State Intervention since 1981

This chapter argues that despite the increasing importance of American managerialism and of non-French share ownership, the state remains at the heart of the organisation of relations between capital and French labour. It is not that the state is neutral. Rather its directing groups see their interventions as modernising France so that it can perform better within global markets. Yet, how these interventions occur is still shaped by the mobilising powers of a range of actors, from the employers and trade unions, to political parties and distinctive interest groups such as the military, the Church, the state elite itself and the whole body of state employees and even the hunting and fishing lobby. In turn the pressures these actors exercise reflect the continuing tensions on them of the interrelated but distinct ideological poles representing liberté, fraternité and égalité — of the market, of society and of class.