A neoliberal turn

Photo by roberto muratore

Over the past three decades or so, the French State has been going through a neoliberal turn, like many other Western States. This emerged in the late 1980s, not only through privatisation and a retreat of the State but also through a new definition of the role of the State, where public institutions, the government and the regulatory agencies tried to promote private markets and to infuse a culture of market in society. To that aim, the State has been progressively reframed.

What has changed?

We have transformed many ministries into independent agencies; we have thought about building a closer relationship between market actors and public civil servants and, in particular, regulators of these independent agencies. We’ve seen a transformation of the French State, which, in part, is related to the push of the European Union towards this neoliberal transformation of States and the development of independent agencies.

What’s interesting is that the French State has progressively conceived of its role to not simply animate the mixed economy of the 1960s and 1970s but to be a promoter of fair competition and the good functioning of private markets. This has transformed relationships between top civil servants and large companies.

Public servants’ viewpoint

There is a sense among public servants, whether it’s as a commissioner of public procurement, as a public investor or as a shareholder of a public utility company, that the State has to act as a private actor; an actor, however, that plays by the market rules. The State, the government and public servants have increasingly called upon consultants, corporate lawyers and banks to help States secure their investments in private markets. So, here again, a new type of relationship has emerged between State elites and the market of public affairs.

The public service mission

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The fight for public servants to act in the name of public service is certainly connected to the idea that the public service mission of a given firm – electricity, energy, transport, public utilities – is not an exception. It’s not something that’s at the margin of the functioning of a company that is otherwise acting and behaving like a classic private company.

Companies should put this public service mission at the core of the functioning of the firm, and accept the fact that it requires a different type of management: one that brings to the foreground public service knowledge and professionals, as opposed to those of private management who have increasingly taken up roles as financiers at the top of public utility companies.

The revolving door practice

The revolving door practice – civil servants moving to the private sector – is certainly not new; it’s been going on for decades. What is new, and since the 1980s, is that these public servants tend to go into positions in the counselling industry, the lobbying industry and in corporate law.

The difference of the revolving door as we know it today is that it’s a neoliberal revolving door, in the sense that its purpose is to acquire the knowledge and expertise of the State itself, to counter or redirect the regulating efforts of the State. In a way, it’s a tactic that counselling companies and public affairs companies are using to be able to decipher the functioning of the State to influence it more effectively. So, I guess this is the novelty of the revolving door: it is aimed at influencing regulation.

Revolving doors before the 1980s

Before the 1980s, you would move on from a company and still keep in contact with your former government colleagues. It was viewed as a way of coordinating the economy, as another way through which the State could govern the market. Revolving doors used to be an extension of the capacity of the State to regulate, organise and plan the economy, whereas today they’re exactly the opposite: they’re empowering actors that should be regulated or are under regulation. This change is connected to the neoliberal transformation of the State.

Endangering the State’s regulation

The fact that many top civil servants, like the members of the Conseil d’État – the Administrative Court in France – moved to the private sector and became corporate lawyers is of particular interest, in that they are the ones who frame the law in the Administrative Court; likewise, counsellors of ministers, heads of cabinet and sometimes even prime ministers, like Édouard Philippe, who has continuously been moving from top civil servant positions to business positions.

In this circulation, what is in danger is the capacity of the State to regulate. What is at stake with this revolving door is a narrowing of the relationship between large firms, top civil servants and the counselling and lobbying industries. In these narrowing and collusive ties, the strength of regulation is lower because if, as a civil servant, you’ve been moving continuously in and out of the State, you probably care less about the interests of civil society and more about corporate interests.

An object of influence

Photo by Jo Bouroch

The French State has become an object of influence precisely because it has redefined itself as a fabric of private markets through its regulatory agencies, through its courts and through its government. It has defined itself as a regulator of private markets. Indeed, the definition of these norms, the judicial decisions that are taken, the governmental decrees, the laws that are passed by the parliament – all these sets of decisions have become critical for large companies because they define their market share and their capacity to navigate in the French market.

Discover more about

a neoliberal republic

Vauchez, A., & France, P. (2021). The Neoliberal Republic: Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France. Cornell University Press.

Vauchez, A. (2018). Brokering Europe: Euro-Lawyers and the Making of a Transnational Polity. Cambridge University Press.

The neoliberal transformation of the French Republic