Michel Crozier, the eminent sociologist best known for The Bureaucratic Phenomenon, died last night at the age of 91. His book The Actor and the System was the first I ever translated.
French sociology also lost Raymond Boudon and Robert Castel earlier this year, which has been a grim season for a discipline that blossomed in the 1970s and 80s.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Lagarde Is Named as a "Témoin assisté"
Ah, French law. How to explain what un témoin assisté is, and why the director of the IMF is one as of today? In the old days, a "person of interest" in a criminal case could either be a "witness" (témoin) or "indicted" (inculpé). In 1987, however, the law was changed: one was no longer indicted but rather "mis en examen," that is, placed under official investigation. Short of that, but somewhere this side of exonerated, was created the new status of témoin assisté, no longer a simple witness but not exactly an accused. Presumably this was meant to preserve the "presumption of innocence," thought to be somewhat compromised by indictment or its more modern counterpart, which suggests at least a preliminary belief in the person's involvement in the commission of some crime.
The témoin assisté has certain rights, including the right to have an attorney examine the case files and appear with the witness, to insist on confrontation with accusers, and so on.
To a simple-minded Anglo-Saxon, it all seems rather a muddle, and for now it probably won't affect Lagarde's IMF position. The Fund has declared its confidence in her and knew about the allegations when it hired her. But it also declared its confidence in DSK before dumping him--not that the cases are in any way comparable.
I suspect that Lagarde, as a veteran litigator in the US, will plead that the use of a panel of private arbitrators to settle a complex lawsuit involving teams of corporate lawyers on both sides was a perfectly reasonable way to proceed and far more likely to be fair and efficient than a jury trial. How was she to know that there would be reason to doubt the neutrality of the arbitrators? Or whatever.
There will be so much smoke blown here and there before this case is over that I doubt anyone will know what happened in the end. And who really cares whether the bankers diddled Tapie or Tapie the bankers? The state should have gotten more out of the deal, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pittance. Anyone who can say what Justice is in this case has more patience than I have. But resonant words will be spoken, no doubt, and grand claims advanced, and in the end there will be a settlement, and perhaps someone will go to jail. But I doubt it will be Christine Lagarde.
The témoin assisté has certain rights, including the right to have an attorney examine the case files and appear with the witness, to insist on confrontation with accusers, and so on.
To a simple-minded Anglo-Saxon, it all seems rather a muddle, and for now it probably won't affect Lagarde's IMF position. The Fund has declared its confidence in her and knew about the allegations when it hired her. But it also declared its confidence in DSK before dumping him--not that the cases are in any way comparable.
I suspect that Lagarde, as a veteran litigator in the US, will plead that the use of a panel of private arbitrators to settle a complex lawsuit involving teams of corporate lawyers on both sides was a perfectly reasonable way to proceed and far more likely to be fair and efficient than a jury trial. How was she to know that there would be reason to doubt the neutrality of the arbitrators? Or whatever.
There will be so much smoke blown here and there before this case is over that I doubt anyone will know what happened in the end. And who really cares whether the bankers diddled Tapie or Tapie the bankers? The state should have gotten more out of the deal, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pittance. Anyone who can say what Justice is in this case has more patience than I have. But resonant words will be spoken, no doubt, and grand claims advanced, and in the end there will be a settlement, and perhaps someone will go to jail. But I doubt it will be Christine Lagarde.
"Culture Is No Longer a State Priority"
One thing we learn from this morning's Le Monde is that "culture is no longer a state priority" in France. Another is that François Hollande does not read novels. A third is that his culture minister, Aurélie Filippetti, has cut the cultural budget by 30 2%. "What would people have said if the Right had done that," mused former right-wing culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres.
That said, does it matter? I've often been critical of the way the cultural ministry has spent its money over the years. Too much was squandered on pseudo-prestigious eyewash and subsidization of the ephemeral. Still, le patrimoine culturel is immense, and it needs to be tended carefully. Cheese-paring will eventually lead to rot.
But preservation is not the sexy part of the culture minister's mission. "Innovation" is what always gets the attention. Filippetti has shown little interest in this. Yet surely there are projects that an ambitious, left-leaning miner's daughter, even serving a president who eschews literature, would find worthwhile, even in an age of austerity.
The promotion of French scholarship abroad comes to mind. Yet the budget reductions in Paris are all too obvious in the reduced subsidies available on this side of the Atlantic for scholarly travel, conferences, and publishing. In high Parisian precincts it is apparently now believed that the market can be left to its own devices in this regard. Ironically, at the same moment, the "cultural exception" has been asserted in trade negotiations, precisely because, it is averred, the market does not know best.
It is a strange schizophrenia that afflicts France these days. Culture--in its old and venerated sense as a jewel in the crown of the State--is defended these days by the ministry of foreign trade but relegated to an orphanage by the ministry of culture.
