Vincent Pons is a professor at Harvard Business School, a specialist in political economy. He is the winner ex aequo with Julia Cagé of the prize for the best young economist in 2023. Before him, Thomas Piketty, David Thesmar or Esther Duflo had received the prestigious distinction.
L’Express: After the pension reform and the psychodrama of 49-3 and while a new day of demonstration against pensions is scheduled for June 6, France seems to be sinking into a democratic crisis. Is the situation serious?
Vincent Pons: France is indeed going through a real democratic crisis, the origin of which goes beyond the current episode of pension reform. In reality, this crisis has been brewing for a very long time. Its symptoms are known and already old: rise in extreme voting and populist voting, drop in turnout… Over the years, these symptoms worsen. We can also add the growing distrust of elected officials. For several decades, opinion studies have been asking the French people the following question: do you think that politicians care about what people like you think? In the 1970s, we had a strong majority of positive answers, then the fraction of positive answers did not stop decreasing. Today, the French overwhelmingly respond negatively!
Certainly, but this democratic crisis is visible in all major democracies. Is there a French specificity?
It is true, this phenomenon is at work in all major democracies. The rise in distrust was measured everywhere, as was the decline in participation. With one exception, the United States, where voter turnout has been increasing since the 2000s and peaked during the Trump period, no doubt due to the polarization of political supply.
What is specific to France is that mistrust of elected officials is also accompanied by very strong interpersonal mistrust, much more so than elsewhere. Distrust is widespread. In general, the French give little credit to people who have an opinion different from theirs, which weakens democratic deliberation and makes it complicated, if not impossible, to build a consensus.
To what extent does this crisis of mistrust impact economic dynamics?
Part of my work consists of establishing the links between political phenomena, in particular the loss of momentum of democracies, and their economic consequences. The example of Chile is very interesting in this regard. In the fall of 2019, great social anger erupted in the country, the detonator being the increase in the metro ticket in Santiago. This protest comes at a time when Chile is perceived as an oasis of political stability and prosperity in the middle of a continent plagued by political and economic turbulence. A million people march through the streets, subway stations are burned, Walmart supermarkets are destroyed. No one saw this crisis coming which, basically, reveals the dissatisfaction of a large part of the population – low-income and middle-class households – with the strong economic inequalities and a standard of living that is not increasing. not as expected. The government of the day responded to this social crisis by setting up a constituent assembly whose objective was to write a new constitution. A first text was rejected by the population and three years later, the political process has still not succeeded. The result ? The country is in a situation of great uncertainty and most economic players, especially companies, are in a waiting position, which inevitably weighs on growth.
In France, there is a real risk that the anger of the Yellow Vests four years ago and the current pension crisis will be just dress rehearsals of a much wider social storm that could sweep the country in the months and years. coming. With obvious consequences on the dynamics of growth.
In the inflammable context that you describe, is it still possible to launch reforms in France, for example like that of the RSA which is in the pipeline?
When we are in a moment of democratic dissatisfaction like today, the legitimacy of political decision-makers to implement reforms or even to have a simple substantive debate on the advisability of these reforms is very largely undermined. This does not mean that you have to pause all action! But the absolute priority must be in the reconstruction of a dialogue with the voters, obviously passing through the intermediary bodies and the unions.