In 2020, in the midst of the first wave of Covid-19, Nicolas Castoldi left his position as chief of staff to the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation to participate in the management of the pandemic within the Ministry of Health, before joining Martin Hirsch at the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) as deputy director. This experience inspired him to write an essay. Not on the health crisis, but on what it revealed, namely what the author calls a “feeling of impediment”. “Barely had the crisis ended, when everything returned to the previous state, as if nothing had happened and as if we had not learned anything from this occasion”, he laments.
For L’Express, this senior civil servant, a philosopher by training, explains why France is experiencing the exhaustion of a model: “The executive is at the centre of everything, it does not have to compromise, to build with other political forces, with local authorities, to share the decision and the associated responsibilities with the major social bodies.” Interview.
L’Express: Your book opens with a paradox. In your opinion, the management of the health crisis has been a success, but at the same time, you think that this period has given rise to a feeling of “impediment” within French society. Explain this to us.
Nicolas Castoldi : With this crisis, we have relearned how to do, to rely on others – starting with citizens, who actively participated in this management of the pandemic by confining themselves to protect those most at risk – and to lend each other a helping hand by going off the beaten track. There was a real surge. At the time, some must remember, many were wondering about “what comes next”, betting that nothing would be the same after this episode. But the facts are there: the effort undertaken collectively during these two long years of crisis does not seem to have carried the seeds of anything other than itself. Of course, on an individual scale, many things have changed. Some have changed careers, others have moved, personal lives have been turned upside down. But if we think on a broader scale, this episode has not given rise to any real reflection on what made this immense collective effort possible.
The fact that today, many are still struggling to put the word “success” on this crisis management seems to me to reveal that it went hand in hand with the emergence of a significant feeling of loneliness among decision-makers, as well as social actors. We were able to do it, but it was done with pain. And what remains today is this feeling of impediment, without the impetus to overcome it.
I can talk about what I saw: to deal with the emergency, we had to put aside many of the rules, procedures and habits that organize public action – to buy what we lacked, to cooperate, to authorize Covid tests carried out in this or that place or by this or that person. This made us much more efficient. It had to be. But as soon as the crisis was over, everything returned to the previous state, as if nothing had happened and as if we had not learned anything from it. This is also true in terms of concepts and discourses: faced with an exceptional crisis, we had to speak and think differently. But since then we have returned to a mode of political expression that is still and always the same. The concepts, the key words, the rhetoric are identical to what they were ten, twenty or thirty years ago. I know them, I have used them, they have had value, but they ring hollow today.
Do you think that this problem extends beyond the sphere of senior civil service and “decision-makers”?
Absolutely. Feeling hindered means no longer feeling like the subject of collective actions. We belong to collectives, we live among others, but it is as if each time we carry out projects that are important to us, we come up against invisible walls. They can be legal, financial, administrative, intellectual… They create the feeling of an immense complexity in which we are as if stuck. I am firmly convinced that this feeling of blockage is shared as much by leading public figures as by intellectuals, including yellow vests who are hindered economically, for example because they cannot afford a tank of gas. It is diffuse, but omnipresent. I would even say that the feeling of hindrance has become characteristic of our French society at the beginning of the 21st century.
Your book doesn’t really target anyone responsible for this situation. Because there aren’t any?
What is happening is not the work of a particular individual or group of individuals. It is a crisis of social and collective organization, a disease specific to societies that have reached a significant level of intellectual, social and economic development. And which, in their momentum, have given in to the race to refine roles, standards, professions… The frameworks of thought, the concepts have become more and more specific to professions, territories. Financiers talk to you about “economic model”, lawyers “compliance” and so on, without trying to understand what you do and asking you to fit into their mold, before moving on to the next one. This progressive fragmentation of society on the altar of specialization has led to us being locked into mental universes impermeable to others, to the point where we can no longer truly cooperate.
