Hollande must heed lessons of Louis XVI

French leader may come to be seen as the victim of a revolt against modern elites, says Dominique Moïsi

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François Hollande may have had François Mitterrand as his role model – a Machiavellian operator. One might have wished he would be a French Gerhard Schroeder – a tough reformer. But, in the wake of the Cahuzac scandal, France’s president looks ever more like a modern Louis XVI – the king guillotined by revolutionaries.

After five years of economic and social crisis, and with no light at the end of the tunnel, the French are losing patience not only with their politicians but with all of their elites. Mr Hollande, like Louis, might prove to be an unexceptional man in exceptional times.

Ancien regime France fell, taking Louis with it, when the privileges of the aristocracy were no longer perceived as the counterpart to services rendered to society. Mr Hollande may be seen in the future as the victim of a revolt against France’s modern elites.

He sits at the head of the political aristocracy, which spans both the left and the right, and which has lost contact with the rest of the country. Their “small deals between friends” were accepted because their contribution was seen as positive. But in France today, as throughout Europe, the privileges of the elites are perceived as unfair. It is one of the keys if not the major explanation for the rise of a populism that has the unsavoury perfume of the 1930s. Unlike then, there are no external powers encouraging the hard left or hard right. But a weak economy and scandals are fuelling extremism.

At the end of the 18th century the rest of Europe, confronted with the French Revolution, was in two minds. Was it a unique opportunity to benefit from the self-exclusion of Paris from Europe’s power games or was the spectre of revolution a threat? Today, the French crisis is above all a cause for worry in all European capitals – in Berlin, in particular. Of course, France is not an exception – consider Spain and its tainted royal family or Italy’s paralysed political system.

But France is different and potentially more preoccupying. The “Grande Nation”, known for its strong state and international ambitions, seems to be afflicted with nothing less than a regime crisis. It is very unlikely a Sixth Republic will emerge from the present deteriorating climate. But the crisis goes beyond the scandal surrounding Jérôme Cahuzac, who last month resigned as budget minister. In that job, he was supposed to incarnate the rigour of the French state – yet he lied repeatedly about holding a Swiss bank account.

This is the culmination of a process of alienation between the people and its elites that has followed a series of breaches in the confidence the French have in the state. Partly, this reflects the government’s inability to fight unemployment but, more deeply, it speaks to the very erosion of its dignity. No one has contributed to this more than Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, with his mixing of the private and public spheres.

Intent on restoring the dignity of the state, Mr Hollande wants above all to appease and reassure the French. But by navigating with excessive prudence between the logic of the bond markets (no Keynesian policy) and that of his Socialist party inside (no courageous measures to free up the labour market), he has reached the exact opposite result. He has encouraged a climate of negative expectations and suspicion vis a vis the efficiency of the state.

Have we reached the climax of the crisis? Not necessarily. It is unclear what Mr Hollande can do to reinvent himself. He presented himself as a normal man to win power in the May 2012 presidential elections – perhaps the main cause for his rapid fall from grace. Never has a president found himself so unpopular after just 11 months.

Confronted with the dual rise of the extreme left and (more importantly) right, his natural tendency to adopt a wait-and-see policy will be insufficient. Will a new government and in particular a new prime minister solve the problem? It is far from certain.

Louis XVI was an honest man who tried to do his best for his country but who failed to perceive the depth of popular discontent, was unable to control his entourage and ended up as a tragic figure, a victim of forces his personality was not prepared to confront. François Hollande should be wary of such a fate.

The writer is a senior adviser at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales and a visiting professor at King’s College London