ECONOMY – Charles de Gaulle, the Economy and the State as a Strategist  (1958-1974): What inspirations for France in 2027?

Par François Souty

François Souty, PhD in Economic History, former International Affairs Officer at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (2021-2024), was a member of the OECD Expert Committee on Competition Policy from 1996 to 2024. He teaches European institutions and geopolitics at the Excelia Business School group (La Rochelle-Paris Cachan) as well as European competition law and policy at the Faculty of Law of the University of Nantes. He is head of the economics section at Le Diplomate Media.

 » Grandir sa force à la mesure de ses desseins, ne pas attendre du hasard ni des formules ce qu’on néglige de préparer, proportionner l’enjeu et les moyens : l’action des peuples, comme celle des individus, est soumise à ces froides règles. Inexorables, elles ne se laissent fléchir ni par les plus belles causes ni par les principes les plus généreux. »

Charles de Gaulle, La France et son armée, Paris, Plon, 1938[1]

Executive Summary

This article proposes a rereading of economic Gaullism in the light of the profound transformations that have taken place over the past half century in the world economy. Its purpose is neither to celebrate a bygone period nor to plead for a return to the economic policies conducted between 1958 and 1969, or even 1974. It aims to demonstrate that economic Gaullism is less an economic doctrine than a method of government, based on national sovereignty, long-term strategic vision, indicative planning, productive investment, scientific and technological innovation, and the permanent evaluation of public action. Economic Gaullism was based on two pillars, a method of government and a few main instruments emphasizing that the State was less a manager than an organizer of the collective capacities of the Nation. A break occurred from 1974 onwards. This evolution has contributed to lasting deindustrialisation, the deterioration of foreign trade, the loss of many industrial capacities, the decline of sovereignty in several critical sectors, the increase in energy, digital and health dependencies, as well as insufficient protection of innovative companies, their know-how and their intellectual property rights. The reindustrialisation policies undertaken since the 2010s reflect a real awareness, but still remain incomplete due to the lack of a coherent doctrine of the strategic State. The current transformations of the world economy call less for a « return to Gaullism » than for an major update of its method.

French deindustrialization is less the result of an economic fatality than of the gradual weakening of the state’s strategic capacities since the mid-1970s. The main industrial powers – Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and India – have, each according to their institutions, strengthened their strategic state instruments in order to respond to the new challenges of economic security, technological competition, robotization, artificial intelligence and industrial sovereignty. Finally, today, the challenge is no longer to reproduce the public policies of the Gaullist years, but to adapt the method to the economic, technological and geopolitical realities of 2027. There are several guidelines aimed at rebuilding a strategic State adapted to the twenty-first century: re-establishing a genuine national capacity for strategic planning, strengthening economic administration, protecting critical businesses and technologies, developing long-term financing instruments, bringing research, innovation and industry closer together, accelerating the spread of digital and robotic technologies, rehabilitating scientific, technical and vocational training, and putting the social dimension back at the heart of industrial policy. In addition, we need to better coordinate national policies with the European level. The Draghi report confirms that the European Union is now suffering from a worrying lag in the areas of digital technology, robotisation, artificial intelligence, the financing of innovation and the dissemination of advanced technologies. Without radically opposing the European Union, the latter will nevertheless regain its full legitimacy only in its ability to strengthen innovation, competitiveness, technological sovereignty, economic security and the industrial power of its Member States. The European level must therefore complement national strategic capabilities, not replace them.

In the end, the relevance of economic Gaullism lies less in the instruments used between 1958 and 1969 than in the method they reflected. The most fruitful legacy of economic Gaullism is thus less a set of public policies than a method of government based on realism, anticipation, sovereignty and the long term. It is this method that must be adapted today to the challenges of France and Europe in the twenty-first century.

Introduction

Between the end of the 1950s and the mid-1970s, France underwent one of the most profound economic, industrial, scientific and technological transformations in its contemporary internal history. In less than two decades, in parallel with its colonial disengagement in view of the aspirations of the peoples and the fact of an outdated system that was too expensive for all the former imperial powers, it restored monetary stability, restored the balance of its public finances, modernized its productive apparatus, developed higher education and research, and embarked on major industrial programs — nuclear, space, aeronautics, telecommunications and defense — which still constitute several of the foundations of its power today.[2]

However, this success did not emerge ex nihilo. It extended the transformations initiated at the Liberation with the creation of the General Planning Commission, nationalizations, the development of public companies and the implementation of instruments intended to guide investment and reconstruction.[3] Economic Gaullism did not invent the strategic intervention of the State; it gave it a new coherence by ordering it to a central objective: to guarantee France the economic means of its political independence.

