Why Neo-Liberalism Failed In France:

Political Sociology Of The Spread Of

Neo-liberal Ideas In France (1974–2012)
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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CLASSICAL LIBERALISM
SERIES EDITORS: DAVID F. HARDWICK · LESLIE MARSH

Why Neo-Liberalism
Failed in France
Political Sociology of the
Spread of Neo-liberal Ideas
in France (1974–2012)
Kevin Brookes
 Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism

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 Kevin Brookes

Why Neo-Liberalism
Failed in France
Political Sociology of the Spread
of Neo-liberal Ideas
in France (1974–2012)
Kevin Brookes
University Grenoble Alpes
CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble
Grenoble, France

ISSN 2662-6470 ISSN 2662-6489 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism
ISBN 978-3-030-82187-6 ISBN 978-3-030-82188-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82188-3

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Kevin would like to dedicate this book to his father, Michael William
Brookes
 Acknowledgments

This book is the result of a writing process of several years for a Ph.D.
thesis in political science defended in 2018 at the University of Grenoble
Alpes. I would like to thank my thesis supervisors Raul Magni-Berton
and Emmanuel Taïeb for directing this research and for giving me a taste
for social science research. I would also like to thank the members of my
Ph.D. committee for their comments and criticisms: Christophe Bouil-
laud, Sébastien Caré, François Facchini, Florence Haegel and Monica
Prasad.
Special thanks to Mike Guetta who helped me to write this book in
English and without whom this project would not have been possible.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Ferghane Azihari,
Benjamin Le Pendeven, Arnaud Lacheret, Guillaume Moukala Same,
Jérôme Perrier and Morgane Delorme who reviewed the manuscript and
provided me with valuable advice.
I am grateful to the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies (IEP de
Grenoble) for providing me with a stimulating environment and for
allowing me to socialise with fellow doctoral students who have helped
me over the years.
Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unfailing support.

vii
 Praise for Why Neo-Liberalism Failed
in France

“For a brief period, from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, it looked
as if France was turning its back from the dirigisme of earlier decades
and adopting a more (classically) liberal outlook on economic and global
affairs. (Progressive “liberalism” in the American sense has no meaning in
the French cultural context.). But the wind turned, and as Kevin Brookes
brilliantly demonstrates with a wealth of data, public opinion shifted.
Whether one considers opinion polls, voting patterns or public policy,
French exceptionalism in the 21st century stands out: no other country
in the Western world has proved more hostile to (neo)liberalism than
France, even though many politicians and public intellectuals continue
to insist that (neo)liberalism has won the day. Brookes very cogently
analyzes the convergence of many other (historical, structural, etc.)
factors besides public opinion to write an excellent book that should
be of interest not only to students of French politics but also political
economy and the history of ideas.”
—Laurent Dobuzinskis, Simon Fraser University, Canada

ix
x Praise for Why Neo-Liberalism Failed in France

“One of the greatest mysteries in the political sociology of France is the

absence of a strong liberal party in a country that generated the 1789
revolution, human rights and numerous authors central to the classical
liberal tradition, including Jean-Baptiste Say and Frédéric Bastiat. Kevin
Brookes lifts the veil on this question using surveys, interviews, statistical
series and an original theoretical framework. Liberalism is weak in France
due to the high justification costs that attend a multitude of institutional
factors (such as the status of the senior administration in the construction
of public policy choices and the ideological biases induced by the public
funding of social science research). To understand the French status quo
and the country’s inability to reform itself, this book is a must-read.”
—François Facchini, Professor of Economics at University of Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
1 What Is Neoliberalism? 4
2 The Paradox of Economic Liberalism in France 10
3 “Why Didn’t It Happen Here?” Explaining the French
Resistance to Neoliberalism 13
References 16
2 Why Neoliberalism Spread in Some Countries,
But Not Others 21
1 Existing Theories for Analysis of the International
Spread of Ideas 25
2 Theoretical Paradoxes in the Spread of Neoliberalism
in France 33
3 Accounting for Resistance to Neoliberalism in France
via a Theory of the Cost of Justifying an Ideology 37
References 47

xi
xii Contents

3 The Spread of Neoliberalism in French Public Policies:

Is There a French Exception? 55
1 The “Neo-Liberal Shift” in Question: Changes
in Economic and Social Policies in France Since
the 1970s 62
2 France from a Comparative Perspective: Stronger
Resistance to NeoLiberal Reforms 83
References 119
4 The Value of Public Opinion, Political Party Discourse
and the Politics of Liberalisation in France 125
1 Reasons for the State’s Withdrawal from Economic
and Social Matters 126
2 Explanatory Model 133
3 Case Selection and Model Specifications 144
4 Empirical Results: Citizen Values and Political
Discourses Matter for Liberalization 156
5 Explaining the Resilience of Interventionism in France 176
References 195
5 The Structure of French Knowledge Regimes
as a Factor in Resistance to Neoliberalism 199
1 Comparative Analysis of the Structures of the Senior
Civil Service in France and the United States 204
2 The Relative Weakness of Think Tanks and Academics
in France Compared to the US 213
3 Specific Case: The Production of Economic Expertise
in France 232
4 The Effects of the Structure of the French Knowledge
Regime on the Development of Public Policy 242
References 261
 Contents xiii

6 “A Spring Without a Summer”: The Political Failure

of Neoliberalism (1984–2012) 267
1 The Neoliberal Experiment of 1986–1988 270
2 Divisions and Fractures in the French Neoliberal
Movement, 1988–2012 284
References 316
7 Conclusion: Why It Didn’t Happen Here 319
References 325

Bibliography 327
Index 351
 List of Figures

Chapter 2
Fig. 1 Analysis framework for the spread of neoliberalism
in France (Source Author) 47

Chapter 3
Fig. 1 Evolution of public expenditures in Western European
countries (Sources David Brady, Evelyne Huber and John
D. Stephens, «Comparative Welfare States Data Set»,
Universiy of North Carolina and Berlin Social Science
Center [WZB], 2014 [OECD data] and Thomas Cusack,
«General Governement Expenditures and Revenues
dataset», 2003) 88

xv
xvi List of Figures

Fig. 2 Evolution of the share of public employment

in the working age population in Western European
countries (Source David Brady, Evelyne Huber and John
D. Stephens, «Comparative Welfare States Data Set»,
University of North Carolina and Berlin Social Science
Center [WZB], 2014 [OCDE data] and Thomas Cusack,
«General Governement Expenditures and Revenues
dataset», 2003 [for Portugal and Spain data] accessible
on line: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/resources/other-dat
abases/) 91
Fig. 3 Level of general compensation of civil servants in Western
European countries (Source Thomas CUSACK, Public
Employment Dataset, 2003; Eurostat Data Base,
Compensation of employees, available on line: http://ec.eur
opa.eu/eurostat/web/government-finance-statistics/data/
database; http://www2000.wzb.eu/alt/ism/people/misc/
cusack/d_sets.en.htm) 93
Fig. 4 Modes of recruitment of senior officials in Europe (Source
Government at a Glance 2009, Paris, OECD, p. 200) 95
Fig. 5 Tax revenues (as % of GDP) in Western European
countries (Source OECD, «Government revenue statistics,
comparative tables») 98
Fig. 6 Evolution of the different forms of taxation in France
and in the Euro-15 (Source OECD, «Government public
revenue statistics, comparative tables») 100
Fig. 7 Evolution of the marginal corporate tax rate in Western
European countries (Source OECD, Tax Policy Database,
2015) 101
Fig. 8 Regulation of the energy, transport and communication
sectors in the EU (Source Regulatory reform
indicators in the energy, transport and communication
sectors [ETCR], OECD (http://stats.oecd.org/Index.
aspx?lang=fr). The indicator takes into account
regulatory arrangements in the following sectors:
telecommunications, electricity, gas, postal services,
rail transport, air passenger transport and road freight
transport) 103
 List of Figures xvii

Fig. 9 Developments in labour market regulation in Western

European countries (Source OECD, Employment
protection time series 1985–2013. Note The closer
the index is to 6, the more regulated the labour market
is with regard to dismissal. The permanent employment
protection indicator takes into account variables such
as the length of probationary periods, the definition
of unfair dismissal, dismissal notification procedures,
the length of the dismissal notice period, etc. The
fixed-term employment protection indicator takes
into account elements such as the number of successive
fixed-term contracts allowed, the modalities of recourse
to temporary work, the treatment of temporary workers) 104
Fig. 10 Share of exports and imports in GDP (Source David
Brady, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens, Comparative
Welfare States Data Set, University of North Carolina
and Berlin Social Science Center [WZB], 2014 [data
from Penn Tables] available online: http://www.lisdatace
nter.org/resources/other-databases/) 106
Fig. 11 Trade and capital restriction index (Kof Index) (Source
KOF Globalisation Index) 107
Fig. 12 Evolution of social expenditures in Western European
countries (Source OECD, Social Expenditure Database,
available online: http://www.oecd.org/fr/social/depenses.
htm) 111
Fig. 13 Share of social protection expenditures in the total
state budget (Source Authors calculations from OECD
Stats—COFOG) 114
Fig. 14 Evolution of the composite generosity index of the welfare
state (Source Lyle Scruggs, Jahn Detlef and Kati Kuitto,
Comparative Welfare Entitlements Data Set, 2014) 117
Fig. 15 Evolution of the generosity of the welfare state
in the different sectors (Source Lyle Scruggs, Jahn Detlef
and Kati Kuitto, Comparative Welfare Entitlements Data
Set, 2014. Available online: http://cwed2.org/) 118
xviii List of Figures

Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Relationship between citizen opinion on the market
economy and the economic platforms of political parties
(All Parties and Future Governing Parties) (Source Author) 157
Fig. 2 Link between citizens’ views on the market economy
and different sub-indicators of the Economic Freedom
Index (EFW) (Source Author’s calculations) 162
Fig. 3 Link between party positioning on economic
neoliberalism, and economic freedom (Source Author’s
calculations) 164
Fig. 4 Relation between citizens’ views on the economy
and economic freedom in European countries (Source
Author’s calculations. Name of countries follow the ISO3
classification) 178
Fig. 5 Positioning of the platforms of ruling parties
and of parties in aggregate on economic neoliberalism
(Source Marpor) 179
Fig. 6 Changes in mood and positioning of French political
parties (Source Author’s calculations) 182
Fig. 7 Trends in public spending, political party platform
and public opinion (Source Author’s calculations) 185
Fig. 8 Trends in public opinion and party platform on economic
neoliberalism and economic liberalism indexes on public
policy 188
Fig. 9 Changes in public opinion and party platform regarding
social neoliberalism and welfare state generosity 189

