labor market that kept unemployment at double-digit levels. And maintenance of the republican social model entailed toleration of its shortcomings—that is, the sick
banlieues
, the “angry young men” left behind, the poor living conditions for many families from immigrant backgrounds, the abuses of the
droit acquis
like those enjoyed by unionized and retired workers, the accompanying bloated state bureaucracy, and the high costs of the welfare state. Seemingly intractable problems remained. And if some of the economic disparities with the Anglo-Saxons had been addressed, the French in many respects remained behind their rivals in job creation, business start-ups, and the development of certain high-technology sectors.

In the 1980s and ‘90s France scored major successes in improving its economic performance and opening its economy to domestic and foreign competition while preserving social solidarity. Yet if one of the goals of reform was to catch up to the Anglo-Americans, along with adjusting to European integration and globalization, a gap remained after two decades.

The French simultaneously borrowed from the American model and shunned it. What they transferred was accomplished without ostensibly imitating their transatlantic cousins: they camouflaged market-inspired reforms, insisted on designing French alternatives, and, above all, defended the essentials of their socioeconomic order and their national culture. They bridged the ocean, but did so with a difference. In so doing they enunciated a French alternative within the transatlantic community at the fin de siècle. They could boast about making enormous progress toward adapting to a market economy and
globalization while preserving the fundamentals of the French way. They had maintained the republican social contract, a mixed economy, a vigorous state, and a distinctive cultural identity. The American challenge had spurred the French to renovate their socioeconomic order so that by 2000 they had advanced a long way from 1981, when Francois Mitterrand had entered the Elysee seeking a rupture with capitalism. Yet the French way was intact.

The speculation that France and the United States are drifting apart remains a hypothesis. Two decades do not make a historical trend and much of the divergence and much of the anti-Americanism of the fin de siècle represented a persistent gap inherited from the past that circumstances aggravated, such as the French malaise and the U.S. government's triumphalism. Some of the perceived differences did express long-term shifts like the retreat of religion among the French while others are of more recent vintage and scarcely qualify as trends. For example, France waited until 1981 to ban capital punishment and came late to the environmental cause. Furthermore, the thesis of growing apart neglects growing similarities, for France and the United States are more alike today than they were fifty years ago: they are democracies that share market economies softened by redistributive social policies; they worry about common issues like immigration and urban blight, and face the same dangers like nuclear proliferation, international terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism.

Rather than confirming a trend of continental drift, these decades represent the paradox of American-led globalization. The emergence and celebration of the French (or European) way can be explained as a reaction to the integrative and homogenizing effects of globalization and its partner, Americanization. The simultaneous progress of Americanization and expressions of anti-Americanism are an example of the dynamics of globalization, a process that intensifies interdependence and uniformity and in turn incites resistance, often in the form of assertions of identity, be it ethnic, religious, or national. As France and America became more alike, the French protested the process and
defended an identity that rejected the American way. Time may, or may not, confirm the trend of transatlantic drift, but what happened in fin-de-siècle France was an example of the paradox of American-led globalization that fostered both resemblance and divergence.

The question remains for the new millennium: Will France have to embrace more fully a globalized, Americanized modernity? Or can it continue to adapt incrementally without sacrificing the essence of the French difference?

This history of the recent past leads to the conclusion that there is a viable French way. If this is true, it will be healthy for the French, for Americans, and for others.

NOTES

Note : All translations from the French are my own unless otherwise indicated.

Preface

1
. Federico Romero, “The Twilight of American Cultural Hegemony: A Historical Perspective on Western Europe's Distancing from America,” in
What They Think of Us: International Perspectives of the United States since 9/11
, ed. David Farber (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 172. The beginning of hostilities in Iraq spurred Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, two European intellectual celebrities, to issue a “manifesto” in May 2003 calling for the “rebirth of Europe” and for Europeans to redefine their common identity. The literature on the transatlantic drift is plentiful; some examples are Tony Judt, “Europe vs. America,”
New York Review of Books
, 10 February 2005, 37-41; Tony Judt, “Europe as a Way of Life,” in
Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945
(New York: Penguin, 2005); Charles Kupchan,
The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-First Century
(New York: Knopf, 2002); Steven Hill,
Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010); T. R. Reid,
The United States of Europe
(New York: Penguin, 2004); Jeremy Rifkin,
The European Dream
(New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2004); and Robert Kagan,
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
(New York: Knopf, 2003).