The singularity of Gaullism lies less in the extension of the role of the state than in the articulation it establishes between monetary stability, budgetary discipline, indicative planning, industrial modernization and major technological investments. Economic power is never an end in itself, as in planned socialist economies; it is conceived as the condition for national independence and the state’s freedom of decision. Charles de Gaulle’s formula placed at the top of this study — « To increase one’s strength to the extent of one’s designs, not to expect from chance or formulas what one neglects to prepare, to proportion the stakes and the means » — sums up this philosophy of public action.[4]  A nation cannot pursue an ambitious policy without having at its disposal the economic, financial, industrial, scientific and human resources corresponding to its objectives.

This conception sheds light on the reforms carried out from 1958 onwards. The Rueff-Pinay Plan, the restoration of monetary and financial stability, the control of public finances and the modernisation of economic structures are not independent of each other. They are part of the same project aimed at restoring the State’s strategic capacity. Similarly, French planning is in no way based on an administered economy: it is based on indicative planning designed to coordinate public and private actors, to direct investments and to concentrate national resources on sectors deemed decisive for the future, with a concern for economy and good handling in the management of resources for use and expenditure.[5]

The results were considerable. During the post-war boom, France experienced a strong increase in its productivity, transformed its agriculture, developed its infrastructure and gave rise to several world-class industrial sectors. The nuclear, space, naval, aeronautics and telecommunications programmes illustrate an industrial policy combining the State, public research and companies in a long-term strategy of influence and full employment. This success is naturally part of the exceptional context of post-war growth, reconstruction and modernisation; it cannot be attributed solely to the state’s voluntarism. France’s originality lies rather in the ability of its institutions to direct this growth towards the sustainable strengthening of national capacities, powerfully inspired by the historical vision of General de Gaulle.[6]

Historiography has shown that this experience cannot be reduced to the classic opposition between dirigisme and liberalism. The work of the Americans Academics Richard F. Kuisel, Stanley Hoffmann or the Frenchmen Michel Margairaz, Pierre Rosanvallon or Élie Cohen underlines on the contrary the complexity of a system in which the state acts simultaneously as regulator, investor, coordinator and strategist. Economic Gaullism thus appears less as a fixed doctrine than as a method of action based on the definition of national priorities, the mobilization of all the instruments of the state and the inclusion of public action in the long term, structured by a great ambition for the country.[7]

This reflection is in no way part of a perspective hostile to European integration. On the contrary, European integration can constitute a powerful lever for industrial, technological and strategic development when it effectively strengthens the production, innovation and decision-making capacities of the States that make it up. Achievements such as Airbus or Ariane demonstrate that inter-State European cooperation, based on clearly defined industrial objectives, can become a real power multiplier. The European question cannot therefore be posed in terms of an abstract alternative between national sovereignty and European integration.

This article is therefore based on the idea that European integration can and must provide solutions to the concrete problems of French citizens and strengthen the collective capacity of Europeans to defend their interests in the world. But it cannot be considered as an end in itself: its legitimacy depends on its ability to strengthen the capacities for production, innovation, decision-making and power necessary for the future of the nations that make it up. European cooperation and national sovereignty are therefore only contradictory when they are conceived as such; on the contrary, they can be mutually reinforcing when they are directed to common objectives of power, efficiency and independence, with respect for each Nation.[8]

This question is particularly topical today. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the rise of China, the return of American industrial policies, the technological and digital strategies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, as well as the recent evolution of the European Union towards a more strategic conception of its industrial policy bear witness to a generalized return of the strategic State. China’s accession to the World Trade Organization on 11 December 2001 has, in particular, considerably accelerated its development dynamics and integration into the world economy while allowing it to pursue an active policy of industrial and technological development. [9] The United States, for its part, has returned to assumed industrial policies, in particular with the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and the Inflation Reduction Act of the same year, of which  President Trump’s « Make America Great Again » economic policy  marks the strong continuity.[10]

The European Union itself, which has long been more identified with the construction of the internal market and competition policy, has gradually reintroduced the notions of open strategic autonomy, technological sovereignty, economic security and industrial policy into its vocabulary. The European Chips Act, the initiatives relating to critical raw materials, energy and industrial policies and the Draghi report of September 2024 bear witness to this inflection.[11] The contemporary return of the strategic state is therefore not an exclusively French phenomenon: it is one of the major characteristics of the recomposition of the world economy since the financial crisis of 2008 and, even more so, since the geopolitical upheavals of the 2020s.