In your opinion, “expertise” has become a barrier to our ability to do…
Absolutely. Expertise is not the alpha and omega of decision-making. All experts tend to explain to you that certain things are impossible because they think in terms of their own framework of practice and thought. But the framework can most often be changed – whether it is the intellectual framework or the way of organizing major social activities. There is no absolute necessity to structure the health system or the educational world in this or that way.
“The academic and political worlds should exchange their knowledge more”
Of course, knowing how the major fields of collective life operate is an essential expertise: it is know-how, that is to say knowledge that makes action possible. But by overvaluing this expertise, we have almost made it a form of knowledge in its own right, like scientific knowledge! But that has nothing to do with it. The other negative effect of all this is being locked into one’s expertise. I can’t count the number of times someone has answered me (in good faith!) “I’m not a specialist in that” to tell me that they couldn’t answer me or help me with a project. The irony in this is that most of the time, the expected answer is obvious or common sense…
Is the problem you describe intrinsic to French society?
Let’s say that France is characterized by a political organization in which the executive branch has a much higher level of responsibilities than many other countries, it is even more difficult for certain worlds to talk to each other or to be able to weigh in a decision-making process. I explain in my book, among the circles that should exchange their knowledge more (and better!), there is the academic world and the political world.
Abroad, such as in the United Kingdom or Quebec for example, academic life is mixed with administrative and political life. Academic actors thus have the keys and essential access to understand the executive spheres, and therefore participate in the development of public policies. But in France, we do not operate this way. And the Fifth Republic does nothing to improve this state of affairs…
What do you mean ?
The Fifth Republic was built in a period of major instability, to withstand crises and exceptional periods – a mission that our Constitution fulfills perfectly. But the problem lies in its corollary: in non-exceptional times, the Fifth Republic struggles to create a collective: the executive is at the center of everything, it does not have to compromise, to build with other political forces, with local authorities, to share the decision and the associated responsibilities with the major social bodies. It exchanges with them of course, but in the end, it towers over them. Believe me, I am the first to be surprised by this thought, but I increasingly believe that the Fifth Republic is in the process of making its swan song. We are experiencing the profound exhaustion of a model: it is time to ask ourselves how we can replace it, recreate public debate, give the French people a capacity for action. In short, find a new balance.
You thought about it…
In my view, two approaches are possible. One can come “from above”, that is to say by changing our political and organizational practices in public life – which would therefore imply, as I mentioned, questioning the future of the Fifth Republic, the balance of powers, the place of participatory democracy. I believe in citizens’ conventions on complex issues – including on a subject like that of pensions, precisely because it is complicated.
“In participatory democracy, we always take two steps back when we have taken one step forward.”
In the second scenario, it can also come “from below”. If the collective frameworks are not satisfactory, it is always possible to reflect on them collectively to propose other operating methods. In recent history, there have been think tanks, political and social movements that have arisen spontaneously and that have changed the face of the country. To forget this is to give in to the feeling of being hindered.
In this case, the experiences of citizens’ conventions have not always shone with their success. Some criticize, for example, that, for the time being, the “cahiers de doléances” created following the crisis of yellow vests did not have a concrete translation…
I do not agree with the idea that these experiments have proven their worth. inefficiency. Take the case of the Citizens’ Convention on Climate. The fact that it was set up and was able to take place, with participants taking precise, clear-cut options at the end of the process, but paying attention to the effects of their proposals, is already a success in itself. The same goes for the convention on the end of life. It is not only proof that when we want to, we know how to listen to each other and think together, but also that not everything has to be decided between experts.
That being said, does the political power seize the results of this type of consultation? If we are honest, it is rather no. The grievance books of the Great Debate themselves are not accessible and it is inexplicable. It is striking that in terms of participatory democracy, we always take two steps back when we have taken one step forward. But what matters is to know that at the level of society, it is possible to talk to each other, to get to the end of a subject and to produce something other than lukewarm water. In other words, it does not reassure me about the capacity of the political to seize this type of tool. But it is a good sign for the collective. We have nothing to lose by trying to multiply this type of initiative.
Against the impedimentby Nicolas Castoldi. CNRS editions, 174 p., €12.
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