The.Status.Quo.Riots

...The ensuing conflict lasted two months, in which general strikes brought the country to a standstill right up to the Christmas holidays...

...Socialist president François Mitterrand never recovered the political momentum of the French left after he succumbed to a massive conservative demonstration when he proposed taking government subsidies from parochial Catholic schools...

...The strategic imperative, in Villepin's approach, is to flush out the dispersed stand-pat factions from their narrow agendas and get them to deploy for a frontal confrontation in which their reputation for invulnerability can be shattered...

...In an equally colossal misreading of the French public mood, the floundering government eventually called a snap election and lost...

...The electorate rejected the constitution a year ago in a vote that dramatically repudiated all the mainstream French political parties...

...constitution...

...If the opposition staggers, Villepin will have changed expectations and devalued the trump of an appeal to the street...

...It is Sarkozy who lectured the French, in word and deed, on the need for plain talk about labor-law liberalization, education reforms, candor about race and ethnicity, checks on welfare abuse, reform of the court system, performance incentives in the civil service bureaucracies—almost all the sensitive subjects that have been taboo in party political discourse in France...

...A mindset of defensive calculations exists in French society, including the mainstream political parties and the business community, which now calculates that attempts to introduce radical changes are doomed and therefore not worth fighting for...

...But it has been a special sensitivity for French conservatives since the collapse of the postwar Gaullist consensus in 1968...

...This political trope enjoys special legitimacy in France, where factions and interest groups marginalized in government and parliament take their issues to the streets by strike methods and sometimes even violence that would not be tolerated in the united States or other European democracies...

...But there is an ironic ideological twist: It is the French government that is advocating change while students on the moral barricades are defending the status quo...

...That setback vaulted Villepin to the premiership of a country politically adrift...

...The comparison gets it awfully wrong...

...The "First Employment Contract" put through parliament by the Villepin government would give employers the right to fire workers easily and freely when they are under 26 and have been in a job for less than two years...

...Rash as it may seem, Villepin's gamble stems from an insight into the nature of the forces arrayed in systematic opposition to reformist change in France...

...To show that the country can be governed, a sensible agenda is not enough in the current circumstances...

...should be trying to accommodate the students and avoid an embarrassing stalemate and possible defeat...

...The government claims that the change, breaking with the recent French mantra of equal protection for all working people, will bring job oppor-tunities—and admittedly short-term risks—to many more French young people, especially job candidates who are not outstandingly well qualified and likely to convince employers to invest in them, such as young Muslim men in the ghetto-like suburbs...

...But Juppé was proposing changes greater than the French were ready to swallow, and he folded...

...He seems to be inviting a fall...

...True, we are witnessing a ritualistic springtime skirmish between students and the authorities...

...If he succeeds, he may just deliver a salutary jolt to France's largely paralyzed political system...

...The interesting point about the current French situation—and the reason it may matter—is that gusto for confrontation is coming not from the students but from Prime Minister Dominique de villepin...

...His presidential ambitions burn as hot as Villepin's, but he has no option but to back Villepin to the hilt...

...In seizing the occasion, Villepin hopes to demonstrate—for the first time in decades in France—that a government can push through an agenda for change against the implicit threat of a massive reaction in the streets...

...Thanks to the educational shock-treatment from the blunt Sarkozy, much of French opinion—this is another recent change in the political landscape—may be ready to acquiesce in Villepin's newly aggressive tactics...

...They chose a referendum (instead of the parliament they control) to ratify the largely made-in-France initiative...

...In practice, the current stagnation amounts to protecting the unemployment benefits of people who will never get a job in their lives...

...If Villepin faces down the street, he can start making the most fundamental change of all in French attitudes— to a sense that change is possible and therefore a possible good...

...Imperfect or not, the controversial law worked as a rallying point for the inchoate opposition in France...

...Beyond his presidential ambitions, some social changes have improved Villepin's chances of succeeding with his confrontational strategy...

...Instead, as of this writing, he is steadfastly refusing to dangle a face-saving compromise or stake out a line of retreat—a stance that is tantamount to escalation...

...Undeterred, the duo in 2003 positioned France against the United States on the Iraq invasion (Villepin had become foreign minister...

...Already near zero in private-sector industry and business, their membership and political clout are dwindling with the shrinkage of France's state-owned sector...

...Hastily drafted last fall in response to a bout of youth unrest and arson in immigrant-populated suburbs, the law will probably have to be amended in the light of experience with employers once it goes into effect...

...The pragmatic problem is real enough...

...villepin, appointed last summer, is running for president and trying to jaw-jaw his way to popularity with piecemeal reforms that don't offend the left— reforms-by-stealth...

...Now Villepin is using his initiative as a bayonet: Push until you meet resistance, then push harder because you know you have reached a point where it counts...

