19/11/2019

Yellow Vests: Has the Fever Gone Down?

Three questions to Bruno Cautrès

Senior Fellow - Political Sociology and Institutions

On 17th November 2018 was organized the first demonstration by the French Yellow Vests. Unprecedented in its scope and modalities of expression, this movement has revealed deep fractures in France and left a strong mark on the current Presidential mandate. One year on, this last weekend was marked by a resurgence of the violence in certain Parisian neighborhoods, even if these few protests looked nothing like what France had experienced during the peak of the mobilization. This anniversary allows us to assess the situation. Have policy responses lived up to expectations? Answers from Bruno Cautrès, researcher at CNRS and CEVIPOF, and contributor to Institut Montaigne's Faces of France, The Barometer of Territories 2019.

Despite a waning in the movement during the last demonstrations, is the Yellow Vests’ anger really alleviated?

The anger that has exploded during the Yellow Vests crisis is far more structural than a simple reaction of fiscal dissatisfaction – remember, it all started with the question of gasoline taxation, particularly diesel – or request for purchasing power. This explosion of anger was spectacular and of a scale that makes it one of France’s political protest climaxes to date. Never had France experienced such a crisis in recent decades, nor have French people ever seen on their screens such strong, harsh, violent images of what political protest can look like in a country that is rich and powerful. The depth of this crisis, its length and modalities of expression clearly indicate that the emergence of this movement had been boiling for a long period of time.

To understand the structural nature of this crisis, we ought to relate to data and research concepts available in political sociology. Several explanatory paradigms can be mobilized: sociologists and politicians have developed different theoretical frameworks relating to protests, political mobilizations and social movements. These argue that political mobilization can be explained by the ability of political actors to mobilize resources – social capital, political capital – or to use frameworks of action, such as inscribing their demands in partisan or ideological interpretation grids; or expressing anger in ways that are strongly rooted in legacy social struggles.

With the Yellow Vests, these explanations only partially reflect the reality of the movement. There are, of course, modalities and forms of protest that are inscribed in France's long history of protest. The fact for example, at the outset of the mobilization, of wanting to call out Emmanuel Macron directly at the Elysée – almost as a way of physically "taking him out" – undoubtedly evokes the long-lasting memory of French revolutionary episodes. We also see social and political capitals expressed in the crisis. The use of social networks, Facebook groups in particular, was instrumental; even if mobilization has failed to evolve into a political movement, it has enabled many people to familiarize with political engagement, as well as being a reflection of new forms of engagement.

But if we want to truly understand the structural nature of this crisis, we must mobilize other explanatory paradigms than those traditionally used to analyze political mobilizations. In this respect, I would argue that two dimensions are essential for understanding that if the expression of anger seems to have subsided, it is only smokescreens. There has been and remains, with this explosion of social anger, the expression of a feeling that is stronger than the one of social injustice, an already burning feeling in France.

The anger that has exploded during the Yellow Vests crisis is far more structural than a simple reaction of fiscal dissatisfaction or request for purchasing power.

We had observed it in the survey carried out by Elabe and Institut Montaigne, Faces of France, The Barometer of Territories 2019: feelings that France is "blocked", doesn’t allow for second chances, nor delivers on its promise of equality, came across strongly in the survey. Besides, there is another, more "moral" dimension, very strongly expressed in the Yellow Vests crisis: the feeling that the current economic, social and political system is an attack on dignity more so than on equality.

The feeling that with the fruit of one’s labour, one cannot live with dignity and that a life dedicated to lifting one’s family can only end up with bills that are too difficult to pay, ultimately dealing with few margins for manoeuvre and progress. This dimension of "moral indignation", remarkably explained in the analyses of the politician Samuel Hayat, was a powerful lever in the crisis and helps to explain its duration, intensity and scale. Let’s not forget that in France, this dimension is essential. The pride of belonging to a professional body, the aspiration to be recognized for one's profession, the symbolic and even sometimes emotional investment that we put into our professional lives, are very strong in France. The sociologist Philippe d'Iribarne has studied this "French anomaly", showing that these dimensions offer good explanations of the challenges faced with social dialogue or human resources management in France.