Chapter 5
Fig. 1 Organisational distribution of French Economic Journals,
1980–1982 (Note The surface area of each cluster is
proportional to the percentage of total citations received.
Source Koen, V. (1986). La production française de
connaissances économiques: analyse bibliométrique.
Revue économique, 37 (1), 117–136) 240
 List of Figures xix

Fig. 2 Changes in ideology among university associate professors

of economics, 1871–1968 (Source Facchini, F. (2016).
Ideologyand professorial appointments in French Economics
Universities. Unpublished Communication, https://hal.
archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01735226/document) 241
Fig. 3 Civil service recruitment structure and level of economic
freedom (Source OECD, “Government at a Glance–2009,
p. 79; Fraser Institute, Economic Freedom of the World:
2017 Annual Report, 2017) 259

Chapter 6
Fig. 1 Media mentions of The main group of neoliberal
intellectuals in France, “Nouveaux Economistes” In Le
Monde, 1978–2012 (Source Europresse) 285
Fig. 2 Change in the index measuring the spread
of neoliberalism in the platforms of the parliamentary
right 1945–2012 (Source MARPOR) 286
 List of Tables

Chapter 3
Table 1 Principal economic reforms undertaken in France
since 1974 76
Table 2 Replacement rates of the different branches of social
security in France 82
Table 3 Main social reforms undertaken in France since 1974 84
Table 4 Public expenditures as % of GDP—1974–2008 89
Table 5 Public employment as % of labour force 92
Table 6 Evolution of public revenues—1974–2008 99
Table 7 Marginal tax rate on the highest income 102
Table 8 Ranking of Western European countries according
to the economic freedom index 109
Table 9 Evolution of social expenditures in Western European
countries 112

Chapter 4
Table 1 List of variables selected 145
Table 2 Descriptive statistics for the countries studied (average
of observations by country) 154

xxi
xxii List of Tables

Table 3 Models predicting the economic positioning of political

parties in relation to neoliberalism 159
Table 4 Multiple regression models—social platforms of political
parties 160
Table 5 Sub-indicators of public opinion and economic freedom 163
Table 6 Economic freedom index explained by ideology
of citizens and political parties 166
Table 7 Sub-indicators of economic freedom explained
by ideology of citizens and political parties 168
Table 8 Economic freedom index (and opinions on specific
issues) 170
Table 9 Welfare state generosity and social expenditures 173
Table 10 Public expenditures as % of GDP 175
Table 11 Platforms of French parties in the next election
and mood (1978–2012) 183
Table 12 Ideology of citizens and political parties and French
public spending 186
Table 13 Economic Freedom Index (France) explained by public
opinion and political parties platforms 188
Table 14 Welfare state generosity explained by the ideology
of citizens and political parties platforms 190
Table 15 Summary table of changes in opinion, party platforms
and public policies in France (1978–2012) 191

Chapter 5
Table 1 Number of appointments involving presidential
nomination in the United States 208
Table 2 Influence of principal American Think Tanks (2013) 218
Table 3 Organisational characteristics of the main French Think
Tanks in 2013 226
Table 4 Presence of the “Grands corps” in the presidential
and executive entourages (percent) 244
Table 5 Trends in the sources of recruitment for the president’s
entourage 246
Table 6 Sociography of Department Heads and Cabinet
Members in the economic administrations of France
and the United States (in %) 251
 List of Tables xxiii

Chapter 6
Table 1 List of neoliberal organisations during the “Liberal
Spring” of 1981–1986 301
 1
Introduction

The goal of this book is to analyse the spread of contemporary liberalism

in French political life. This research project originated with a specific
event symptomatic of the relationship of French political actors to this
ideology. In the middle of his 2008 campaign to become First Secretary
of the Parti Socialiste, Bertrand Delanoë declared in a book of interviews
that he was “socialist and liberal” (Delanoë & Joffrin, 2008). This simple
statement inflamed his competitors sufficiently that the resulting contro-
versy forced him to withdraw from the race. This anecdote illustrates
the pitfalls of claiming allegiance to liberal ideas in French politics—one
is immediately branded as “neo-liberal” by all concerned. Liberalism is
generally at the crux of political debate, and routinely comes under viru-
lent attack, as evidenced by the titles of many essays and articles blaming
it for all manner of contemporary societal ills (Duménil & Lévy, 2014;
Klein, 2007; Touraine, 1998). The nature and persistence of these atti-
tudes in French political agents, from citizens through politicians and
political parties, demand a deeper investigation, and an explanation.
Since its origins, liberalism has informed the main debates
surrounding the organisation of political society. Alongside socialism and
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2021
K. Brookes, Why Neo-Liberalism Failed in France,
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82188-3_1
2 K. Brookes

conservatism, it is one of the three great ideologies that constitute moder-

nity (Wallerstein, 1992). But before going any further, it behooves us to
consider the variety of its forms by speaking not of liberalism, but of
liberalisms. Distinct currents of liberalism differ in their interpretations
of the boundaries to be drawn between the individual and society, and
between democracy and the market. They also differ in their manner of
justifying individual liberty: some rely on a specific code of ethics (such as
Objectivism), others on consequentialist, or purely deontological foun-
dations. The common core of liberalism resides in the sovereignty of the
individual, in the conception of a person as subject to the power of the
law rather than to the power of other people (Jaume, 2009). These intel-
lectual traditions arise from a common root and emerged in the 1600s.
Over the ensuing centuries, liberal authors have espoused the rule of law;
the separation and division of political powers; respect for (and toler-
ance of ) religious pluralism; the idea that the sovereign and the members
of the body politic must submit to the power of laws rather than to
the power of men; and the defence of property rights. A divergence
on economic issues arose in the nineteenth century, as tension devel-
oped between the need to assert the prerogatives of civil society and
the defence of individual rights. A number of politically liberal intel-
lectuals began to question the free trade and naturalist understanding of
the market that dominated among liberal economists of the era. Clas-
sical liberals were devoted to the principles of the price system and free
trade, whereas the new “social liberals” proposed a liberalism that took
into account the increased ability of individuals to realize their goals
with the help of a community in which economic affairs were partially
subject to public control in order to ensure greater equality of opportu-
nity (Audard, 2009; Audier, 2006). In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the
term “liberal” gradually came to be identified with this new school of
thought, while in Europe the label has maintained its association with
those strictly in opposition to all state intervention in economic matters.
The economic dimension of liberalism, which holds up the market as a
way of organising society, has since stoked disputes between different
 1 Introduction 3

schools of liberalism and continues to drive the main public debates

(Audard, 2009).
This book examines the spread of neoliberal ideas in French political
life from 1974 to 2012. I have chosen these chronological milestones
for two reasons. First, because there is a certain historiographical void
across this period, and second, because this is when a “second generation”
neoliberalism developed in France under the aegis of the “Nouveaux
Économistes,” around the time that Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected
the President of the Republic. This was a pivotal era both in French
political history and in the history of neoliberalism. The historiog-
raphy of twentieth-century French liberalism is less abundant when
compared with the nineteenth century, yet some biographies of promi-
nent personalities do exist (Dard, 2008; Minart & Schäuble, 2016),
and historians of ideas have shown a strong interest in rediscovering the
heritage of French political liberalism during the 1970s, particularly with
respect to Raymond Aron and his disciples, and in some other circles
among the “New Philosophers” (Châton, 2006; Christofferson, 2009;
Sawyer & Stewart, 2016). From a historical point of view, the period
in which the first variants of neoliberalism arose (from the 1930s to
the 1950s) has been studied intensively. In my previous work (Brookes,
2012), I have described another important organisation, founded in
1966 by French members of the Mont Pelerin Society: l’Association pour
la Liberté économique et le Progrès Social (ALEPS). The vague and patro-
nising doctrine defended there does not correspond to today’s definition
of neoliberalism with all of its Chicagoan and Austrian associations.
Contemporary neoliberalism did not really appear until the creation of
the group known as the “Nouveaux Économistes” in the early 1970s
(Brookes, 2017). This group brought together a number of academics,
the majority of whom had completed at least part of their studies in
North America, where they had discovered the currents of neoliber-
alism. This period coincided with the rise to power of Valéry Giscard
d’Estaing, who had declared before ALEPS that, “The most learned
form of modern economic thought is liberal thought” (Bourdieu &
Boltanski, 1976, 22). Thus, 1974 marks the creation of the main group
4 K. Brookes

of promoters of neoliberalism in France, as well as of the political expres-

sion of a movement defining itself as “liberal.” My research then extends
only as far forward as 2012, partly in order to enjoy some hindsight in
the analysis, but also to ensure access to comprehensive data over the
entire period.

