2023-04-16 13:55:00
At the start of 2023, we are certainly experiencing one of the most important political crises in recent decades. In any case, we find most of the elements usually observed by contemporary scientific approaches to the construction of these crises.
As the French political scientist Michel Dobry explains in his founding work “Sociologie des crises politiques”, one of the main factors in the construction of a critical situation is the national emergence of multisectoral mobilizations, that is to say actions collective extended to many social spaces.
Demonstrations, strikes, blockades, riots, lobbying actions, blackmail, public positions… these mobilizations can take on various aspects and should continue following the decision of the Constitutional Council to validate the majority of the text on the reform of pensions and to reject the proposal for a shared referendum.
And without this necessarily being the desired goal, the mobilizations converge towards an important phenomenon for understanding what a political crisis is: they affect the routines of relations between sectors of society.
Thus, elected officials are appealing for support from the street, deputies come to check the work of the police, police officials challenge the government, mayors support the garbage collectors’ strike by refusing to intervene for the collection, ministers can be “grilled” for influence attempts that normally go unnoticed, very right-wing organizations are calling for stop police brutality…
The emergence of multisectoral mobilizations
The events that lead mobilizations to form a large multisectoral movement are very varied and can be the result of strategies decided by a few individuals or organizations. It is therefore impossible to exhaustively list the springs. But we can dwell on a few typical phenomena which often play an important role.
One of the main points of support for the extension of mobilizations is the existence, in several sectors of society, of potential cause entrepreneurs, networks or “dormant” structures made up of people ready to commit. These structures or networks can come from past mobilizations or from sociability groups formed in places as diverse as the world of work, sports clubs, college or social networks. These links clearly play a decisive role in the current situation, where the pension reform is present in the discussions of a large number of French people, who organize in particular between colleagues their participation in the planned action days.
Another element which reinforces the chances of extension of the mobilizations is the significant presence of the small daily subversive actions that the sociologist James Scott calls “arts of resistance” once morest the dominant: workers who slow down the pace, jokes regarding the bosses, caricatures, rumors…
Long considered a “valve” alleviating the desire for revolt, these arts of resistance contribute rather to accelerating its diffusion in the various sectors of a society, since they make it possible to observe that the desires to resist are shared.
In the current situation, the undeniable presence of these micro-resistances has an effect that is all the stronger since more formal indices such as opinion polls allow a large number of people to measure how much their rejection of the pension reform and the decisions of government is shared. The figures showing that all social categories are opposed to the reform and that only 7% of working people are in favor of it are thus among the most divided in the mobilizations and on social networks.
The emergence of the unpredictable
Another typical figure that stimulates the multisectoral extension of mobilizations, among the most documented in research, is that of the “emergence of the unpredictable”. This has been studied in particular by Michel Dobry in the case of student movements: some university sites are blocked by students when suddenly, we learn that a new site, a law school deemed “right-wing” and therefore difficult to mobilize , joined the movement.
The actors of the mobilization and those who aspire to join it occupy a large part of their time to evaluate, during general assemblies and meetings, the progress of the movement and the various stages crossed by the places of mobilization. Such an event therefore has a particular impact and can convince still hesitant groups that the mobilization is “taking” more than expected, that it is time to join it.
The emergence of the unpredictable, however, has no objective definition. There is no thermometer or official measurement allowing us to agree that events have just taken an exceptional turn.
A significant part of the activity of the actors of a crisis consists precisely in fighting to impose definitions of the situation in conformity with their strategic lines. Thus, the trade union confederations assure, overstated figures in their pockets, that they have once once more been able to take 3 million people to the streets, while “off” sources from the Élysée cabinet or members of the government relativize. Without completely achieving this, these government interventions aim to erase the fact that, according to police figures, the demonstration days of January 31 and March 7, 2023 were the most populated in the entire history of France.
Struggles of definition and construction of the crisis
In general, the escalation of a political crisis cannot be attested by consensual objective indicators. They are all the object of definition struggles. Some underline the exceptionality of the situation and others trivialize the street movements, affirm that things follow their ordinary “democratic path” or that a motion of censure passed by nine votes to bring down the government is none other than a victory for this government.
‘Explosions’, ‘escalations’ and ‘climbs to extremes’ are labels that we try to put up or tear down. The same goes for the very existence of the crisis, which some present as self-evident. when others deny it.
Because when a politician talks regarding the escalation, the emergence or the non-emergence of a crisis, his objective is not to provide a fair and technical definition of what is happening. The challenge is rather to make a date, to score points in the competition for the definition of reality. To point out, like that, in passing, that he or she is the “responsible”, “lucid” person and that it is the members of the other camps who are “irresponsible”.
Before being eventually accepted by all the actors, the idea of a crisis is above all an object of threats, warnings, invectives, reciprocal stigmatization, bargaining: “if the government continues to ignore the French, we will enter an unprecedented political crisis”; “if France Insoumise continues its excesses, we will leave the democratic game and they will bear the responsibility”; “if the Prime Minister resorts to 49.3, she is directing us straight towards the crisis”; “if the LR deputies deny their convictions and vote for the motion of censure…”.
Finally, the outcomes of the crisis are also objects of bargaining. Passage in force and repression, retreat on the law, change of government, dissolution… none of these solutions is good in essence. What contributes most to the success of an institutional strategy launched by the leaders in place is generally its ability to offer different camps a chance to gain something from it and, therefore, reasons to present it as a negotiated solution or ” fair play”. It is difficult to say, at the time of writing, if the presidential camp will resolve to launch proposals likely to meet these criteria, or if it will continue to bet on the breathlessness of the protests…
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Par Teacher and researcher in social sciences, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
The original version of this article was published on The Conversation.
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