The French experience of the years 1958-1974 thus acquires a scope that goes far beyond its historical context alone. Obviously, it is not a question of restoring the instruments of a bygone era or of giving in to nostalgia for the post-war boom. Economic, social and international conditions have changed profoundly: the economy is globalized, value chains are European and international, digital technologies have transformed the relations of production, capital is much more mobile and environmental constraints have become central. On the other hand, the principles that guided this policy — coherence between national ambitions and available resources, financial stability, long-term vision, investment in strategic sectors and continuity of public action — remain remarkably relevant.

The purpose of this study is therefore twofold. On the one hand, it is a question of reconstructing the intellectual, institutional and operational foundations of economic Gaullism between 1958 and 1974 in order to identify its guiding principles; on the other hand, it is a question of assessing the extent to which these principles can still inspire reflection on the conditions of French economic power in the twenty-first century. This approach implies going beyond both nostalgia for a so-called « golden age » and retrospective condemnation of dirigisme. The tensions between the state, the market, economic efficiency, solidarity and freedom, highlighted in particular by Pierre Rosanvallon and Élie Cohen, invite us to consider the Gaullist experience as a complex historical construction rather than as an easily transposable model.[12]

The central question then becomes that of coherence between national ambitions and the resources devoted to them. This is precisely the meaning of Charles de Gaulle’s remarks. A nation that claims to maintain its rank of power must have the economic, industrial, scientific, technological, financial and human resources corresponding to this ambition. Conversely, a nation that gradually renounces these capacities, in particular through formulas or lyrical flights of fancy that are disconnected or divorced from reality, can retain the institutional appearances of power while losing the real means of its independence.

The stakes of this reflection thus go far beyond economic history alone. It touches on the very conception of the State, the definition of sovereignty and the place of France in the world. Economic Gaullism deserves to be studied not as a fixed doctrine belonging to the past, but as a historical experience of the twentieth century that allows us to ask anew a question that has become central to the twenty-first century: how can a market democracy like France organize its resources, its institutions and its productive capacities in such a way as to effectively remain master of its essential choices?

I – The historical and intellectual roots of economic Gaullism: a French doctrine of public power

Economic Gaullism was not born in 1958. When General de Gaulle returned to power, France already had a long experience of state intervention in the economy, an administration profoundly renewed by the war and the Liberation, a large public sector, planning institutions and a generation of economists, senior civil servants and engineers committed to national modernization, after having often risked their lives with the greatest courage on titanic battlefields or in the shadows at the risk of the worst trials of the Resistance, in the face of a savage and barbaric enemy. The singularity of the Fifth Republic therefore lies less in the invention of these instruments than in their coming together, under the political authority of the General, in a coherent conception of power, sovereignty and modernization, endowed with a remarkable collective will to intelligence.

This construction is part of an older history. Without equating seventeenth-century Colbertism with twentieth-century industrial policies, we can discern a permanence of French public thought: certain activities, infrastructures, technologies or productive capacities are considered to be sufficiently decisive for national power not to be left to market forces alone. The transformations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, followed by the two world wars, the crisis of the 1930s and the war economy, gradually gave this intervention a new dimension.

The Liberation was a decisive moment in this respect. Nationalisations, reconstruction, the creation of the General Planning Commission, the modernisation of infrastructure and the renewal of the administrative apparatus reflected the same conviction: an industrial power must be able to know, guide and, when necessary, mobilise its economic resources. However, French planning was neither Soviet nor administered; it aimed to coordinate investments, organise collective choices and bring the State and companies closer together around common objectives.[13]

During the 1950s, a veritable culture of modernization was formed. Economists, Finance Inspectors, engineers, senior planning officials and heads of major public institutions developed new instruments for forecasting, programming, financing and guiding the economy. They did not form a homogeneous school and sometimes diverged on the role of money, the market, planning or public ownership. But they shared the idea that modernization could not be left to the sole play of spontaneous mechanisms and required a capacity for public decision-making in the long term.

