The Limits of Stalemate Politics

...Hoffmann provides an impressive list of de Gaulle's achievements, and comes close to describing him as France's greatest statesman...

...It does have shortcomings, however, and a point of view that may well be overtaken by events currently underway...

...While admitting that the revolt occurred in reaction to real problems in French society, he insists it was "more nostalgic than futuristic...

...After all, there are many reasons why hierarchy, centralization, economic growth, corporate capitalism, and the other verities of our age may face increasing challenge in the next decade...

...Ultimately, both Crozier and Hoffmann owe much to Tocqueville, who depicted the French Revolution as a revolt against the old regime that ironically culminated in an even more centralized regime...

...Such a system is stable in the short run but vulnerable in the long run: It is better at evading responsibility and postponing reform than in confronting problems, better at defense than offense...

...Because of the survival of pre-industrial attitudes and practices, France is (in a phrase coined by Hoffmann and later employed by Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas) a "stalemate society," a nation of competing social groups united through mutual antagonism and a desire for isolation and independence...

...Until recently, Hoffmann maintains, France represented a "halfway" house between a rural past and an urban industrial future...

...He interprets May 1968 both as a careerist opposition to declassement and a pursuit of an impossible dream—that is, an anarchist rebellion against hierarchy and centralization...

...Sooner or later, however, the chickens come home to roost...

...This model of French society and the French state is now the standard interpretation...

...Most dubious, it-seems to me, is Hoffmann's implicit acceptance of certain trends as inevitable, and this is especially puzzling in the light of his general refusal to adopt easy answers...

...To start with a quibble about style: Most of the book initially appeared as articles in different journals addressed to different audiences at different times,- and despite extensive revisions, the varied antecedents of the chapters make for an uneven tone...

...Without declaring that May 1968 was a "prelude to revolution," I would nonetheless maintain that the future of the West cannot be predicted with certainty...

...Little people" rarely appear: Only the chapter on protest focuses on nonruling groups, and it treats merely a single facet of a vast question...

...Yet, in a crucial respect the heroic leader remains typically French: He refuses to institute new procedures...

...According to Crozier and Hoffmann, an abhorrence of face-to-face relations, an opposition to negotiation and a refusal to take responsibility create the need among the French for an external higher authority to intervene whenever the various social groups cannot resolve disputes by themselves...

...In deciding whether France is destined for decline or renewal, one must await the outcome of struggles whose outlines are still only dimly understood...

...The stalemate society is linked to a particular kind of government, described by Hoffmann as centralized but limited...

...In Decline or Renewal...

...That reality is never spelled out, though it seems to involve acceptance of modern corporate production in a state consisting of representative institutions and a strong executive...

...others —like the French Left, the trade-union movement, immigrant workers, the Church—are virtually ignored...

...He thus becomes the agent for change, as opposed to the skillful defenders of the status quo who prevail in normal times...

...What I am suggesting is that Hoffmann is unduly harsh in rejecting the Utopian elements in the May movement...

...Little more than a deus ex machina, he deals only with the crisis that brought him to power and then disappears (or is discarded...

...Yet France is one of the few industrialized countries where a self-profess-edly Leftist government (with a program posing sharp alternatives to present arrangements) could be elected to office...

...Certain subjects are dealt with at considerable length...

...A primary reason is Hoffmann's own contribution to the book, "Paradoxes of the French Political Community," an essay in which he brilliantly delineates what he calls the republican synthesis...

...But most important, he tries to find a place for the obvious anomaly of Charles de GauUe...

...For instance, the essay on The Sorrow and the Pity, Marcel Ophuls' anguished if cynical film of the Vichy regime, was written for intellectuals, not specialists in political science or French politics, whereas the chapter on "Heroic Leadership in Modern France" was first presented as a paper at a professional meeting and retains traces of its academic pedigree...

...An issue at the heart of Decline or Renewal...

...Hoffmann curtly dismisses French intellectuals who are actively hostile to capitalism...

...They constitute a parallel hierarchy to the professional administration, attempting to temper bureaucratic universalism and dirigisme by securing exemptions from the rules for their constituents...

...Of greater importance is the book's somewhat disjointed balance in the treatment of specific issues —various explanations and disclaimers along the way notwithstanding...

...The political situation, therefore, is an unstable mixture of, to quote Hoffmann, "limited authoritarianism and potential revolt against authority...

...as Karl Mannheim pointed out long ago, Utopian visions may prefigure future possibilities...

...Unlike other politicians, the heroic leader is not afraid to confront crisis, accept responsibility and take decisive action...

...Underlying attitudes and habits are left unchanged...

...It is also a country where genuine critical analysis flourishes...

...is a major complement to Hoffmann's earlier accomplishment, again demonstrating that he is one of our best analysts of modern France...

...Still, following a sensitive and wide-ranging discussion, he concludes that "there is no new balance, no new synthesis...

...At these moments of crisis, Hoffmann says, a different type of political figure may emerge—the heroic leader...

...The accuracy of this judgment can be seen in the experience this month of Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Gaullist candidate for President, who ran a distant third in the first round of the French general elections, obtaining a meager 15 per cent of the popular vote...

...comes close to the Gaullist electoral slogan that the choice for modern France is between Gaullism and chaos...

...Permeating the book is the notion that an objective reality exists to which France must conform, and that failure to do so would signify maladjustment...

...Or was the General unable to reverse the previous drift and decline...

...Changes originating outside the political system (in the social, economic and international spheres) become burdens that normal stalemate politics cannot handle, and pressure for action accumulates, eventually bursting into the political arena through protest...

...The sympathy Hoffmann accords de Gaulle, whom some have termed a "noble anachronism," is not accorded the rebels of May...

...Hoffmann argues that in the stalemate society politicians play a central though passive role as brokers...

...To consider the possibility of Leftist rule means taking seriously not only the heroism of de Gaulle but the search within the country by others, less heroic, to forge a realistic substitute for "advanced capitalism...

...is whether de Gaulle permanently altered this pattern of heroic intervention...

...Indeed, Crozier and Hoffmann stand virtually unchallenged within the United States (although they have encountered criticism in France, for example from sociologist Alain Touraine...

...Hoffmann extends and deepens his analysis, and suggests limits to the approach by studying the breakdown of the stalemate-society model during the Vichy period...

...Hoffmann says at the beginning that "French political forces have been studied mainly in their parliamentary and ideological aspects rather than from the viewpoint of their social bases," but he does relatively little to remedy the problem...

...Despite a wave of political upheavals, the country never experienced an industrial and urban revolution comparable to those of Germany and England, remaining largely precapitalist even as late as World War II...

...Thus Decline or Renewal...

...More broadly, economic affairs receive barely a nod...

...His formulation leans heavily on sociologist Michel Crozier's analysis (in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon) of French attitudes toward authority and the role of the bureaucracy...

...Examples include Marshal Petain and de Gaulle after the fall of France in 1940, Pierre Mendes-France during the Indochinese war, and de Gaulle again at the time of the Algerian impasse in 1958...

...Does the Fifth Republic represent a renewal of France (to echo the optimistic title of de Gaulle's last volume of memoirs...

...Reviewed by Mark Kesselman Professor of Political Science, Columbia Since its publication in 1962, In Search of France, coauthored by Stanley Hoffmann, professor of government at Harvard, has been recognized as one of the finest surveys of that country's modern development...