Post-democracy and institutionalized austerity in France: budgetary politics during François Hollande’s presidency

Andrew Glencross

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

This paper applies the concept of post-democracy coined by Crouch to shed light on the emerging political dynamics of macro-economic policy coordination in the Eurozone as they applied to France during Hollande’s presidency. Firstly, the paper explains the nature of EMU reform, characterized here as post-democratic by institutional design, before analysing its impact on France’s budgetary politics. Finally, the French case involving Hollande’s balancing act between supranational rules and domestic spending preferences is used as a way to reflect on the stability of this post-democratic arrangement for rescuing the Euro. The 2017 presidential election pitting Macron against Le Pen showed that post-democracy by design is sustainable only if the supply side of politics remains supportive of EMU – a condition undermined by the institutionalization of austerity, at least in France.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)119–134
JournalFrench Politics
Volume16
Issue number2
Early online date6 Feb 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2018

Bibliographical note

The Author(s) 2018. This article is an open access publication. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Keywords

  • Post-democracy
  • EMU reform
  • Hollande
  • budgetary politics
  • France

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