By Brigitte Granville* McGill-Queen’s University Press
Published in 2021, What Ails France? is a provocative but constructive critique of the French model of technocratic, elite leadership. Amidst the ongoing protest over pension law and retirement age in France today, Brigitte Granville’s book remains as relevant as ever. In What Ails France? Granville views the malaise as a peculiarly French symptom of the difficulties experienced by many advanced industrial democracies in the face of globalization, technology, and mass immigration. Granville brings trenchant criticism to bear in this wide-ranging survey of the political economy of contemporary France, building her case for the prosecution on the self-reinforcing rigidity produced by a narrow Parisian oligarchy that is both entitled and intellectually hidebound….
*Brigitte Granville is Professor of International Economics and Economic Policy at the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of What Ails France
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