When General de Gaulle returned to power, he therefore found less virgin ground than a set of institutions, experiences and skills already constituted. His essential contribution was to give them a higher political purpose. The economy must provide France with the means for its independence, its influence and its international action. Monetary and financial stability, industrial modernization, energy, transport, telecommunications, research, major technological programs, regional planning and defence are therefore part of the same concept: a nation cannot claim to exert an influence commensurate with its ambitions if it does not possess the corresponding economic and technological capacities.

This is why economic Gaullism cannot be reduced to dirigisme. It combines financial rigour and public intervention, market economy and planning, freedom of enterprise and major public programmes, international openness and the desire for national independence. It is concerned with regular justifications and results in the use of state resources. This combination, far from being contradictory, is precisely its originality: to make the market an instrument of prosperity while reserving to the state the responsibility for the choices that engage national power. It is this search for a French third way that gives unity to a doctrine whose roots are at once historical, intellectual and institutional.

We must first return to the French legacies of the strategic state, in order to distinguish the true continuities from the ruptures and to understand how the idea of a public power responsible for the conditions of economic power was gradually constituted. It will then be necessary to follow the men and ideas who, from the war to the reconstruction and then to the Plan, transformed this experience into instruments and proposals. Finally, the analysis of the principles of this French third way will allow us to understand how Gaullism ordered these legacies around a few essential requirements: sovereignty, monetary stability, financial responsibility, indicative planning, industrial policy, scientific and technological investment, association of capital and labour and the constitution of national capacities in strategic sectors.

This first part does not yet measure the results of economic Gaullism and does not examine the causes of its subsequent decline. It first seeks to reconstruct its foundations: the experiences that made it possible, the men who developed its instruments and the conception of the Nation that gave them their coherence.

A. The French and Quebec Legacies of the Strategic State

When General de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, France already had a long experience of public intervention in the economic, industrial, financial and technological fields, as well as an administrative apparatus that had been profoundly renewed by the war and the Liberation. Its uniqueness lies less in the invention of these instruments than in their coming together around a coherent conception of power, sovereignty and modernization. This history is ancient. For several centuries, the French state has intervened when certain infrastructures, industries, resources or technologies appear essential to national power. But it would be artificial to see in this tradition a continuous economic doctrine. What is perpetuated is rather a question: how can a political power have the economic and productive capacities corresponding to its ambitions? Pierre Rosanvallon has thus shown that the interventions successively described as « Colbertist » in reality respond to different historical logics.[14]

1. From Colbert to modernization: a French culture of public power. Colbert’s experience was a first milestone. In Louis XIV’s France, manufactures, foreign trade, port infrastructure, arsenals, and the navy were seen as interdependent elements of the kingdom’s power. It would be anachronistic to see this as a direct prefiguration of economic Gaullism; one can nevertheless discern an idea that was destined to retain a certain permanence: political power presupposes a productive, commercial, financial, technological, and human base commensurate with it.[15]

The interest of Colbertism also lies in a method : identifying essential sectors, concentrating available resources, organizing skills and making public action a long-term reality. But this experience also reminds us that intervention can become counterproductive when it turns into excessive regulation or administrative rigidity. The strategic state should therefore not be confused with the regulatory state: the former seeks to create capacities, the latter risks multiplying constraints.

In the nineteenth century, industrialization, railways, banks, large networks, ports and heavy industries profoundly transformed the relationship between the state and the private economy. The state does not necessarily replace business; it creates infrastructure, facilitates financing and intervenes when the scale or strategic nature of investments exceeds the immediate capacities of the private sector.[16]

The experience of the Second Empire is particularly revealing in this respect. The works of Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda, and before that the very political and erudite book by Philippe Séguin,[17] have shown the coherence of a policy combining infrastructure, credit, railway development, port modernization, trade opening and industrialization. [18] Napoleon III did not seek to substitute the state for the private economy, but to use public power to accelerate a transformation deemed necessary for the modernization and influence of France.[19]  The spectacular expansion of the railway network, the renewal of the banking system, the development of large credit institutions, the modernization of ports and the Franco-British treaty of 1860 bear witness to this articulation between international openness, private capitalism and public impulse.[20] Experience naturally knows its contradictions and crises; it nevertheless shows that a policy of economic power can seek to guide the transformation of the country without suppressing the market.