A Note on Anti-Americanism

1
. The literature on anti-Americanism is vast and in most cases the definitional issue is skirted. But there are some recent, explicit, and instructive attempts at definition. Pierre Rigoulot defines it as “a hostile predisposition to all aspects of American life” tinged with either “political disagreement or cultural revulsion”; it is irrational and touches the unconscious and emotions like fear and nostalgia. See Pierre Rigoulot,
LAntiaméricanisme: critique d'un prêt-à-penser retrograde et chauvin
(Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 2004), 15, 259. Philippe Roger regards anti-Americanism as an obsessive, cumulative, self-replicating discourse created by generations of intellectuals, and likens it to geological sedimentation; see Philippe Roger,
The American Enemy: The History of French Anti-Americanism
, trans. Sharon Bowman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Seth Armus, like Roger, argues that anti-Americanism is basically a cultural and elitist response but he discerns a second strain that is political and popular; see Seth D. Armus,
French Anti-Americanism, 1930-1948: Critical Moments in a Complex History
(Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 3-5. Jessica Gienow-Hecht goes too far in defining anti-Americanism in Europe as cultural revulsion and dismissing politics and transatlantic relations as mere “triggers” rather than “causes”; see Jessica Gienow-Hecht, “Always Blame the Americans: Anti-Americanism in Europe in the Twentieth Century,”
American Historical Review
111 (October 2006): 1067-91. Josef Joffe insists anti-Americanism is not criticism of American policies, but an obsessive denigration, demonization, and stereotyping ofAmerica and its culture; see JosefJoffe,
Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation ofAmerica
(New York: Norton, 2006), 69-77. David Ellwood defines anti-Americanism as a catchall that combines attacks on the U.S. government and its policies; who or whatever is American (e.g., products); and American values in a normative sense; see David Ellwood, “Comparative Anti-Americanism in Western Europe,” in
Transactions, Transgressions, Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe andJapan
, ed. Heide Fehrenbach and Uta Poiger (New York: Berghahn, 2000), 26-44. Ellwood develops his thesis in
America as a European Power: Modernity, Prosperity, Identity, 1898-2008
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Assuming a global perspective. Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane advance a spacious definition—“a psychological tendency to hold negative views of the United States and American society in general”—which leads to a recognition of variety, or what they call “anti-Americanisms” in the plural; see Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert Keohane, “Varieties of Anti-Americanism: A Framework for Analysis,” in
Anti-Americanisms in World Politics
, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein and Robert Keohane (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 12. The psychology that fuels anti-Americanism ranges from a mild predisposition to more systematic distrust to strong bias. Katzenstein and Keohane refine their definition to include a typology of anti-Americanisms—”liberal,” “social,” “sovereign-nationalist,” and “radical”—and they add other varieties like “elitist” and “legacy.” To these political scientists the subject is important as a political phenomenon. Sophie Meunier applies their approach to France and stresses politics arguing that, at least since the 1990s, French anti-Americanism can be explained more by the principles of French policy, be it wariness of the U.S. government's unilateralism or cultural defense; see Sophie Meunier, “The Distinctiveness of French Anti-Americanism,” in Katzenstein and Keohane, eds.,
Anti-Americanisms
, 129-56. She contends that anti-Americanism is based on distrust, which she ascribes to causes like the deep reservoir of attacks by elites and to the exploitation of these sentiments by politicians. A useful comparative treatment, but one that does not directly address the definitional issue, is Alexander Stephan, ed.,
The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy and Anti-Americanism after 1945
(New York: Berghahn, 2006).

2
. The New Philosophers were among those who indicted
anti-américanisme primaire
to express their disgust with ideological dogmatism past and present. See, for example, Bernard-Henri Lévy,
L'Idéologie française
(Paris: Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1981), 288-89.

