French-style social democracy: the experience of the National Economic Council 1924-1940.

Summary Civil society versus the Jacobin state seems to be a summary of French history over the past two centuries. But the opposition is not so simple, and the state has always developed institutions to interface with unions and associations. To understand the French path to social democracy, the study of the inter-war period is a privileged field. The forerunner of the current Economic and Social Council, the National Economic Council, an institution created in 1925 and abolished in 1940, was a specific response to the debates on corporatism and the place of the unions in relation to the legislative and executive powers. A place of confrontation between workers, bosses, farmers, craftsmen and engineers, the CNE was also a space for expressing the transformations of the French high administration, which was then building up a new economic expertise. Caught up in the debates linked to the economic crisis of the 1930s, the CNE's action was linked to the questioning of liberalism and the development of a managed economy. Finally, the Council played a major role in the application of the social laws of the Popular Front, and in particular the law on the reduction of working hours (the 40-hour week). Based on the examination of a considerable mass of archives, often unpublished, this book helps to better understand the confrontations between the social partners and the State and attempts to "take the institution seriously", thus drawing up a political, social and economic history of France in the 1920s and 1930s. In the current context of social reform, debates on trade union representativeness and the development of an international civil society, the history of an original institution helps us to better understand the challenges of tomorrow.