Another experience, much more distant in time and space, but which genuinely belongs to a French spirit as a legacy, sheds light on this same logic from a different angle: that of Quebec under Provincial Premier Lomer Gouin. Premier of Quebec from 1905 to 1920, Lomer Gouin sought to attract Canadian and American capital while ensuring that Quebec benefited more from the transformation of its own resources. The objective was not to oust private initiative, but to modify the conditions of private initiative in order to promote local industrialization, which had been abandoned by the very English-speaking and Francophobic federal level.[21] The pulp policy provided a significant illustration of this. In 1910, the government banned the export of pulpwood from Crown land in order to encourage its processing locally. Similarly, the creation of the Quebec Running Water Commission in 1910 was intended to develop the province’s hydroelectric potential and promote its industrial use.[22] In both cases, the public authorities sought less to possess than to develop industrial capacity in the territory that would increase its value.

However, this policy did not only concern resources and infrastructure. It also concerned the men called upon to lead this modernization. It was here that the action of Athanase David, secretary of the Province of Quebec from 1919 to 1936, took on its full importance. David saw education as an instrument for overcoming the economic inferiority of French Canadians and sought to diversify an education that was still largely dominated by the classical humanities.[23] The creation of the Écoles des Beaux-Arts de Québec and Montréal in 1922 and 1923, with the first French director, was part of this policy. In addition to artistic education, these institutions helped to train architects and professionals capable of participating in the material transformation of the province. The use of French expertise, in particular Emmanuel Fougerat and Jean Bailleul, also illustrates the role of the transfer of competences and institutional models in this modernization enterprise.[24]

The Quebec experience thus broadens the notion of the strategic state : the public authorities do not only build infrastructures or companies; they also build the skills necessary for their design, financing, management and development. Education, technical training, architecture, science and culture can therefore participate directly in the constitution of economic capacities.[25]

It would obviously be anachronistic to attribute to Gouin or Athanase David a doctrine of a « strategic state » in the contemporary sense. But their policy has several of its features: diagnosis of structural weakness, identification of missing capacities, voluntarism, particularly in investment in infrastructure and skills, recourse to private capital, and the search for greater control over the value created in the territory.

This logic found a particularly interesting extension thirty years later with the Quiet Revolution, with generations of young leaders around Provincial Premier René Levesque trained by the institutions created in the first third of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1960s, Quebec considerably increased the role of the state, reorganized its education system and used public enterprises and the nationalization of electricity as instruments of development. The control of hydroelectricity thus became, like nuclear power in France, a means of transforming a resource into an industrial capacity and an instrument of economic sovereignty.

The Franco-Quebec rapprochement of the 1960s was part of this dynamic. The meeting between Jean Lesage and General de Gaulle in 1961, the creation of the Maison du Québec in Paris, and the first Franco-Quebec agreements opened up a new institutional relationship.[26] In 1965, the appointment of a Québec delegate general in Paris and the conclusion of an initial agreement on education, followed by the formulation of the « Gérin-Lajoie doctrine« , reinforced Québec’s desire to exercise its jurisdiction in international relations.[27] Charles de Gaulle’s visit to Québec in July 1967 revealed how interested the General in this development. Beyond the political dimension of his trip, he observes the constitution in Quebec of « elites, factories, companies, laboratories« : all capacities that he considers to be the concrete foundations of a lasting power.[28] The Franco-Quebec relationship thus appears as a space for the circulation of ideas and experiences around the same question: how to modernize an economy, train its elites, control its resources and preserve a decision-making capacity in an environment dominated by larger powers? The privileged relationship between Quebec and France on the intercultural, economic and political levels was celebrated in Canada during the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the French presence in Quebec in 2008. [29] However, it would be excessive to deduce from this that Quebec has a direct influence on French economic policy. The interest of the comparison lies elsewhere. It shows that international openness and economic sovereignty are not necessarily contradictory, provided that openness is accompanied by its own capabilities. Quebec attracts foreign capital while seeking to strengthen its decision-making capacity; France develops its international trade while building up domestic industrial and technological sectors.

