What's the matter with France?

From the Economist:

... Why are the French so restless? The answer is threefold. First, their economy has lost ground. For example, France's GDP measured at current exchange rates has been overtaken by Britain's, which is now 5% bigger (even though the two countries' populations are much the same). Back in the late 1970s it was the other way round: the British economy was only three-quarters the size of the French one. Over the past 25 years, in terms of GDP per head at current exchange rates, the French have dropped from seventh place in the world to 17th. Even allowing for things France does well, such as health care and welfare, the 2005 United Nations Human Development Index ranked it 16th, down from eighth in 1990. The French feel the slippage keenly. Polls show that “loss of purchasing power” is one of their top concerns.

Second, France's heavily planned economy has reached its limits. In the past, the French dirigiste model, which relies on a strong centralised state in the pre-revolutionary tradition established by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, served the country well. It speeded up reconstruction after the second world war. It delivered the trente glorieuses, or 30 years of post-war prosperity. And it laid the ground for the rapid transformation of the economy into an industrial powerhouse.

Even today, elements of dirigiste planning have helped to set France up for the modern age. Its high-speed TGV train network reaches into new corners each year: to Strasbourg in 2007, from Lyon to Turin by 2018, with projects to extend lines to Bordeaux, Rennes and Perpignan. As Thierry Breton, the finance minister, points out, France's early decision to invest in nuclear energy, which accounts for 78% of its electricity production, has turned a country short of fossil fuels into a net electricity exporter.

Yet the planned society relies crucially on an intelligent and efficient state, and over the years the French version has become untenable: too many bureaucrats, supported by too many taxes, impose too many rules in too many overlapping organisations. Despite all this effort, there is little sign that the public sector in France is any more efficient than in other rich countries. French public spending accounts for 54% of GDP, compared with an OECD average of 41% (see chart 1). One in four French workers is employed by the public sector. Public debt amounts to 66% of GDP, compared with 42% in Britain, and over the past ten years has grown faster in France than in any other EU-15 country. The baby-boom generation is leaving behind a poisoned legacy: as the title of a recent book puts it, “Our Children Will Hate Us”.

Moreover, in such a hierarchical system people too often expect solutions to be provided from the top. For example, whereas Google was devised by two graduate students at Stanford University, a rival search engine with the unpronounceable name “Quaero” was ordered by the French government from, among others, two big French companies, Thomson and France Telecom. CNN was founded by Ted Turner, an American entrepreneur in Atlanta; a new French challenger to the cable television network, France 24, which is due to start broadcasting shortly, was invented by Mr Chirac and is financed with government money.

The problems have been building up for some time. Thirty years ago, Alain Peyrefitte predicted that the mal français—essentially, a bureaucratic mentality—would stifle creativity and innovation and entrench resistance to change. Another critic wrote in 1994 of a “France suffering from a more profound sickness” than anybody then imagined: a “heavy and inert” state machinery that, if unreformed, would “block the evolution of society”. The prescient author? Mr Chirac.

Even so, politicians have consistently failed to explain to the citizens why the country cannot afford to go on as before. This is the third source of French electoral dissatisfaction. Instead of making the case for change, successive politicians have preferred to blame, and thus to discredit, outside forces—usually Europe, America or globalisation. “The French political class has constructed a wall of lies against the globalised world,” comments Nicolas Baverez, author of “France in Freefall”. No wonder there is no consensus for reform.