Chapter 1. America à la Mode: The 1980s

1
. Jérôme Dumoulin and Yves Guihannec, “La France est-elle encore une grande puissance?”
L'Express
, 27 January-2 February 1984, 12-19.

2
. Pierre Rosanvallon,
L'Etat en France de 1789 à nos jours
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990), 262.

3
. Frank and Mary Ann, “France est devenue civilisée,”
La Croix
, 6 May 1976.

4
. Examples of commentary on the new society are Henri Mendras,
La Seconde Révolution française, 1965-1984
(Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1988); Alain Touraine, “Existe-t-il encore une société française,”
Tocqueville Review
11 (1990): 143-71; John Ardagh,
France in the 1980s
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1982).

5
. United States Information Agency (henceforth USIA), “American Image in France remains Positive,” 28 January 1988, Regular and Special Reports of the Office of Research, 1988-89, National Archives, RG 306, box 4, 1988 Research Memoranda. In 1984 the ratio of pro-to anti-Americans was 43:18 and in 1987 it was 44:15.

6
. Ibid. See also “What the World Thinks of America,”
Newsweek
, 11 July 1983, 44-52; Steven Smith and Douglas Wertman,
U.S.-West European Relations during the Reagan Years
(New York: St. Martin's, 1992), 110.

7
. Société française d'enquêtes par sondages, poll, October 1988, published as “Les Français aiment les Etats-Unis, mais…,”
Le Figaro
, 4 November 1988; henceforth cited as SOFRES/Le
Figaro
, October 1988. The percentage (multiple responses) were: power, 56; dynamism, 32; wealth, 31; freedom, 30; violence, 28; racism, 27; inequality, 25; relaxed morals, 15; imperialism, 12; youth-fulness, 11; generosity, 7; naïveté, 4. Similar findings are reported in Gallup International for the French-American Foundation and
L'Express
, “France and the United States: A Study in Mutual Image,” survey, April 1986, which appears in an abbreviated form in Sara Pais, “Plus ça change…ça change: A Survey of French-American Attitudes,”
France Magazine
6 (1986): 5-8; henceforth cited as Gallup/French American Foundation, 1986.

8
. Smith and Wertman,
U.S.-West European Relations
, 108. While the French and the West Germans were quite similar in all categories of this assessment, the Italians and the British were more distinctive.

9
. In a 1985 survey, some 60 percent of the French saw their values as different, compared to 43 percent of the West Germans, 38 percent of the British, and 42 percent of the Italians; see Smith and Wertman,
U.S.-West European Relations
, 105.

10
. SOFRES poll, January 1983, reported in Elizabeth Hann Hastings and Philip Hastings, eds.,
Index to International Public Opinion, 1983-1984
(N ew York: Survey Research Consultants International/Greenwood, 1985), 201-2.

11
. For a comparison among Europeans who professed anti-Americanism, see Smith and Wertman,
U.S.-West European Relations
, 94-97, and 294, n. 7. In 1988, 22 percent of those who were backers ofthe socialists said they were anti-American, but so did 8 percent of the Union pour la Démocratie Française (henceforth UDF) and 4 percent of the Rassemblement pour la République (henceforth RPR). In comparison, for West Germany, 23 percent of members of the Social Democratic Party and 13 percent of the Christian Democrats identified themselves as anti-Americans.

12
. If one adds those who thought American influence was insubstantial
(insuffisant)
to those who said it posed no problem, the percentages were: food, 77; clothes/fashion, 70; language, 58; advertising, 53; and cinema, 50. Music and TV programming were much more divisive, with the approval-to-disapproval ratio being 48:41 and 46:45, respectively; see SOFRES poll, cited in Daniel Vernet, “Les Français préfèrent M. Reagan au ‘reaganisme,'”
Le Monde
, 6 November 1984, 1, 6; henceforth cited as SOFRES/Le
Monde
, November 1984. Another poll conducted in 1988 (SOFRES/Le
Figaro
, October 1988) found that the percentages of those who thought American culture was excessive as opposed to insubstantial or didn't pose a problem were: TV programming, 67, 2, 24; cinema, 53, 2, 36; music, 47, 2, 44; advertising, 42, 1, 47; language, 32, 4, 54; clothes, 19, 2, 71; cuisine, 10, 2, 79; and literature, 3, 4, 75. A
Newsweek
survey (“What the World Thinks”) had similar results.