That said, does it matter? I've often been critical of the way the cultural ministry has spent its money over the years. Too much was squandered on pseudo-prestigious eyewash and subsidization of the ephemeral. Still, le patrimoine culturel is immense, and it needs to be tended carefully. Cheese-paring will eventually lead to rot.
But preservation is not the sexy part of the culture minister's mission. "Innovation" is what always gets the attention. Filippetti has shown little interest in this. Yet surely there are projects that an ambitious, left-leaning miner's daughter, even serving a president who eschews literature, would find worthwhile, even in an age of austerity.
The promotion of French scholarship abroad comes to mind. Yet the budget reductions in Paris are all too obvious in the reduced subsidies available on this side of the Atlantic for scholarly travel, conferences, and publishing. In high Parisian precincts it is apparently now believed that the market can be left to its own devices in this regard. Ironically, at the same moment, the "cultural exception" has been asserted in trade negotiations, precisely because, it is averred, the market does not know best.
It is a strange schizophrenia that afflicts France these days. Culture--in its old and venerated sense as a jewel in the crown of the State--is defended these days by the ministry of foreign trade but relegated to an orphanage by the ministry of culture.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
One Million Page Views
According to Google Analytics, this blog has now received over one million page views since its inception in May of 2007. StatCounter, the other statistical source I use, counts somewhere in the 800,000s, probably because it uses different criteria to determine what counts as a "unique" page view. In any case, the number of views is larger than I ever expected when I started this blog. Thank you all for reading, and please keep coming back.
Lagarde To Be Placed Under Investigation
The head of the IMF may have to receive combat pay in the future. It's a dangerous occupation. Christine Lagarde's predecessor ended up in jail (briefly), and now Le Monde reports that Mme Lagarde herself will soon be placed under official investigation in connection with the Tapie Affair. You may recall that M. Tapie was the beneficiary of a sweetheart deal in settlement of a lawsuit, a deal on which Mme Lagarde was required to sign off in her previous position as French minister of finance. The deal was probably not her idea, nor even to her liking, but would she be IMF chief today if she hadn't signed it? Probably not, given that it was backed by then president Nicolas Sarkozy, whose support was instrumental in getting Lagarde appointed to the IMF. You do what you have to do, but sometimes it comes back to haunt you. How good the evidence of wrongdoing against Lagarde is remains to be seen, however. It may be a long road to a conviction, and the investigation hasn't even begun, so it would be foolish to lay odds.
Open Markets Help French Agriculture
According to Eric Adam, an advisor to the National Assembly:
En effet, si l’agriculture, est encore tenue à l’écart de la crise économique européenne, c’est grâce à son ouverture sur l’extérieur. Qu’il s’agisse des céréales, des produits laitiers et plus récemment de la viande bovine, tous doivent leur redressement au marché mondial. Pour mémoire, la moitié de la production française de blé est destinée à l’exportation. Du côté de la viande bovine, la consommation française est en baisse constante et les exportations ont progressé en 2011 de 9% et principalement vers les pays tiers. Enfin, l’industrie laitière exporte près de 30 % du lait collecté.
Selon France Agrimer, en 2011, les exportations de produits agroalimentaires ont enregistré une hausse de 15% par rapport à 2010. En comptabilisant les importations, l’excédent commercial de ce secteur est le deuxième plus important derrière celui de l’aéronautique et atteint un record historique de 11,6 milliards d’euros pour l’année 2012. Avec une part de marché mondiale de 6,5% dans l’agroalimentaire, la France se situe au même niveau que le Brésil et devant l’Allemagne.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
The German Social Democrats: A Model for the Future of the Left?
The German Social Democratic Party, the SPD, is about to celebrate its 150th anniversary. Le Monde devotes an interesting article to the party's history, drawing a certain number of contrasts with the French Socialist Party. This one intrigued me, especially Helmut Schmidt's bon mot:
Entre les Français et les Allemands, ce sont en fait deux conceptions de la politique qui s'opposent. "Les Français croient au primat du politique. Ils aiment penser qu'au lendemain d'une élection, tout peut changer. L'Allemagne est plus proche de la réalité. Helmut Schmidt avait même eu ce mot impensable en France : "Celui qui a des visions doit aller se faire soigner chez le psychiatre"", analyse Klaus-Peter Sick. Un réalisme qui explique sans doute également la proximité du SPD avec le mouvement syndical allemand : une autre caractéristique qui rapproche le SPD du Labour britannique et le distingue du Parti socialiste français. Celui-ci n'a toujours pas eu son "Bad-Godesberg", un congrès au cours duquel le SPD, en 1959, a abandonné la vulgate marxiste et assumé son réformisme.On the other hand, as Le Monde notes in its next sentence, pragmatism is not without its disadvantages, and it doesn't always help to win elections. A second article ponders the trans-European effort to conceive of a new future for the social-democratic left, which seems to have run out of ideas. It seems that there is a new "Progressive Alliance" within the Socialist International, but this is not necessarily heartening to American Democrats who have witnessed the marginalization of the self-styled "progressive" faction within the Democratic Party over the last 50 years. The Progressive Alliance seems rather cool on the EU, a direction that admits of several interpretations, some hopeful, others less so. A Dutch scholar, Prof. J. M. De Waele, has this to say:
En réalité, les crises ne sont pas bonnes pour elle [la gauche sociale-démocrate]. Elle est apte à partager les fruits de la croissance, pas les effets de la crise. Et elle est, sauf rares exceptions, incapable d'élaborer une alternative pour les vrais perdants de la mondialisation. Elle doit, par ailleurs, bien admettre que le cadre européen qu'elle défend n'est pas protecteur.He goes on to say that what the left needs to do is to rethink its approach to globalization. It must admit that it cannot preserve the current hierarchy of labor in Europe and must instead adapt to the new competitive landscape. I have been making this argument for some time, though admittedly it's easier to make in general terms than to translate into specific policies. But there are some things that clearly can be done now: facilitate industrial restructuring, fund job retraining for displaced workers, encourage new investment, provide additional funds for education, government-backed R&D, increase opportunities for young researchers. This is not neo-liberalism, Government must play an active role, but it must not cling to the past in a haze of nostalgia for the achievements of the Trente Glorieuses. For one thing, those years did not seem entirely glorious at the time. For another, they ended in 1975. It's time to move on.
French Historian Shoots Himself Inside Notre-Dame, Invoking Heidegger and Renaud Camus
Dominique Venner, A French historian and extreme-right-wing activist, former member of the OAS, shot himself inside Notre-Dame, apparently to protest what he considers to be the Islamization of Europe. He invoked Heidegger and Renaud Camus in his suicide note:
Dans son dernier post de blog, intitulé "La manif du 26 mai et Heidegger", il affirme que "les manifestants du 26 mai [contre le mariage gay] auront raison de crier leur impatience et leur colère" mais que "leur combat ne peut se limiter au refus du mariage gay".
Selon lui, "le 'grand remplacement' de population de la France et de l'Europe, dénoncé par l'écrivain Renaud Camus, est un péril autrement catastrophique pour l'avenir".
University Reform: After Pécresse, Fioraso
University reform: always a contentious subject in France. The Collectif des Universitaires had no use for Mme Pécresse's LRU and has even less use for Mme Fioraso's reform of the reform, which it claims is a continuation and exacerbation of the LRU in all but name. The rhetoric of its diatribe is so overheated, however, that one's skeptical hackles are raised from the outset.
Nevertheless, a more temperate piece by Le Monde's Nathalie Brafman also makes the point that the proposed Fioraso Law does not represent a break with the spirit of the Pécresse Law:
These charges will likely get little hearing in the forthcoming debate, however, because the question of whether some courses will be taught in English (in order to improve French students' facility with the language) will monopolize the attention of the nation's representatives, even though fewer than 1% of courses are affected. This is one of those initiatives that, though well meant, probably won't accomplish much. Real competence in a foreign language takes more than sitting passively through a course or two taught in that language. But is the harm really so great? Why not try the experiment? Does this initiative really "sign the death warrant" of the language of Racine, as some critics (hysterically) claim? Asked and answered.
Nevertheless, a more temperate piece by Le Monde's Nathalie Brafman also makes the point that the proposed Fioraso Law does not represent a break with the spirit of the Pécresse Law:
Le texte que défendra Geneviève Fioraso, la ministre de l'enseignement supérieur, ne revient pas sur l'autonomie des universités entérinée par la loi relative aux libertés et responsabilités des universités de l'ex-ministre Valérie Pécresse, votée en 2007. "Ce n'est pas une loi de rupture", a assumé le rapporteur de la loi, Vincent Feltesse (PS, Gironde).So it all comes down to what you think autonomy has accomplished. If you believe the Collectif, it has paradoxically made universities more dependent than ever on the ministry of education, shrunk their budgets, prohibited the replacement of retiring professors, and established "petty potentates" at the local level, wreaking havoc with the selection process and enforcing mediocrity.
These charges will likely get little hearing in the forthcoming debate, however, because the question of whether some courses will be taught in English (in order to improve French students' facility with the language) will monopolize the attention of the nation's representatives, even though fewer than 1% of courses are affected. This is one of those initiatives that, though well meant, probably won't accomplish much. Real competence in a foreign language takes more than sitting passively through a course or two taught in that language. But is the harm really so great? Why not try the experiment? Does this initiative really "sign the death warrant" of the language of Racine, as some critics (hysterically) claim? Asked and answered.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Marine Le Pen Breaks Her Back
Marine Le Pen broke her sacrum (base of the spinal column) when she fell into her own empty swimming pool. She says it was an accident. ... One awaits further details of this story with some considerable interest.
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