1 What Is Neoliberalism?
The spread of neoliberalism is one of the defining economic and polit-
ical facts of the late twentieth century. It has accompanied a “great
transformation,” both intellectual and political, in the relationship of
democracies to the market, and in the conceptual approach of prin-
cipal leaders to public policy (Blyth, 2002). It constitutes the intellectual
aspect of the crisis of Keynesianism in the 1970s, and marks a break in
the then dominant paradigm of Western economic policy. Advocates of
neoliberalism have helped to bring the crisis of the welfare state to the
forefront of political and academic debate (Merrien, 2007).
The study of neoliberalism is all the rage these days, yet the abun-
dance of academic production surrounding the notion has not helped
to clarify it. On the contrary, the term has become a nebulous catch-
all frequently employed with no clear definition (Caré & Châton, 2016,
3), despite being subject to an intense political and academic struggle
to define its meaning. It often has a tendentious meaning: almost every
author writing about neoliberalism is critical of the ideology (Thorsen
2010). For its critics, neoliberalism is everywhere (Saad-Filho & John-
ston, 2005, 1), to the point of becoming a “new global rationale” that
has transformed not only public policies, but also the behaviour of
individuals in our societies (Dardot & Laval, 2009). Neoliberalism is
blamed for climate change, the economic and financial crisis of 2008,
and the increases in inequality within and between countries (Duménil
& Lévy, 2014), as well as the evolution of rugby in France (Smith, 2000),
the bureaucratisation of life, both corporate and quotidian (Hibou,
2012), and so on. The term “neoliberalism” is used almost exclusively by
the critical left (Dean, 2012), editorialists painting the ideology as the
 1 Introduction 5

“source of all our problems,”1 Joseph Stiglitz depicting neoliberalism as

“market fundamentalism” (Stiglitz, 2008). The nature and definition of
neoliberalism are seen as a “theoretical and political issue for the left” by
intellectuals at the intersection of academic research and activist engage-
ment (Dardot & Laval, 2007) because the right definition of the notion
would serve and enable the criticism of neoliberal economic policies.
One of the leading representatives of the British New Left acknowledges
that the term is used to describe very disparate realities and is unsatisfac-
tory, but he justifies its use as follows: “I would also argue that naming
neoliberalism is politically necessary to give the resistance to its onward
march content, focus and a cutting edge” (Hall, 2011, 706). On the
other hand, neoliberals today refuse to recognise themselves in the label.
For them, it is a “dirty word” and a “political insult” (Hartwich, 2009).
Contra the militant and critical use of the label “neoliberalism” in
the literature, we propose to define it primarily through the ideas of the
thinkers who formulated it. Neoliberalism can be defined as an ideology,
i.e., a set of ideas both descriptive and prescriptive and that guide the
political behaviour of actors by giving them a direction (Freeden, 2003).
To employ John Campbell’s distinction, ideas can be cognitive (analysing
causes and describing reality) or normative (stating what should be)
(Campbell, 1998). Neoliberal ideas manifest this dual nature. As such,
neoliberalism must be analysed in both dimensions: as a research plat-
form based on epistemological presuppositions that underpin a positive
analysis of society, and as a set of normative theories that imply the
implementation of certain public policies derived from them (Lagueux,
1989). We can distinguish four intellectual poles of neoliberalism: the
German pole, the Austrian pole, and the American pole, to which we
would add the libertarians (Caré, 2016). They differ in terms of epis-
temology, their preferred degree of state intervention and the specific
public policies they advocate. Beyond these divergences, which have been
the subject of intense debate among neoliberals, we can observe their
convergences and propose to define neoliberalism as an ideology that
criticises state intervention in both economic and social spheres and

1George Monbiot, «Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems», The
Guardian, 15 avril 2016.
6 K. Brookes

considers the free market to be the most efficient and the fairest insti-
tution for organising the activities of individuals in society. Indeed, since
the 1930s neoliberalism has been developed intellectually in opposition
to ideas invoking “market failure.” Neoliberalism is based on economic
theories that point rather to “government failure” in organising the
activities of a complex society.
This definition does not seem to differ from the laissez-faire doctrine
of the nineteenth century, embodied, for example, by the French school
of political economy or by the Manchester school. So how is neoliber-
alism “neo” and how does it differ from classical liberalism, sometimes
referred to by its proponents and detractors as “paleo-liberalism?” In
its contemporary sense, the prefix “neo” refers more to a dimension
of renewal and revival, rather than to the reforming dimension of the
doctrine implied when the word first appeared in the 1930s. Thus the
“newness” implicit in the prefix “neo” may refer to any of three elements:
the unfavourable historical context in which these theories are developed,
the new scientificity with which some of its schools are adorned, and
a radicalisation that translated into a desire to draw on the intellectual
sources of economic liberalism by reinterpreting them.
The use of the term refers first of all to a precise historical context that
anchors neoliberalism in the institutional framework of the twentieth
century, at a time when it was restricted by state institutions and when
it was defined above all against competing ideologies such as “market
socialism” (Oskar Lange), planism or Keynesianism.2 Developed in a
crisis situation for economic liberalism, on a practical and intellectual
level, the circumstances of its elaboration differ from those of eighteenth-
century economic liberalism. Neoliberalism here refers to the revival of
an ideology that had been marginalised from the intellectual and polit-
ical scene for nearly a century, one that defended the sovereignty of the
individual, the market economy, the right of ownership and the freedom
of trade (laissez-faire). This was built in response to doctrines emerging
at the same time (planism, corporatism, Keynesianism) as well as to a

2 Rachel S. Turner, «The ‘Rebirth of Liberalism’: The Origins of Neo-Liberal Ideology», Journal
of Political Ideologies, février 2007, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 67–83; Gilles Dostaler, «Les chemins
sinueux de la pensée économique libérale», L’Économie politique, 2009, vol. 44, no. 4, p. 42.
 1 Introduction 7

new institutional context characterised by the welfare state on the social

level and the regulatory state on the economic level. Initially constructed
in a hostile context, it was subsequently transformed in a second phase,
marked by the Cold War, into a theoretical body of work on campuses
on the margins of the academic world, before being consecrated in the
1970s by the award of the Nobel Prize in Economics to several of its
proponents. Its last phase, which consisted of the partial application of
neoliberal theories, also refers to a particular context marked by the end
of the Keynesian era and an increasing internationalisation of economies.
The prefix “neo” is a tool to designate this contemporary doctrine, which
was developed in dialogue with the thinkers of its time, and in reaction
to the economic and social developments of its century.
The historian of ideas Alain Laurent considers the label neoliberalism
misleading, since the ideas to which it refers correspond to a “clas-
sical liberalism returned to itself.”3 This assertion does not do justice
to the doctrinal innovations of twentieth-century neoliberals. Nor does
it properly account for the profound differences in context between the
development of political economy in the nineteenth century and the later
critiques of bureaucracy and the welfare state by the public choice school
or the Chicago school. It ignores all the debates and confrontations
between the tendencies of neoliberalism and their work of adaptation
to present circumstances as well as their partial radicalisation towards a
visceral anti-statism. The neoliberals mobilised authors from the past,
but extended the scope of their analyses to all fields of human action
(not only economics), mobilised new tools of analysis (epistemology of
the Chicago school, Austrian praxeology), and involved themselves in the
problems that occupied their time (notably the crises of Keynesianism
and the Welfare State). Neoliberalism also corresponded, particularly
in its libertarian side, to a revival of the vigour and the utopian char-
acter that liberalism had once had.4 Like other modern ideologies (such

3Alain Laurent, Le libéralisme américain, op. cit., p. 177.

4This was the objective that Friedrich Hayek assigned to the liberals of his time in his famous
1949 article “Intellectuals and Socialism.” We take up here the filiation that Pierre Rosanvallon
imputes between the neoliberals and the Physiocrats and the Scottish Enlightenment, and his
analysis of market naturalism which brings them together. Pierre Rosanvallon, Le capitalisme
utopique: critique de l’idéologie économique, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1979.
8 K. Brookes

as socialism), it was characterised by more scientific pretensions than

classical liberalism, giving its defenders an increased legitimacy. It was
renewed by reliance on new epistemological developments in the social
sciences. It constituted both a research program in the human sciences
based on methodological individualism (in several of its variants) aimed
at describing and explaining the functioning of human communities in
all their dimensions (politics, history, economy, society…), and a norma-
tive political ideology aiming to prescribe specific public policies to act
on reality. The originality of neoliberalism in relation to classical liber-
alism consists in its redefinition as a research program (positive analysis of
society as it is in the future based on empirical tests) as much as a polit-
ical ideology.5 Neoliberalism thus acquired a scientificity by providing
an intelligibility to the social world based on the postulate of individual
rationality that neoliberals extended to all fields of knowledge. It was
distinguished by a new willingness to apply its grid of analysis (and the
normative conclusions thus derived) to all social interactions, beyond the
simple field of economics.
The third element that intellectually characterised neoliberalism was
its radicalisation, its wish to break with economic liberalism as it had
been theorised in the eighteenth century. The prefix in “neo” liberalism
is misleading here. Though we may consider this prefix in its connota-
tion of renewal and see it as part of a new historical context that includes
innovations, it does not, for all that, break much with classical liber-
alism. Several facts and theoretical references tend to show that, on the
contrary, it aimed at reviving previous intellectual traditions that can be
traced back to the Scottish Enlightenment or to Physiocracy.6 It can be
argued that the version of neoliberalism that has predominated since
the 1970s should be understood as a desire to “return to the source,”
that is, to the classical liberal traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. This translates into a reappropriation of its canonical authors
(Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, John Stuart Mill, to name but a few) and
its founding schools (the Scottish Enlightenment, the Physiocrats, the

5 Maurice Lagueux, «Le néo-libéralisme comme programme de recherche et comme idéologie»,

Cahiers d’économie politique, no. 16–17, 1989, pp. 129–152.
6 Pierre Rosanvallon, Le capitalisme utopique, op. cit.
 1 Introduction 9

Manchester School, the French School of Political Economy, etc.).7 It is

thus akin to the rediscovery of a lost tradition, as attested to by Friedrich
Hayek’s desire in the early days of the Mont Pelerin Society to name the
group the Lord Acton-Tocqueville Society in order to be in line with the
main liberal thinkers of the nineteenth century. The Wealth of Nations
by Adam Smith was the subject of a bicentenary commemoration at
the Mont Pelerin Society during which Milton Friedman emphasised
the topicality of Smith’s thought.8 The French neoliberals (the “New
Economists”) rediscovered the French school of political economy. This
is why Friedrich Hayek himself rejected the term “neoliberalism,” which
he associated with the renovators of the Lippmann conference: “The
problem is that we are not neoliberals. Those who define themselves
in this way are not liberals, they are socialists. We are liberals who are
seeking to renovate, but we adhere to the old tradition, that we can
improve, but cannot change what is fundamental.”9
To conclude, the meaning we assign to the term neoliberalism empha-
sises the history and context of its production and diffusion more than
it underlines any breaks with classical liberalism. The label “liberalism”
seemed too imprecise to us, as it could also refer to the renewal of theories
of social justice around the work of John Rawls, or to a social liberalism
critical of neoliberalism. The use of the prefix “neo” allows us to show
that this is one of the branches of liberalism, and to recall its intellectual
roots in classical liberalism while avoiding associated stigmas.

