Ségo at the Kennedy School

Ségolène Royal spoke at Harvard's Kennedy School tonight on the theme of "Reforming the Left in order to Reform the Economy." There were elements of the program she outlined that could easily be interchanged with elements of Sarkozy's. For instance, she said that thriving economies are economies with high rates of job destruction and job creation and that a modern labor-market policy had to accommodate the need for high rates of flow from job to job by assisting workers in job search, offering continuing education, etc. The similarity may have something to do with the fact that Royal met yesterday with Olivier Blanchard, who advises Sarkozy and was the author, along with Jean Tirole, of the report on which Sarkozy's labor-market reforms are based. She also cited Amartya Sen, another Sarkozy advisor with whom she also met this week, on the importance of fostering the "capabilities" of workers to adapt to a flexible economy.

On university reform, she said that the key was a new mode of governance combined with increased funding. I'm not sure that she used the word "autonomy," but the new mode of governance seemed to be another way of saying the same thing. In response to a question, she said that she was impressed by what she had seen in American universities and heard from students at Harvard and MIT, including the flexibility that Harvard allows students to "shop" for courses in the first two weeks of the term and the usefulness of closer ties between academia and industrial R&D. She also mentioned the practice of students "grading" professors in the United States, which she said would be unthinkable in France in the short term but offered interesting possibilities. One could easily imagine Valérie Pécresse making the same points.

On the other hand, there were some sharp differences with Sarkozy. For example, she singled out for special criticism his eagerness to sell nuclear power plants abroad. She unequivocally rejected that idea.

She also attacked Sarkozy for failing to be truthful during the campaign about what kinds of reform were possible rather than merely desirable. In particular, she mentioned his promise to raise the minimum old-age benefit by 25 percent, whereas she had maintained that no more than 5 percent was possible. The increase announced yesterday was in fact only 1 percent. But in fairness to Sarkozy, it should be noted that he maintains his intention to raise the minimum gradually to 25 percent above the current level within five years. And since Royal has acknowledged that she campaigned on a Socialist platform calling for an increase in the minimum wage to 1500 euros even though she didn't believe this was possible, I'm not sure that she can claim any clearcut advantage over Sarkozy in this respect. Nevertheless, her point that lack of truthfulness alienates citizens from government and ultimately undermines democracy is surely worth honoring in the breach, given that the observance quite frequently proves elusive.

The forum once again highlighted the challenges that a politician faces. The first question from the audience called for a statement of Royal's position on the demand of Puerto Ricans to be granted the right to vote in US elections--not a matter likely to have been given much thought by la présidente de Poitou-Charentes. Ségo maintained her poise admirably and continued to smile while much of the audience groaned and scowled.

More on Ségo at Harvard here.