A second dimension must be taken into account to understand the structural nature of the outburst of anger, a dimension no longer only restricted to the case of France. We are witnessing a historical transformation on a global scale: the global economy and its dynamics have violently disrupted the political compromises and socio-economic relations established in the post-war period. Globalization and its economic, political interdependencies are shaking up everything; it is acting as a steamroller and one that is moving fast. Faced with these developments, our governments have tried different response strategies, the one proposed by Emmanuel Macron being only one of many. It is the core of Macron's political message to call on our ability to adapt to this vast transformation. In order to achieve this adaptation, Macron wanted to offer the French people new meanings to the concepts of "justice" and "equality". The main point here is to postulate that the post-war model not only does not allow for adaptation, because it would have created frozen status of the "haves", but also that it further distances the "losers" and "winners" from globalization – the promise of generous growth for all would have been misused in defence of the “haves” status. So far, Emmanuel Macron's proposal has however come up against a structural barrier: social inequalities of the "old world" are still a reality today. It is not enough to assume that we are redeploying the resources of the public authorities or redefining the parameters of their action to change the meaning of the concepts of "justice" and "equality". The Yellow Vests crisis has reminded Emmanuel Macron that it should have been a priority to deal with those who are struggling and have seen the gap between their aspirations and possibilities widen. The gap between the two is a fundamental factor in explaining how the explosion of social anger is mainly coming from middle classes who feel "stuck" and "in decline". The call for a dynamic France where one only needs "crossing the street" (in September 2018, Macron had to face a controversy when he told jobseekers that finding a job was only a matter of “crossing the street”) to find or change jobs was only the spark waiting to light up the smouldering fire.

Did the Great National Debate contribute to easing tensions?

It is true there was another side to this crisis. It went beyond social and fiscal justice and equality. The critique of the French democratic model was just as strong, even if it was not necessarily expressed at the same time or by the same actors of this movement. The large-scale consultation of the country, through the Great National Debate, undoubtedly played a soothing role. As always in politics, the tactical nature of organising this debate cannot be ignored. But it would be too limited to only consider it as a purely formal exercise aimed at giving the executive, apparently stunned, a handle back on the situation.

The fact that the French people were consulted at large, through different channels ranging from website to local debates to dialogue with intermediary bodies, civil society and assemblies, will remain an important symbol. Its legacy will have to be put into perspective in a few years' time: has this initiative introduced the idea of "deliberative democracy" for good in France? Indeed, without being completely lacking especially at the local level, "deliberation" is far from being the strong suit of the Fifth Republic’s institutions.

If the crisis and its apparent ending have shown the resilience of our institutions, the question of modernizing - even transforming - our democratic model remains essential.

While we witnessed a slowdown of the movement during and after the debate, it is nevertheless necessary to question the sustainability of this effect. First, data collected by researchers and observers shows the sociological bias of the latter: those suffering most socially, the poorest and most deprived were not the principal social actors in the discussions. There is also a close correlation between the geographies where local debates were held and Emmanuel Macron's electoral map, suggesting that local members and executives of the LREM were actively mobilized for its organization, or that it is the France of medium-sized cities that mobilized to participate. While it is democratically a positive development that political forces are mobilizing to participate in a broad national consultation, it also shows there is a territorial bias in the local debates of this Great National Debate. The French people who came to debate were neither socially nor territorially representative of the whole French population.

The online consultation, conducted simultaneously, did not compensate for this dual territorial and sociological bias of the Great National Debate. Finally, the steering of the debate by the executive, even with the appointment of five "guarantors" acting as safety nets, raises questions over the merits of the Head of State’s presence as a key actor, its omnipresence throughout the process and the fact that he himself had set the terms and questions of the debate. An alternative debate, which has been described by some as the "real debate", has tried to emerge in parallel but without achieving the same visibility. The online consultation questionnaire itself was not free of bias.

How were the government’s measures received among the Yellow Vests?

We still lack perspective to fully answer this important question. Up-to-date data on the implementation of these measures would need to be available because, at some point, there will necessarily be a retrospective evaluation by the French people as a whole and not only the Yellow Vests. But what can already be said is that the feeling that the executive is using a delaying tactic to save time has not disappeared for some of those who are mobilized. The crisis has probably already gone too far for the executive's announcements to erase those feelings, tensions and frustrations. Failing to credit the power of sincerity in listening and responding to the crisis, some of them are waiting to witness tangible effects on their lived experiences. One of the markers of this crisis is the significant gap between the overall effects of the measures taken, such as the average increase in purchasing power that was observed in real terms in 2019, and French people’s individual perceptions, subjective perceptions that are yet to change.

One of the aspects that has attracted the strongest negative resentment was the failure to take into account the request for the introduction of a citizens' initiative referendum (RIC). In fact, we observed that responses to the democratic crisis have been, for the time being, less substantial than the fiscal and economic ones. The French executive would be wrong to consider this to be a fixation abscess. If the crisis and its apparent ending have shown the resilience of our institutions, the question of modernizing - even transforming - our democratic model remains essential.

Copyright : CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP