Chapter 4 analyzes the institutional factors fueling the contestation of economic liberalization. The dirigiste model was rooted in the premise that top-down governance, free of interference by interest groups, offered the best way to modernize the country. The institutions of the Fifth Republic reinforced this exclusionary orientation by centralizing power in the executive. While France’s top-down or “skinny” approach may be effective when governments are extending popular new benefits, it is problematic when they are trying to avoid blame for unpopular measures, as is generally the case with economic liberalization, since with concentrated power comes concentrated accountability. Despite this problem, Chapter 4 shows that French authorities have refused to break with skinny politics. In the late 1990s, the “social refoundation” tried to shift reform away from the contested political arena to negotiations among the social partners but was blocked by governments of left and right alike. Finally, through analyses of liberalizing initiatives during Chirac’s second presidency and the case of French pension reform, Chapter 4 shows that skinny politics almost invariably triggers popular contestation and, even when successful, tends to yield half-measures that antagonize the populace without fixing the fiscal and economic problems that motivated action in the first place.

Chapter 8 teases out some of the broader theoretical lessons of the French case. The chapter distills the effects of dirigiste legacies in France into a general set of hypotheses about the sources of contestation of liberalization and shows how these hypotheses might apply to East Asia and Latin America. Chapter 8 also probes ways in which governments might diminish contestation by improving the process and substance of liberalization: the process, by moving away from skinny governance and enlarging the circle of participants to include an array of stakeholders; the substance, by ceasing to equate economic liberalization with giveaways to companies and the affluent and making more of an effort to ensure an equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of liberal reform. Chapter 8 concludes by discussing the links between France’s contested liberalization and the rise of illiberal populist parties. If Anglo-American neoliberalism is widely blamed for surging populist movements, French resistance to liberalization has likewise failed to keep populists at bay. For this reason, finding a version of economic liberalization that is fair, inclusive, and widely accepted is critical, not only for limiting contestation, but also for protecting the health and well-being of French democracy.