7 Alain Laurent, Le libéralisme américain, op. cit.

8 With, in particular, an intervention by Milton Friedman that claimed Adam Smith a more
relevant thinker for analysis of the political situation in 1976 than for that of two centuries
earlier. Cf. Milton Friedman, «Adam Smith’s relevance for 1976», «21ème Congrès de la Société
du Mont Pèlerin, St Andrews, 1976», Liberaal Archief , Gand (Belgique).
9 Friedrich Hayek, interview in El Mercurio, El Mercurio, April 19, 1981, quoted in Bruce
Caldwell and Leonidas Montes, «Friedrich Hayek and his visits to Chile», The Review of Austrian
Economics, September 2015, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 261–309.
10 K. Brookes

2 The Paradox of Economic Liberalism

in France
The relationship of France and her political life with liberalism is an
enigma. In terms of political theory, French liberalism is distinguished
both by its richness and by the originality of many of its thinkers, and
the country has been fertile ground for all aspects of the liberal intellec-
tual tradition (Laurent & Valentin, 2012, Manent, 1986). However, this
wealth of ideas is out of balance with its actual influence in public debate
and on the practice of power. Historians of purely political forces, must
struggle to find traces of this rich and diversified intellectual tradition
in any structured liberal movement persisting over the long term. The
political history of liberalism in France has seesawed between periods of
fecundity, such as the end of the nineteenth century, and intervals of
decline, such as during the First World War, (Barjot et al., 2016) the
economic crisis of 1929, and the Second World War. Liberalism “against
the State” has nevertheless remained but a minor influence throughout;
on both intellectual and political levels, it has enjoyed only occasional
“liberal moments,” such as those marked by the actions of individuals
such as Antoine Pinay, Jacques Rueff or, more recently, Alain Madelin,
who exemplified an ideology aimed at restricting the ambit of State
action. That it never manifested in a party, or even within a wing of
any dominant party, allowed a specialist on party politics to write, “In
France, liberalism has not been a factor in the identity of a specific party
as was the case in Great Britain with the Whigs, or in Germany with the
Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP)” (Massart, 2002).
While political liberalism saw a wide resurgence in France in the
1970s (Châton, 2006; Christofferson, 2009; Sawyer & Stewart, 2016),
classical economic liberalism and its contemporary manifestations have
been subject to strong criticism, including from major liberal thinkers
such as Raymond Aron: “The purely scientific content of the teaching
of economists is most often wrapped up, and sometimes hidden in
ideological representations, value judgements and metaphysics charac-
teristic of an era and assured of an ineluctable aging. Thus, liberalism
has often been disguised as a law of nature, although it flourishes only
 1 Introduction 11

with the help of political art, and of the highest art.”10 This quotation
bears witness to the intellectual distinctiveness of a French liberalism
that, confronted with its social and political environment, takes a very
particular doctrinal form. Larry Siedentop had grasped the features of
this French-style liberalism, which was distinguished by its rejection of
individualism and of the concept of freedom as non-interference, by
its republicanism, and by the amount of attention paid to the social
anchoring of individuals, to local freedoms, and to the historical process
of the societies in which they evolved (Geenens & Rosenblatt, 2012;
Siedentop, 1979). The work of Lucien Jaume also describes the para-
doxical nature of a French liberal tradition whose major currents take
the form of a “state-managed liberalism” (libéralisme par l’Etat ) that all
too easily accommodates the administration at the expense of individ-
ualistic liberal strains more favourable to the market order. The latter
have remained in the minority (Jaume, 1997). According to Jaume, these
traits can be explained by the institutional context (the Jacobin state) and
the political context (the threat of revolution) in which they evolved.
This “state-managed liberalism” was embodied in particular by the “doc-
trinaires.” Far from constituting a coherent ideology, they defended a
number of principles including an attachment to the pluralism of ideas
and interests, the need to take into account the interplay of social forces,
a preference for gradual reform, and a tolerance designed to avoid falling
into Manichean visions of the world (Craiutu, 2006). This tradition of
moderation was later exemplified by the representatives of the Orléanist
right, and left very little room for the expression of a liberalism “against
the state,” supportive of the market, and combining the defence of
individual and economic freedoms (Perrier, 2016).
Parallel to this specific intellectual tradition, France has nevertheless
incubated thinkers propounding a liberalism “against the State,” attached
to individualism and an uncompromising defence of the market. This
other branch, which has followed the path of more traditionally liber-
tarian thought, has been the subject of much interest in recent years.
In addition to the many important summaries (Geenens & Rosenblatt,

10Author’s translation. Aron was speaking at a lecture given at the reception for the Prix de la
pensée libérale by ALEPS, 1969. Raymond Aron, “Qu’est ce que le libéralisme?” Commentaire,
1998, no. 84, pp. 943–946.
12 K. Brookes

2012; Harpaz, 2000; Jaume, 1997; Leroux & Hart, 2014; Nemo &
Petitot, 2006), there exist a number of studies testifying to the richness of
the diverse intellectual history of French liberalism since the eighteenth
century: on Quesnay and the physiocrats (Skornicki, 2011; Steiner,
1998), the Coppet circle (Jaume, Association française des constitu-
tionnalistes, & Association française de science politique, 2000; Steiner,
2003), the ideologues (Jaume, 1997), the industrialists (Leroux, 2015),
and on the founders of political economy (and their successors) some-
times grouped together under the name of “School of Paris” (Breton
& Lutfalla, 1991; Le Van-Lemesle, 2004; Leter, 2006). What these
studies have in common is that they highlight both the moments when
these ideas became institutionalised in influential networks (the Political
Economy Society, the Moral Academy of Political Sciences, the Athénée,
the Journal des Économistes, etc.), and the originality of this liberalism
that, in contrast with English utilitarianism, based the justification of
freedom on natural law. This French liberal tradition enjoyed a certain
international success and spread frequently beyond the borders of France
(e.g. in the relationship between Adam Smith and the physiocrats) to the
point that the work of several nineteenth-century French liberals such as
Gustave de Molinari, Charles Comte and Frédéric Bastiat has recently
enjoyed a resurgence in popularity across the Atlantic (Behrent, 2010;
Hart, 1981; Garello, 2002; Liggio, 1977; Rothbard, 1995).
France has been one of the top producers of liberal economic theory,
yet it has never had a sustained liberal political movement with enough
support to affect public decision-making. The theory underpinning
economic liberalism was elaborated in several successive phases by French
thinkers such as François Quesnay, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frédéric Bastiat etc.
In addition, several Frenchmen had significant influences on the intel-
lectual genesis of neoliberalism, whether through Bertrand de Jouvenel’s
contributions on power and its growth (Jouvenel, 1972), Jacques Rueff ’s
critique of John Maynard Keynes’ general theory, or via the organisa-
tional role played by Louis Rougier in holding one of the first doctrinal
meetings attempting to renovate economic liberalism (Audier, 2012).
They have collectively contributed to a liberalism that emphasises the
need for institutions that set strict rules for the functioning of the market
(Diemer, 2014). Yet, France never experienced a neoliberal turn. How
can this be explained?
 1 Introduction 13

3 “Why Didn’t It Happen Here?”

Explaining the French Resistance
to Neoliberalism
As shown by comparative studies, France has not seen any equiva-
lent to the figures or movements promoting free-market rhetoric such
as have been prominent in the United States, the United Kingdom,
Germany and certain Latin American countries (Fourcade-Gourinchas
& Babb, 2002; Prasad, 2005). The appearance of neoliberal discourse
on Western agendas, with recipes for public policy intended to give
free rein to market mechanisms, was engineered in conjunction with
an international network of think tanks, intellectuals and experts with
a united objective: to challenge the post-war Keynesian economic and
social model. Yet, in the case of France, there is little empirical work
attesting to links with this transnational network, nor is there evidence
for the influence of the members of these international societies on
French politics.11
A quick glance at some public policy indicators suggests instead the
hypothesis that the French political system was somehow resistant to
this ideology: between 1974 and 2012, the number of public employees,
public spending (as a share of GDP), social assistance programs and
spending, compulsory levies, employment assistance policies and social
spending all increased (we return to these findings in detail in Chapter 2).
Likewise, hostility to the market economy remains one of the salient
features of French public opinion. In a 2011 survey comparing 10 coun-
tries (including the United States and China), the French were the least
likely by far to see the market economy as a system that works well and
should be maintained (15%).12 France represents a striking exception, as
there is a significant gap even with the second most market-unfriendly
country, Italy, where only 26% of inhabitants consider the market

11 With the French exception of François Denord, whose thesis deals mainly with the intra-war
and immediate post-war periods. (Denord 2016).
12 “Regard sur la mondialisation dans 10 pays,” IFOP-Lacroix poll, January 2011 (http://www.
ifop.com/media/poll/1390-1-study_file.pdf).
14 K. Brookes

economy to be functioning well. There seems, then, to be a significant

difference in the way the French population perceives neoliberalism.13
This weakness in the political will of voters and political entrepreneurs
in support of this ideology is compelling. My work takes shape in this
investigation by addressing two complementary problems: that of the
propagation of neoliberal ideas within the French framework (the how),
and that of the reasons that may account for the relative failure of neolib-
eralism’s adherents to form a political movement of a scope and influence
comparable with the other countries neighbouring France (the why). In
this context, I wish to contribute to the understanding of a political
failure following the example of sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset. He
attempted, at the end of his career, to identify the causes that might
explain why socialism had never succeeded in becoming a dominant
political force in the United States. His book had the evocative title,
“It Didn’t Happen Here” (Lipset & Marks, 2000). In an inversion of
the work of Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser, who established the
causes of the relatively weak development of the welfare state in the
United States (Alesina & Glaeser, 2006), I hope to identify the elements
that explain the inability of neoliberal doctrines in France since the
1970s to mount a serious challenge to the welfare state and economic
interventionism from a well-structured political movement.
How has neoliberalism spread through the intellectual and political
landscapes of France since the 1970s? Why hasn’t France experienced
a significant neoliberal shift comparable to those of other European
countries? What factors might explain the resistance this ideology has
faced?
Though the subject of this book is the penetration of neoliberal ideas
in the French context, my inquiry also pertains to the more general
issues of the diffusion of ideologies and their relationship with changes
in public policy. We are thus dealing with a classic question in polit-
ical science: Under what conditions do ideas matter in the process of
shaping public policy decisions? This brings us back to Vivien Schmidt’s
famous assertion: “The big question for scholars of ideas is why some

13 The literature shows that this is a special case within the European Union and that the trend
towards mistrust of the market economy is increasing. (François 2013; Degeorges et Gonthier,
2012).
 1 Introduction 15

ideas become the policies, programs, and philosophies that dominate

political reality while others do not” (Schmidt, 2008, 307).
The central idea of this book is that the spread of an ideology through
the body politic of a nation depends largely on the costs incurred by
individuals in defending it (Facchini, 2016). These costs vary as a func-
tion of both institutional factors (such as the nature of the knowledge
production regime and the partisan system), and historical factors that
shape the incentive structure governing individual actions at the macro-
political level. We shall see in particular that neoliberalism has been less
influential than in other countries due to both the strong resistance of
public opinion that has constrained the window of political opportunity
for neoliberals, and to the structure of French institutions that favour
a path-dependent effect in both the production of public policy and in
the way political discourse is constructed. In addition to these structural
factors, there are also cyclical factors linked to the internal history of the
neoliberal movement. This movement has not been able to assert itself
due to its fragmentation, its radicality out of sync with the French polit-
ical context, and its difficulty in attracting political entrepreneurs to a
marginal movement. I will present these hypotheses and this theoret-
ical framework more comprehensively in the chapter on theory and the
different approaches in the literature (this chapter).
This book differs from a monograph on France in two ways. It starts
from a general political science enquiry into the influence of ideas on the
structure of party competition and public policy changes. In addition, it
uses comparisons to answer the central problem of the thesis. To this end,
a theoretical framework is developed based on several types of literature
fragmented across several disciplines, but with the common objective of
analysing the role of ideology in politics. On the one hand, the history of
ideas in politics has privileged the exegesis of texts and has endeavoured
to trace the descent of ideas between thinkers. On the other hand, the
sociology of public action, although it has put the role of ideas back in
the heart of its analysis, rarely traces their origins, defines their content,
or distinguishes between the various ideologies competing for the trans-
formation of public policy (Maynard, 2013). Our aim here is to meet
the challenge of tracking the circulation of ideas from their theoretical
development to their implementation in political action.
16 K. Brookes

This book is organised into five chapters. The first sets out the theo-
retical framework by defining neoliberalism and by positing a viewpoint
from which to study it: the theory of the costs of justifying an ideology.
The second draws a conclusion and allows us to better define our
enigma, i.e. what needs to be explained. By comparing France with other
European countries, and by proposing an analysis of several quantita-
tive indicators over time, it measures the spread of neoliberal ideas in
public policies. The last three chapters explore the hypotheses (gener-
ated by the theory of the cost of justifying ideologies) regarding the
main causes that could explain the relative resilience of French statism
in public policy. Chapter 3 focuses on public opinion as a variable
explaining the weakness of neoliberal attempts at economic, social and
fiscal policy reforms. Chapter 4 explores the structure of knowledge
production guiding government action. It posits that the French model
of a state monopoly on the knowledge regime acts as a powerful brake
on intellectual entrepreneurs wishing to challenge the status quo. The
last chapter traces the historical trajectory of the French neoliberals, and
identifies factors internal to the structure of their movement in order to
explain the reasons for their political failure.

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 2
Why Neoliberalism Spread in Some
Countries, But Not Others

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are
right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly
understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who
believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences,
are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. […] I am sure that
the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the
gradual encroachment of ideas. […] But, soon or late, it is ideas, not
vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money, ch. 24, p. 383 (1935).

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the
socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the
support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion
which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote.
Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed prac-
ticable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even
this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 21

Switzerland AG 2021
K. Brookes, Why Neo-Liberalism Failed in France,
Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82188-3_2
22 K. Brookes

a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can
make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living
intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the
ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom
are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas
which was the mark of liberalism at its greatest, the battle is not lost. The
intellectual revival of liberalism is already under way in many parts of the
world. Will it be in time?
Friedrich Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” The University of
Chicago Law Review, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Spring, 1949), pp. 417–433.

Academics use ideas in their work every day, but paradoxically accord
them little weight in the understanding of political phenomena. They
are often considered too imprecise and less important than more prac-
tical interests (Béland & Cox, 2011). Ideas are mental representations
that make it possible to interpret the world we live in and to alter the
conceptions of our own particular interests (Blyth, 2002, 7) Both John
Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek considered them important in
explaining the evolution of public policy (see quotes above).
During the 1990s, however, political science underwent a “concep-
tual turning point,” taking the ideas and representations of various
actors “seriously” and integrating them into analytical models (Béland,
2016; Blyth, 1997; Campbell, 2002). The emergence of this newly idea-
based analytical framework led to empirical work focused on changes
in public policy following the profound ideological transformation of
Western countries in the 1970s in the wake of the oil crisis and the
economic difficulties associated with stagflation. These economic facts
had undermined the Keynesian paradigm and the conceptual founda-
tions of the welfare state, fomenting a renewed appreciation for the
defenders of economic liberalism. These defenders had used their years
in exile to devise critiques of existing models, and analyses of the fail-
ures of the state and of interventionist policies (e.g. public choice theory,
Coase’s theorem, monetarism, property rights theory, new institutional
economics, etc.). These economic and intellectual transformations have
prompted much theoretical and empirical reflection on the causes of
public policy orientation.
 2 Why Neoliberalism Spread in Some … 23

These “idealistic” scholars entered the debate in reaction to the overly

simplistic Marxist explanations of everything in terms of class interests,
and of rational choice theorists in terms of self-interest (Berman, 2013).
They offered a more complex account of individual motivations than the
proponents of rational choice, who associated the motivations of actors
with instrumental rationality in the Weberian sense, i.e. the quest for
maximisation of material interests. The idealists took into account the
axiological dimension of rationality, or “cognitive rationality,” as well
(Boudon, 2012, 52). They asserted that individuals have good reasons
to act, which may be ideological or religious in nature. In this view,
ideas are thus a “primary source of political behaviour,” (Béland & Cox,
2011) shaping the understanding of policy issues by providing a frame-
work for interpretation, defining goals and strategies, and acting as the
currency of communication about policy. This wider understanding led
the researchers to integrate the study of associated ideas with the insti-
tutions and the interests of the parties involved (Muller, 2005; Palier &
Surel, 2005).
Another contribution of this “conceptual turning point” in polit-
ical science was to encourage a more dynamic view of public policy
change by considering the potential of ideas to overcome the burdens
associated with an established regime (Blyth, 2002; Schmidt, 2008;
Weir, 1989). Peter Hall described ideas as primary guides in shaping
the choices of public policymakers,1 and extended the Kuhnian frame-
work for explaining scientific paradigm shifts by applying it to the
field of public policy. Kuhn distinguished between periods of normal
science—marked by the dominance within a scientific community of a
narrow paradigm sharing the same tools, methods and conceptions of the
world—and the periods of upheaval that occur when a dominant theory
ceases to reflect reality as well as an emerging theory. For Hall, the same
process was observable in economic policy: the dominant paradigm is
challenged when it no longer reflects reality and no longer produces the

1 “It is ideas, in the form of economic theories and the policies developed from them, that
enable national leaders to chart a course through turbulent economic times, and ideas about
what is efficient, expedient, and just that motivate the movement from one line of policy to
another” (Weir 1989, 361).
24 K. Brookes

expected results, thus initiating a period of uncertainty during which it

is questioned.
This creates an opportune moment for changes of varying degrees.
There may be a paradigm shift, i.e., a change in the general objec-
tives of public policy (third-order change), a change in instruments, i.e.,
policy tools (second-order change), or a modification of the parameters
of policy instruments such as a change in indices, or indicators (first-
order change). The first and second-order changes correspond to Heclo’s
incremental changes (Heclo, 2010). The third-order change corresponds
to a paradigm shift, and for this to happen political-administrative actors
must grasp new conceptions that break with the previous ones. Keyne-
sianism, for example, was the dominant paradigm in Great Britain until
the 1970s, and could only be challenged by an alternative such as
monetarism (Hall, 1993). Examination of ideological transformations at
the national level is thus a useful window into the transformation (or
resiliency) of public policy in a given country.
This “ideational turn” (Blyth, 1997) in political science made it
possible to clarify the types of ideas that affect the political process. At
a basic level, these take the form of concrete public policy solutions,
and at a second level, that of more general public policy programs that
reflect the beliefs linking general world views with more specific measures
(Muller, 2000). And at a third even more general level, ideas appear
as “social philosophies,” and “public sentiments,” within which political
ideologies can be integrated (Campbell, 2002). For the purposes of this
book, we will specifically consider this last type of idea residing at a high
level of generality, which we define as systems for justifying the world as
it is, or as it should be (Jost et al., 2009). Neoliberalism (as defined in the
introduction) in this sense constitutes an ideology that is both descriptive
and normative.
The goal of this chapter is to contribute to this reflection on the role
of ideas in political science by attempting a theoretical understanding of
three questions. First, why do some ideas have more impact on public
policy than others? Second, and more specifically, why has neoliberalism
triumphed in some countries but not in others? And third, why has
neoliberalism been less influential in France than elsewhere?
 2 Why Neoliberalism Spread in Some … 25

This chapter is organized as follows: Sect. 1 reviews the theoretical

explanations that emerge from the comparative literature on the spread
of political ideologies. Section 2 then presents studies that draw on these
explanations to understand France’s relationship with neoliberalism, and
points out their limitations. Finally, Sect. 3 formulates the general theo-
retical framework for our analysis by proposing a theory of the cost of
justifying an ideology.

1 Existing Theories for Analysis

of the International Spread of Ideas
There are many theories competing to help us understand and measure
success in the spreading of an ideology. These analytical frameworks do
not directly address the case of neoliberalism, but they do offer stimu-
lating reflections on the determinants of large-scale changes in economic
and social policies.
These types of explanations can be divided into two groups: those
that highlight phenomena related to the convergence of national policy
choices due to the increasing internationalisation of the economy (1.1),
and those that emphasise the persistence of distinct paths in public policy
orientation as a function of contextual variables (1.2, 1.3, 1.4).

1.1 Convergence Theories

Numerous theoretical hypotheses argue that a convergence of public

policies towards neoliberalism arises because of various international
pressures that weigh on public policy makers as a result of globalisation.
They employ four distinct mechanisms to explain the rapid spread of
public policy models rooted in the same ideology: coercion, competi-
tion, learning through the dissemination of social norms and standards,
and emulation (Simmons et al., 2006, 2007).
Theories of coercion (or hegemony) explain the spread of ideas and
models by appeal to the fact that economically dominant countries
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the ax missed his head by the fraction of a second. Then with a whir
the arm rose stiffly again to its original position and remained rigid.
The visitor moistened his lips and sighed.
“That’s a new one, a very new one,” he said under his breath, and
the admiration in his tone was evident. He picked up his overcoat,
flung it over his arm, and mounted half a dozen steps to the next
landing. The inspection of the Chinese cabinet was satisfactory.
The white beam of his lamp flashed into corners and crevices and
showed nothing. He shook the curtain of a window and listened,
holding his breath.
“Not here,” he muttered decisively, “the old man wouldn’t try that
game. Snakes turned loose in a house in London, S.W., take a deal
of collecting in the morning.”
He looked round. From the landing access was gained to three
rooms. That which from its position he surmised faced the street he
did not attempt to enter. The second, covered by a heavy curtain, he
looked at for a time in thought. To the third he walked, and carefully
swathing the door-handle with his silk muffler, he turned it. The door
yielded. He hesitated another moment, and jerking the door wide
open, sprang backward.
The interior of the room was for a second only in pitch darkness,
save for the flicker of light that told of an open fireplace. Then the
visitor heard a click, and the room was flooded with light. In the
darkness on the landing the man waited; then a voice, a cracked old
voice, said grumblingly—
“Come in.”
Still the man on the landing waited.
“Oh, come in, Jimmy—I know ye.”
Cautiously the man outside stepped through the entry into the light
and faced the old man, who, arrayed in a wadded dressing-gown,
sat in a big chair by the fire—an old man, with white face and a
sneering grin, who sat with his lap full of papers.
The visitor nodded a friendly greeting.
“As far as I can gather,” he said deliberately, “we are just above your
dressing-room, and if you dropped me through one of your patent
traps, Reale, I should fetch up amongst your priceless china.”
Save for a momentary look of alarm on the old man’s face at the
mention of the china, he preserved an imperturbable calm, never
moving his eyes from his visitor’s face. Then his grin returned, and
he motioned the other to a chair on the other side of the fireplace.
Jimmy turned the cushion over with the point of his stick and sat
down.
“Suspicious?”—the grin broadened—“suspicious of your old friend,
Jimmy? The old governor, eh?”
Jimmy made no reply for a moment, then—
“You’re a wonder, governor, upon my word you are a wonder. That
man in armor—your idea?”
The old man shook his head regretfully.
“Not mine entirely, Jimmy. Ye see, there’s electricity in it, and I don’t
know much about electricity. I never did, except——”
“Except?” suggested the visitor.
“Oh, that roulette board, that was my own idea; but that was
magnetism, which is different to electricity, by my way of looking.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Ye got past the trap?” The old man had just a glint of admiration in
his eye.
“Yes, jumped it.”
The old man nodded approvingly.
“You always was a one for thinkin’ things out. I’ve known lots of ’em
who would never have thought of jumping it. Connor, and that pig
Massey, they’d have walked right on to it. You didn’t damage
anything?” he demanded suddenly and fiercely. “I heard somethin’
break, an’ I was hoping that it was you.”
Jimmy thought of the marble statue, and remembered that it had
looked valuable.
“Nothing at all,” he lied easily, and the old man’s tense look relaxed.
The pair sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, neither speaking for
fully ten minutes; then Jimmy leant forward.
“Reale,” he said quietly, “how much are you worth?”
In no manner disturbed by this leading question, but rather indicating
a lively satisfaction, the other replied instantly—
“Two millions an’ a bit over, Jimmy. I’ve got the figures in my head.
Reckonin’ furniture and the things in this house at their proper value,
two millions, and forty-seven thousand and forty-three pounds—
floatin’, Jimmy, absolute cash, the same as you might put your hand
in your pocket an’ spend—a million an’ three-quarters exact.”
He leant back in his chair with a triumphant grin and watched his
visitor.
Jimmy had taken a cigarette from his pocket and was lighting it,
looking at the slowly burning match reflectively.
“A million and three-quarters,” he repeated calmly, “is a lot of
money.”
Old Reale chuckled softly.
“All made out of the confiding public, with the aid of me—and Connor
and Massey——”
“Massey is a pig!” the old man interjected spitefully.
Jimmy puffed a cloud of tobacco smoke.
“Wrung with sweat and sorrow from foolish young men who backed
the tiger and played high at Reale’s Unrivaled Temple of Chance,
Cairo, Egypt—with branches at Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez.”
The figure in the wadded gown writhed in a paroxysm of silent
merriment.
“How many men have you ruined, Reale?” asked Jimmy.
“The Lord knows!” the old man answered cheerfully; “only three as I
knows of—two of ’em’s dead, one of ’em’s dying. The two that’s
dead left neither chick nor child; the dying one’s got a daughter.”
Jimmy eyed him through narrowed lids.
“Why this solicitude for the relatives—you’re not going——?”
As he spoke, as if anticipating a question, the old man was nodding
his head with feverish energy, and all the while his grin broadened.
“What a one you are for long words, Jimmy! You always was. That’s
how you managed to persuade your swell pals to come an’ try their
luck. Solicitude! What’s that mean? Frettin’ about ’em, d’ye mean?
Yes, that’s what I’m doin’—frettin’ about ’em. And I’m going to make,
what d’ye call it—you had it on the tip of your tongue a minute or two
ago?”
“Reparation?” suggested Jimmy.
Old Reale nodded delightedly.
“How?”
“Don’t you ask questions!” bullied the old man, his harsh voice rising.
“I ain’t asked you why you broke into my house in the middle of the
night, though I knew it was you who came the other day to check the
electric meter. I saw you, an’ I’ve been waitin’ for you ever since.”
“I knew all about that,” said Jimmy calmly, and flicked the ash of his
cigarette away with his little finger, “and I thought you would——”
Suddenly he stopped speaking and listened.
“Who’s in the house beside us?” he asked quickly, but the look on
the old man’s face reassured him.
“Nobody,” said Reale testily. “I’ve got a special house for the
servants, and they come in every morning after I’ve unfixed my—
burglar-alarms.” He grinned, and then a look of alarm came into his
face.
“The alarms!” he whispered; “you broke them when you came in,
Jimmy. I heard the signal. If there’s some one in the house we
shouldn’t know it now.”
They listened.
Down below in the hall something creaked, then the sound of a soft
thud came up.
“He’s skipped the rug,” whispered Jimmy, and switched out the light.
The two men heard a stealthy footstep on the stair, and waited.
There was the momentary glint of a light, and the sound of some one
breathing heavily. Jimmy leant over and whispered in the old man’s
ear.
Then, as the handle of the door was turned and the door pushed
open, Jimmy switched on the light.
The newcomer was a short, thick-set man with a broad, red face. He
wore a check suit of a particularly glaring pattern, and on the back of
his head was stuck a bowler hat, the narrow brim of which seemed
to emphasize the breadth of his face. A casual observer might have
placed him for a coarse, good-natured man of rude but boisterous
humor. The ethnological student would have known him at once for
what he was—a cruel man-beast without capacity for pity.
He started back as the lights went on, blinking a little, but his hand
held an automatic pistol that covered the occupants of the room.
“Put up your hands,” he growled. “Put ’em up!”
Neither man obeyed him. Jimmy was amused and looked it, stroking
his short beard with his white tapering fingers. The old man was fury
incarnate.
He it was that turned to Jimmy and croaked—
“What did I tell ye, Jimmy? What’ve I always said, Jimmy? Massey is
a pig—he’s got the manners of a pig. Faugh!”
“Put up your hands!” hissed the man with the pistol. “Put ’em up, or
I’ll put you both out!”
“If he’d come first, Jimmy!” Old Reale wrung his hands in his regret.
“S’pose he’d jumped the rug—any sneak-thief could have done that
—d’ye think he’d have spotted the man in armor? If you’d only get
the man in armor ready again.”
“Put your pistol down, Massey,” said Jimmy coolly, “unless you want
something to play with. Old man Reale’s too ill for the gymnastics
you suggest, and I’m not inclined to oblige you.”
The man blustered.
“By God, if you try any of your monkey tricks with me, either of you
——”
“Oh, I’m only a visitor like yourself,” said Jimmy, with a wave of his
hand; “and as to monkey tricks, why, I could have shot you before
you entered the room.”
Massey frowned, and stood twiddling his pistol.
“You will find a safety catch on the left side of the barrel,” continued
Jimmy, pointing to the pistol; “snick it up—you can always push it
down again with your thumb if you really mean business. You are not
my idea of a burglar. You breathe too noisily, and you are built too
clumsily; why, I heard you open the front door!”
The quiet contempt in the tone brought a deeper red into the man’s
face.
“Oh, you are a clever ’un, we know!” he began, and the old man,
who had recovered his self-command, motioned him to a chair.
“Sit down, Mister Massey,” he snapped; “sit down, my fine fellow, an’
tell us all the news. Jimmy an’ me was just speakin’ about you, me
an’ Jimmy was. We was saying what a fine gentleman you was”—his
voice grew shrill—“what a swine, what an overfed, lumbering fool of
a pig you was, Mister Massey!”
He sank back into the depths of his chair exhausted.
“Look here, governor,” began Massey again—he had laid his pistol
on a table by his side, and waved a large red hand to give point to
his remarks—“we don’t want any unpleasantness. I’ve been a good
friend to you, an’ so has Jimmy. We’ve done your dirty work for
years, me an’ Jimmy have, and Jimmy knows it”—turning with an
ingratiating smirk to the subject of his remarks—“and now we want a
bit of our own—that is all it amounts to, our own.”
Old Reale looked under his shaggy eyebrows to where Jimmy sat
with brooding eyes watching the fire.
“So it’s a plant, eh? You’re both in it. Jimmy comes first, he being the
clever one, an’ puts the lay nice an’ snug for the other feller.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“Wrong,” he said. He turned his head and took a long scrutiny of the
newcomer, and the amused contempt of his gaze was too apparent.
“Look at him!” he said at last. “Our dear Massey! Does he look the
sort of person I am likely to share confidence with?”
A cold passion seemed suddenly to possess him.
“It’s a coincidence that brought us both together.”
He rose and walked to where Massey sat, and stared down at him.
There was something in the look that sent Massey’s hand wandering
to his pistol.
“Massey, you dog!” he began, then checked himself with a laugh and
walked to the other end of the room. There was a tantalus with a
soda siphon, and he poured himself a stiff portion and sent the soda
fizzling into the tumbler. He held the glass to the light and looked at
the old man. There was a look on the old man’s face that he
remembered to have seen before. He drank his whisky and gave
utterance to old Reale’s thoughts.
“It’s no good, Reale, you’ve got to settle with Massey, but not the
way you’re thinking. We could put him away, but we should have to
put ourselves away too.” He paused. “And there’s me,” he added.
“And Connor,” said Massey thickly, “and Connor’s worse than me.
I’m reasonable, Reale; I’d take a fair share——”
“You would, would you?”
The old man was grinning again.
“Well, your share’s exactly a million an’ three-quarters in solid cash,
an’ a bit over two millions—all in.”
He paused to notice the effect of his words.
Jimmy’s calm annoyed him; Massey’s indifference was outrageous.
“An’ it’s Jimmy’s share, an’ Connor’s share, an’ it’s Miss Kathleen
Kent’s share.”
This time the effect was better. Into Jimmy’s inexpressive face had
crept a gleam of interest.
“Kent?” he asked quickly. “Wasn’t that the name of the man——?”
Old Reale chuckled.
“The very feller, Jimmy—the man who came in to lose a tenner, an’
lost ten thousand; who came in next night to get it back, and left his
lot. That’s the feller!”
He rubbed his lean hands, as at the memory of some pleasant
happening.
“Open that cupboard, Jimmy.” He pointed to an old-fashioned walnut
cabinet that stood near the door. “D’ye see anything—a thing that
looks like a windmill?”
Jimmy drew out a cardboard structure that was apparently a toy
working-model. He handled it carefully, and deposited it on the table
by the old man’s side. Old Reale touched it caressingly. With his little
finger he set a fly-wheel spinning, and tiny little pasteboard rods ran
to and fro, and little wooden wheels spun easily.
“That’s what I did with his money, invented a noo machine that went
by itself—perpetual motion. You can grin, Massey, but that’s what I
did with it. Five years’ work an’ a quarter of a million, that’s what that
little model means. I never found the secret out. I could always make
a machine that would go for hours with a little push, but it always
wanted the push. I’ve been a chap that went in for inventions and
puzzles. D’ye remember the table at Suez?”
He shot a sly glance at the men.
Massey was growing impatient as the reminiscences proceeded. He
had come that night with an object; he had taken a big risk, and had
not lost sight of the fact. Now he broke in—
“Damn your puzzles, Reale. What about me; never mind about
Jimmy. What’s all this rotten talk about two millions for each of us,
and this girl? When you broke up the place in Egypt you said we
should stand in when the time came. Well, the time’s come!”
“Nearly, nearly,” said Reale, with his death’s-head grin. “It’s nearly
come. You needn’t have troubled to see me. My lawyer’s got your
addresses. I’m nearly through,” he went on cheerfully; “dead I’ll be in
six months, as sure as—as death. Then you fellers will get the
money”—he spoke slowly to give effect to his words—“you Jimmy, or
Massey or Connor or the young lady. You say you don’t like puzzles,
Massey? Well, it’s a bad look out for you. Jimmy’s the clever un, an’
most likely he’ll get it; Connor’s artful, and he might get it from
Jimmy; but the young lady’s got the best chance, because women
are good at puzzles.”
“What in hell!” roared Massey, springing to his feet.
“Sit down!” It was Jimmy that spoke, and Massey obeyed.
“There’s a puzzle about these two millions,” Reale went on, and his
croaky voice, with its harsh cockney accent, grew raucous in his
enjoyment of Massey’s perplexity and Jimmy’s knit brows. “An’ the
one that finds the puzzle out, gets the money.”
Had he been less engrossed in his own amusement he would have
seen a change in Massey’s brute face that would have warned him.
“It’s in my will,” he went on. “I’m goin’ to set the sharps against the
flats; the touts of the gamblin’ hell—that’s you two fellers—against
the pigeons. Two of the biggest pigeons is dead, an’ one’s dying.
Well, he’s got a daughter; let’s see what she can do. When I’m dead
——”
“That’s now!” bellowed Massey, and leant over and struck the old
man.
Jimmy, on his feet, saw the gush of blood and the knife in Massey’s
hand, and reached for his pocket.
Massey’s pistol covered him, and the man’s face was a dreadful
thing to look upon.
“Hands up! It’s God’s truth I’ll kill you if you don’t!”
Jimmy’s hands went up.
“He’s got the money here,” breathed Massey, “somewhere in this
house.”
“You’re mad,” said the other contemptuously. “Why did you hit him?”
“He sat there makin’ a fool of me.” The murderer gave a vicious
glance at the inert figure on the floor. “I want something more than
his puzzle-talk. He asked for it.”
He backed to the table where the decanter stood, and drank a
tumbler half-filled with raw spirit.
“We’re both in this, Jimmy,” he said, still keeping his man covered.
“You can put down your hands; no monkey tricks. Give me your
pistol.”
Jimmy slipped the weapon from his pocket, and handed it butt
foremost to the man. Then Massey bent over the fallen man and
searched his pockets.
“Here are the keys. You stay here,” said Massey, and went out,
closing the door after him.
Jimmy heard the grate of the key, and knew he was a prisoner. He
bent over the old man. He lay motionless. Jimmy tried the pulse, and
felt a faint flutter. Through the clenched teeth he forced a little
whisky, and after a minute the old man’s eyes opened.
“Jimmy!” he whispered; then remembering, “Where’s Massey?” he
asked.
There was no need to inquire the whereabouts of Massey. His
blundering footfalls sounded in the room above.
“Lookin’ for money?” gasped the old man, and something like a smile
crossed his face. “Safe’s up there,” he whispered, and smiled again.
“Got the keys?”
Jimmy nodded.
The old man’s eyes wandered round the room till they rested on
what looked like a switchboard.
“See that handle marked ‘seven’?” he whispered.
Jimmy nodded again.
“Pull it down, Jimmy boy.” His voice was growing fainter. “This is a
new one that I read in a book. Pull it down.”
“Why?”
“Do as I tell you,” the lips motioned, and Jimmy walked across the
room and pulled over the insulated lever.
As he did there was a heavy thud overhead that shook the room,
and then silence.
“What’s that?” he asked sharply.
The dying man smiled.
“That’s Massey!” said the lips.