...when one of these interests is challenged, all these factions usually rally to the cause...

...The leaderless situation spoke for itself last fall in the eruption of anarchic violence in immigrant-populated suburbs that continued for weeks while Villepin and Chirac wobbled and waffled...

...He is taking a make-or-break gamble, risking long obscurity if he fails...

...Normally, he would have been expected to shun conflict...

...The issue itself seems modest enough in contemporary economic practice...

...until this act reaches its denouement, Sarkozy is overshadowed on the political stage...

...But, if he succeeds, he may plant a crampon offering fresh leverage on the protracted struggle in France over how (and indeed whether) to modernize the nation's "social model"— meaning essentially how much protection French workers can expect against the pressures of competitive globalization...

...Both fiascos were the work of Chirac, the recently elected president, and Villepin, his top aide...

...The government counters that the critics simply want to prolong a system constricting job growth...

...crucially, trade unions' strength has fallen drastically...

...But the present squabble has stiffened them into a high-postured offensive stance...

...As the conflict gathers steam, it offers a historically recognizable ballet—the government confronting student and trade-union demonstrators...

...Their own agendas are narrow—opposition to genetically modified crops, to changes in France's tax on personal wealth (a levy that costs more to administer than it brings in), to affirmative action for Muslim immigrants (decried in the name of French equality, with its mantra of one-size-fits-all), or to flexibility in labor regulations...

...The fragmented nature of these factions makes them unable to offer leadership of their own, but enables them to survive as the fodder for massive shows of opposition to change, including action in the street...

...He has embraced the prospect of a showdown...

...Nominally about pensions and health care, the conflict was a struggle for control of the nation's political direction comparable to Margaret Thatcher's confrontation with British miners 15 years earlier...

...But something more is at work this time, perhaps even a new political dynamic in France...

...The blackmail factor of street politics in France is not just a left-right issue...

...The referendum debacle revealed the hemorrhaging credibility of the French political establishment and the emergent power of a largely inchoate "culture of opposition" in France...

...It's a risky strategy, especially in the hands of Villepin and President Jacques Chirac, the duo who precipitated a politically disastrous confrontation with the French trade unions in 1995 by inciting Prime Minister Alain Juppé to go head-to-head with the deeply entrenched unions at state-owned French Railways and at Electricity of France, the giant state-owned utility...

...In the past, villepin has often tripped over his own bravado...

...Presidential elections are due in a year's time, and his only chance lies in demonstrating that he has a winning formula for conservative leadership...

...Opponents of the new law depict it as the thin end of a wedge capable of prying away job security...

...The fragmentation of French politics puts a premium on shoring up support in his own rank and file, devaluing the old formulas of broad coalitions...

...Their key feature is their fragmented, diffuse, and fluid character as interest groups that are normally dispersed like tinder ready to be kindled when an issue strikes a match...

...Villepin's strategy could never have coalesced without the catalyzing role of his conservative rival for the presidency, Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy...

...Even rightist lobbies such as farmers or truckers have been allowed to hijack the political process with strong-arm tactics, apparently because conservative governments feared that a prolonged disturbance might play into "revolutionary" hands...

...In Britain, the Iron Lady famously won...

...Villepin, who often invokes Napoleon as the historic model for success in leading the French into collective action, is applying his mentor's belief that a decisive small engagement can transform the battleground and alter the war...

...Since then, rightist French leaders—not sufficiently confident of their own legitimacy to risk a violent veto from the street—have rarely faced down a popular revolt from the left...

...A suitable flash point came with the new labor law...

...BY JOSEPH FITCHETT THE CURRENT WAVE of protests in France is regularly mis-portrayed as a pale remake of the 1968 student revolt that brought down charles de Gaulle...

...But after so many failures, what makes Villepin think he can succeed...

...The same buddies, reeling onwards like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, masterminded the failed campaign to ratify the E.U...

...More broadly, the lack of effective grassroots organizations (including mosques as well as unions) is a key factor in the social anomie in France's largely immigrant zones...

...Youth employment has become acute in France: Joblessness among 18- to 25-year-olds runs twice as high as it does in the rest of the working-age population and much higher than in similar age groups in the United States or Britain...

...This implicit threat of "the street" has spawned a pervasive culture of paralysis...

...For one thing, he has no choice...

...So, logically, he Joseph Fitchett covered French affairs for two decades as the chief political reporter at the International Herald Tribune in Paris...

...In his enthusiasm for a showdown with the protesters, Villepin clearly thinks he can find an unexpected foothold in his ascent to real power...

...The idea is simple: Companies are reluctant to hire young people with no work record because it is too hard and costly to fire them if business shrinks or a new employee does not work out...

...To do otherwise would expose Sarkozy to damaging charges that he betrayed his side and his own values in the crunch...