13
. A USIA survey using a four-way ranking (very good; somewhat good; somewhat bad; very bad) reported the ratios as: music, 62/17/9/12; cinema, 66/19/9/18; sports, 71/8/5/16; television, 40/39/9/12, (USIA, “American Image,” 1988).

14
. USIA, “American Image,” 1988.

15
. SOFRES survey, June 1987, cited in Elizabeth Hann Hastings and Philip Hastings, eds.,
Index to International Public Opinion, 1987-1988
(N ew York: Survey Research Consultants International/Greenwood, 1989), 208-9. The friendly votes along party lines were (in percentages): RPR, 76; UDF, 66; Front National, 67; Parti Socialiste, 55, Parti Communiste Français (henceforth PCF), 46.

16
. As a child, Mitterrand's parents, who were Catholic, spoke to him more fervently about the American War of Independence than the French Revolution because the latter was anticlerical. See Jacques Attali,
Verbatim
, vol. 1,
Chronique des années 1981-86, première partie, 1981-83
(P 1995), 176. A rather positive assessment of Mitterrand's view of America is recorded in Hubert Védrine,
Les Mondes de François Mitterrand: à l'Elysée 1981-85
(Paris: Éditions Fayard, 1996), 163-65.

17
. Jean Lacouture,
Mitterrand: une histoire de Français
, vol. 2,
Les Vertiges du sommet
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1988), 124-25; Attali,
Verbatim
, 1:10.

18
. Noël-Jean Bergeroux, “Le nouveau venu…,”
Le Monde
, 7 November 1980, 7, and Michel Tatu, “Déclin ou repli?”
Le Monde
, 4 November 1980, 5.

19
. Louis Pauwels, “Lettre au futur président des Etats-Unis, quel qu'il soit,”
Le Figaro Magazine
, 31 October 1980, n.p.

20
. Jacques Rupnik and Muriel Humbertjean, “Images of the United States in Public Opinion,” in
The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism
, ed. Denis Lacorne, Jacques Rupnik, and Marie-France Toinet (New York: St. Martin's, 1990), 86-87.

21
. Gallup/French American Foundation, 1986. In April 1980 a majority said that, in the event of a world crisis, they lacked confidence in President Carter; SOFRES,
Opinion publique, 1985
(Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1986), 255.

22
.
Libération
, 6 November 1980, 1. See also Jean Lefebvre, “Chez Reagan, c'est beau comme un western,”
Le Figaro Magazine
, 31 November 1980, 66.

23
. Nina Sutton, “En attendant Zorro,”
Libération
, 6 November 1980, 16.

24
. Charles Lamborschini, “Un nouvel Eisenhower,”
Le Figaro
, 6 November 1980, 1-2.

25
. Jacques Chirac, quoted in “Giscard: des amis de toujours,”
Le Figaro
, 6 November 1980, 4.

26
. Laurent Fabius, cited in
Le Monde
, 7 November 1980, 7; Jean-Pierre Chevènement, cited in “Giscard: des amis de toujours,” 4.

27
. “Défi à l'Europe?”
Le Monde
, 7 November 1980, 1. See also Michel Tatu, “Deux conceptions,”
Le Monde
, 30 October 1980, 1; and “Déclin ou repli?”
Le Monde
, 4 November 1980, 5.

28
. Smith and Wertman,
U.S.-West European Relations
, 228-30. From 1982 to 1984 roughly half the French found Reagan's policies harmful to the French economy. From 1983 to 1988 the French were consistently—compared to the British, West Germans, and Italians—the most critical of the U.S. lack of cooperation in resolving economic problems with Western Europe.

29
. SOFRES survey, November 1982, reported in Hastings and Hastings,
Index to International Public Opinion, 1983-1984
, 214.