The ongoing protests across France serve as a vital test for the political appeal of the incumbent President Emmanuel Macron.
But education was not the only point of concern.
A Litany of Grievances
The grievances go well beyond the education sector. Financial cuts in different sectors of the public welfare, coupled with the blind implementation of the neo-liberal model of governance, which insists on a substantial “roll-back” of the state in an attempt to resurrect the classical model of laissez-faire economics, make it look like the French government is attempting to champion Social Darwinism—where the government would serve as the representative only of the wealthy class even as the socio-economically vulnerable sections of the French society must fend for themselves.
This echoes the mindset of the Ancien Régime of France, which prioritized the interests of the feudal lords and the imperial monarchy, something that culminated in its demise in the French Revolution of 1789.
The Failure of Technocratic Governance
Further, the protests are symptomatic of the shortcomings of Macron’s governance philosophy. For years, he has developed a top-down, centralized, and “pragmatic” style of governance. But a model that acutely lacks connection with the masses—evident in his lack of consultation on critical matters of public services, economic measures, and important political changes with stakeholders like trade unions, public sector employees, and civil society groups has contributed to a systematic erosion of his government’s legitimacy.
Therefore, the lack of avenues to hold the government accountable saw the people finding only one way to express their discontent with the government—the streets. Jurgen Habermas, the late political scientist and a prominent exponent of the Critical Theory, argued that public spaces act as avenues for the building up of consensus on critical issues; such consensus helps individuals arrive at decisions in a rational manner; this is what he termed communicative rationality. When seen through the prism of the protests, it can be inferred that the inability of the government to address the basic cost of living crisis, deteriorating quality of public infrastructure among other issues left the people with only one rational choice—to protest.
However, the heavy-handed security crackdown on the peaceful protestors signals a lack of appetite on the part of the government to negotiate, thus revealing a governance paradox: an administration that actively exports French democratic norms abroad is restricting the expression of the same norms at home.
A Warning for Europe?
It would be a blunder on the part of European politicians to view the protests as an isolated expression of discontent that is limited to a single country in Europe. This is an alarm bell for all of Europe: governments that prioritize fiscal austerity over public well-being will inevitably face popular anger, particularly because the government is ruling on behalf of the people’s authority; it isn’t ruling the people. For France, the ongoing protests may well signal the end of the ability of the state to deal with structural issues of the economy with executive power alone.
The Macron government must govern of the people, for the people, by the people if it seeks to regain even a modicum of its lost legitimacy.
Pranay Kumar Shome, a research analyst who is a PhD candidate at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India
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