Half an hour later Jimmy left the house with a soiled slip of paper in
his waistcoat pocket, on which was written the most precious verse
of doggerel that the world has known.
And the discovery of the two dead men in the upper chambers the
next morning afforded the evening press the sensation of the year.
 CHAPTER III
ANGEL ESQUIRE

Nobody quite knows how Angel Esquire came to occupy the

position he does at Scotland Yard. On his appointment, “An Officer
of Twenty Years’ Standing” wrote to the Police Review and
characterized the whole thing as “a job.” Probably it was. For Angel
Esquire had been many things in his short but useful career, but
never a policeman. He had been a big game shot, a special
correspondent, a “scratch” magistrate, and his nearest approach to
occupying a responsible position in any police force in the world was
when he was appointed a J.P. of Rhodesia, and, serving on the Tuli
Commission, he hanged M’Linchwe and six of that black
desperado’s companions.
His circle of acquaintances extended to the suburbs of London, and
the suburbanites, who love you to make their flesh creep, would sit in
shivering but pleasurable horror whilst Angel Esquire elaborated the
story of the execution.
In Mayfair Angel Esquire was best known as a successful mediator.
“Who is that old-looking young man with the wicked eye?” asked the
Dowager Duchess of Hoeburn; and her vis-à-vis at the Honorable
Mrs. Carter-Walker’s “sit-down tea”—it was in the days when Mayfair
was aping suburbia—put up his altogether unnecessary eyeglass.
“Oh, that’s Angel Esquire!” he said carelessly.
“What is he?” asked the Duchess.
“A policeman.”
“India?”
“Oh, no, Scotland Yard.”
“Good Heavens!” said Her Grace in a shocked voice. “How very
dreadful! What is he doing? Watching the guests, or keeping a
friendly eye on the Carter woman’s spoons?”
The young man guffawed.
“Don’t despise old Angel, Duchess,” he said. “He’s a man to know.
Great fellow for putting things right. If you have a row with your
governor, or get into the hands of—er—undesirables, or generally, if
you’re in a mess of any kind, Angel’s the chap to pull you out.”
Her Grace surveyed the admirable man with a new interest.
Angel Esquire, with a cup of tea in one hand and a thin grass
sandwich in the other, was the center of a group of men, including
the husband of the hostess. He was talking with some animation.
“I held three aces pat, and opened the pot light to let ’em in. Young
Saville raised the opening to a tenner, and the dealer went ten better.
George Manfred, who had passed, came in for a pony, and took one
card. I took two, and drew another ace. Saville took one, and the
dealer stood pat. I thought it was my money, and bet a pony. Saville
raised it to fifty, the dealer made it a hundred, and George Manfred
doubled the bet. It was up to me. I had four aces; I put Saville with a
‘full,’ and the dealer with a ‘flush.’ I had the beating of that lot; but
what about Manfred? Manfred is a feller with all the sense going. He
knew what the others had. If he bet, he had the goods, so I chucked
my four aces into the discard. George had a straight flush.”
A chorus of approval came from the group.
If “An Officer of Twenty Years’ Standing” had been a listener, he
might well have been further strengthened in his opinion that of all
persons Mr. Angel was least fitted to fill the responsible position he
did.
If the truth be told, nobody quite knew exactly what position Angel
did hold. If you turn into New Scotland Yard and ask the janitor at the
door for Mr. Christopher Angel—Angel Esquire by the way was a
nickname affixed by a pert little girl—the constable, having satisfied
himself as to your bona-fides, would take you up a flight of stairs and
hand you over to yet another officer, who would conduct you through
innumerable swing doors, and along uncounted corridors till he
stopped before a portal inscribed “647.” Within, you would find Angel
Esquire sitting at his desk, doing nothing, with the aid of a Sporting
Life and a small weekly guide to the Turf.
Once Mr. Commissioner himself walked into the room unannounced,
and found Angel so immersed in an elaborate calculation, with big
sheets of paper closely filled with figures, and open books on either
hand, that he did not hear his visitor.
“What is the problem?” asked Mr. Commissioner, and Angel looked
up with his sweetest smile, and recognizing his visitor, rose.
“What’s the problem?” asked Mr. Commissioner again.
“A serious flaw, sir,” said Angel, with all gravity. “Here’s Mimosa
handicapped at seven stone nine in the Friary Nursery, when,
according to my calculations, she can give the field a stone, and beat
any one of ’em.”
The Commissioner gasped.
“My dear fellow,” he expostulated, “I thought you were working on
the Lagos Bank business.”
Angel had a far-away look in his eyes when he answered—
“Oh, that is all finished. Old Carby was poisoned by a man named—
forget his name now, but he was a Monrovian. I wired the Lagos
police, and we caught the chap this morning at Liverpool—took him
off an Elder, Dempster boat.”
The Police Commissioner beamed.
“My congratulations, Angel. By Jove, I thought we shouldn’t have a
chance of helping the people in Africa. Is there a white man in it?”
“We don’t know,” said Angel absently; his eye was wandering up and
down a column of figures on the paper before him.
“I am inclined to fancy there is—man named Connor, who used to be
a croupier or something to old Reale.”
He frowned at the paper, and picking up a pencil from the desk,
made a rapid little calculation. “Seven stone thirteen,” he muttered.
The Commissioner tapped the table impatiently. He had sunk into a
seat opposite Angel.
“My dear man, who is old Reale? You forget that you are our tame
foreign specialist. Lord, Angel, if you heard half the horrid things that
people say about your appointment you would die of shame!”
Angel pushed aside the papers with a little laugh.
“I’m beyond shame,” he said lightheartedly; “and, besides, I’ve
heard. You were asking about Reale. Reale is a character. For
twenty years proprietor of one of the most delightful gambling plants
in Egypt, Rome—goodness knows where. Education—none.
Hobbies—invention. That’s the ‘bee in his bonnet’—invention. If he’s
got another, it is the common or garden puzzle. Pigs in clover,
missing words, all the fake competitions that cheap little papers run
—he goes in for them all. Lives at 43 Terrington Square.”
“Where?” The Commissioner’s eyebrows rose. “Reale? 43 Terrington
Square? Why, of course.” He looked at Angel queerly. “You know all
about Reale?”
Angel shrugged his shoulders.
“As much as anybody knows,” he said.
The Commissioner nodded.
“Well, take a cab and get down at once to 43 Terrington Square.
Your old Reale was murdered last night.”
It was peculiar of Angel Esquire that nothing surprised him. He
received the most tremendous tidings with polite interest, and now
he merely said, “Dear me!” Later, as a swift hansom carried him
along Whitehall he permitted himself to be “blessed.”
Outside No. 43 Terrington Square a small crowd of morbid
sightseers stood in gloomy anticipation of some gruesome
experience or other. A policeman admitted him, and the local
inspector stopped in his interrogation of a white-faced butler to bid
him a curt “Good morning.”
Angel’s preliminary inspection did not take any time. He saw the
bodies, which had not yet been removed. He examined the pockets
of both men, and ran his eye through the scattered papers on the
floor of the room in which the tragedy had occurred. Then he came
back to the big drawing-room and saw the inspector, who was sitting
at a table writing his report.
“The chap on the top floor committed the murder, of course,” said
Angel.
“I know that,” said Inspector Boyden brusquely.
“And was electrocuted by a current passing through the handle of
the safe.”
“I gathered that,” the inspector replied as before, and went on with
his work.
“The murderer’s name is Massey,” continued Angel patiently
—“George Charles Massey.”
The inspector turned in his seat with a sarcastic smile.
“I also,” he said pointedly, “have seen the envelopes addressed in
that name, which were found in his pocket.”
Angel’s face was preternaturally solemn as he continued—
“The third man I am not so sure about.”
The inspector looked up suspiciously.
“Third man—which third man?”
Well-simulated astonishment sent Angel’s eyebrows to the shape of
inverted V’s.
“There was another man in it. Didn’t you know that, Mr. Inspector?”
“I have found no evidence of the presence of a third party,” he said
stiffly; “but I have not yet concluded my investigations.”
“Good!” said Angel cheerfully. “When you have, you will find the ends
of three cigarettes—two in the room where the old man was killed,
and one in the safe room. They are marked ‘Al Kam,’ and are a fairly
expensive variety of Egyptian cigarettes. Massey smoked cigars; old
Reale did not smoke at all. The question is”—he went on speaking
aloud to himself, and ignoring the perplexed police official—“was it
Connor or was it Jimmy?”
The inspector struggled with a desire to satisfy his curiosity at the
expense of his dignity, and resolved to maintain an attitude of
superior incredulity. He turned back to his work.
“It would be jolly difficult to implicate either of them,” Angel went on
reflectively, addressing the back of the inspector. “They would
produce fifty unimpeachable alibis, and bring an action for wrongful
arrest in addition,” he added artfully.
“They can’t do that,” said the inspector gruffly.
“Can’t they?” asked the innocent Angel. “Well, at any rate, it’s not
advisable to arrest them. Jimmy would——”
Inspector Boyden swung round in his chair.
“I don’t know whether you’re ‘pulling my leg,’ Mr. Angel. You are
perhaps unused to the procedure in criminal cases in London, and I
must now inform you that at present I am in charge of the case, and
must request that if you have any information bearing upon this
crime to give it to me at once.”
“With all the pleasure in life,” said Angel heartily. “In the first place,
Jimmy——”
“Full name, please.” The inspector dipped his pen in ink.
“Haven’t the slightest idea,” said the other carelessly. “Everybody
knows Jimmy. He was old Reale’s most successful decoy duck. Had
the presence and the plumage and looked alive, so that all the other
little ducks used to come flying down and settle about him, and long
before they could discover that the beautiful bird that attracted them
was only painted wood and feathers, ‘Bang! bang!’ went old Reale’s
double-barrel, and roast duck was on the menu for days on end.”
Inspector Boyden threw down his pen with a grunt.
“I’m afraid,” he said in despair, “that I cannot include your parable in
my report. When you have any definite information to give, I shall be
pleased to receive it.”
Later, at Scotland Yard, Angel interviewed the Commissioner.
“What sort of a man is Boyden to work with?” asked Mr.
Commissioner.
“A most excellent chap—good-natured, obliging, and as zealous as
the best of ’em,” said Angel, which was his way.
“I shall leave him in charge of the case,” said the Chief.
“You couldn’t do better,” said Angel decisively.
Then he went home to his flat in Jermyn Street to dress for dinner.
It was an immaculate Angel Esquire who pushed through the plate-
glass, turn-table door of the Heinz, and, walking into the magnificent
old rose dining-room, selected a table near a window looking out on
to Piccadilly.
The other occupant of the table looked up and nodded.
“Hullo, Angel!” he said easily.
“Hullo, Jimmy!” greeted the unconventional detective.
He took up the card and chose his dishes with elaborate care. A half-
bottle of Beaujolais completed his order.
“The ridiculous thing is that one has got to pay 7s. 6d. for a small
bottle of wine that any respectable grocer will sell you for tenpence
ha’-penny net.”
“You must pay for the magnificence,” said the other, quietly amused.
Then, after the briefest pause, “What do you want?”
“Not you, Jimmy,” said the amiable Angel, “though my young friend,
Boyden, Inspector of Police, and a Past Chief Templar to boot, will
be looking for you shortly.”
Jimmy carefully chose a toothpick and stripped it of its tissue
covering.
“Of course,” he said quietly, “I wasn’t in it—the killing, I mean. I was
there.”
“I know all about that,” said Angel; “saw your foolish cigarettes. I
didn’t think you had any hand in the killing. You are a property
criminal, not a personal criminal.”
“By which I gather you convey the nice distinction as between crimes
against property and crimes against the person,” said the other.
“Exactly.”
A pause.
“Well?” said Jimmy.
“What I want to see you about is the verse,” said Angel, stirring his
soup.
Jimmy laughed aloud.
“What a clever little devil you are, Angel,” he said admiringly; “and
not so little either, in inches or devilishness.”
He relapsed into silence, and the wrinkled forehead was eloquent.
“Think hard,” taunted Angel.
“I’m thinking,” said Jimmy slowly. “I used a pencil, as there was no
blotting paper. I only made one copy, just as the old man dictated it,
and——”
“You used a block,” said Angel obligingly, “and only tore off the top
sheet. And you pressed rather heavily on that, so that the next sheet
bore a legible impression.”
Jimmy looked annoyed.
“What an ass I am!” he said, and was again silent.
“The verse?” said Angel. “Can you make head or tail of it?”
“No”—Jimmy shook his head—“can you?”
“Not a blessed thing,” Angel frankly confessed.
Through the next three courses neither man spoke. When coffee had
been placed on the table, Jimmy broke the silence—
“You need not worry about the verse. I have only stolen a march of a
few days. Then Connor will have it; and some girl or other will have
it. Massey would have had it too.” He smiled grimly.
“What is it all about?”
Jimmy looked at his questioner with some suspicion.
“Don’t you know?” he demanded.
“Haven’t got the slightest notion. That is why I came to see you.”
“Curious!” mused Jimmy. “I thought of looking you up for the very
same purpose. We shall know in a day or two,” he went on,
beckoning the waiter. “The old man said it was all in the will. He just
told me the verse before he died. The ruling passion, don’t you know.
‘Learn it by heart, Jimmy,’ he croaked; ‘it’s two millions for you if you
guess it’—and that’s how he died. My bill, waiter. Which way do you
go?” he asked as they turned into Piccadilly.
“To the ‘Plait’ for an hour,” said Angel.
“Business?”
“Partly; I’m looking for a man who might be there.”
They crossed Piccadilly, and entered a side turning. The second on
the left and the first on the right brought them opposite a brightly-lit
hotel. From within came the sound of violins. At the little tables with
which the spacious bar-room was set about sat laughing women and
young men in evening dress. A haze of cigarette smoke clouded the
atmosphere, and the music made itself heard above a babel of
laughter and talk. They found a corner, and seated themselves.
“You seem to be fairly well known here,” said Jimmy.
“Yes,” replied Angel ruefully, “a jolly sight too well known. You’re not
quite a stranger, Jimmy,” he added.