From Colbert to the Second Empire, from Gouin and Athanase David to the Quiet Revolution, a continuous doctrine was thus emerging less than the same concern: to transform available resources into sustainable capacities for development and power. The Liberation gave this concern much more powerful instruments: planning, public enterprises, major technological programs, infrastructure, research, energy and training. It was on this basis that economic Gaullism was able to carry out its own synthesis. It was therefore not a creation ex nihilo of 1958, but the culmination of a French culture of public power, enriched by the experiences of the industrial and modernizing state and, more broadly, by exchanges with other societies confronted with the same problem of building capacities.

The strategic state can therefore be defined more precisely: not by the size of the administration, the volume of public spending or the size of the public sector, but by its ability to identify structural weaknesses, prioritize priorities, mobilize skills, concentrate resources and obtain measurable results. This last requirement is essential. The strategic state is not judged by the abundance of its procedures, but by the new capacities that it actually contributes to creating: infrastructure, companies, skills, technologies, research, energy, productivity and, ultimately, the collective capacity to decide on its future. It is this requirement for results that will make it possible, further on, to distinguish the true strategic state from what can be called a « machinist state », capable of retaining considerable means while gradually losing the capacity to transform them into real power.

2. The crises of the twentieth century and the gradual conversion of the French state. The First World War marked a major break in the relationship between the state and the economy. The war economy required unprecedented coordination of productive resources, raw materials, transport, energy and labour. It revealed to the public authorities that certain industrial, logistical and technological capacities were of strategic importance that went far beyond the private sphere.

The crisis of the 1930s deepened this evolution. The collapse of international trade, unemployment, deflation and monetary imbalances encouraged the development of instruments of economic observation, regulation and intervention. As Michel Margairaz has shown, however, this was not a brutal break but a gradual « conversion » of the state, whose structures and practices were transformed between 1932 and 1952.[30] The war thus accelerated changes that had already begun more than it created a new economic apparatus ex nihilo. The Liberation gave this evolution a new direction. Public intervention was now put at the service of reconstruction, but above all of modernisation and national independence. Nationalisation, the creation of economic and financial institutions, the modernisation of infrastructure and planning were the main instruments of this transformation.[31] The first Modernisation and Equipment Plan, drawn up under the authority of Jean Monnet, did not only seek to restore the destroyed economy: it intended to concentrate the available resources on sectors whose development conditioned the development of the economy as a whole — coal, electricity, steel, transport, fuel and agricultural machinery.[32]

This logic is fundamentally strategic. In a capital-poor economy, it is not possible to finance everything simultaneously. The Plan therefore consists of prioritizing, coordinating investments and seeking the most important knock-on effects. The trade-offs made in 1946 show that this selectivity was not a simple theoretical principle: some envelopes were greatly reduced in order to concentrate resources on essential bottlenecks.[33]

The first results were rapid. In March 1949, the maximum level of industrial production reached before the war, that of 1929, had been exceeded.[34] This performance could obviously not be attributed to the Plan alone: it was also the result of the efforts of companies, American aid and the European recovery. But the Plan had made it possible to concentrate resources on the main obstacles to modernization.

Its originality lies precisely in this function of coordination rather than general administration of the economy. The modernization commissions brought together representatives of the administration, companies, unions, farmers and experts around common objectives. The first Plan was thus drawn up with the help of more than a thousand participants.[35] The strategic state appears here not as a state that decides alone, but as one that knows how to organize collective intelligence and transform this intelligence into priorities for action.

3. From reconstruction to modernization: the State as a strategist before de Gaulle. During the 1950s, this architecture was consolidated. The second Modernization and Equipment Plan, for 1954-1957, no longer aimed primarily at repairing the destruction of war: it sought to increase productivity, modernize equipment, strengthen competitiveness and prepare for future transformations.[36] French planning thus gradually became an instrument of foresight and coordination, rather than a simple public investment program.

This evolution is essential to understanding economic Gaullism. When Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, he already found the Plan, the major public establishments, the economic administrations and a culture of programming. The General Planning Commission had been created on 3 January 1946, on the proposal of Jean Monnet, by General de Gaulle himself, then President of the Provisional Government.[37] His contribution in 1958 was therefore less to create these instruments than to inscribe them in a more explicit political conception of national power. This conception presupposes rigorous selection. The strategic State agrees to concentrate its resources on certain priorities, to renounce others and to evaluate the results obtained. It does not measure its power by the extent of its administrative apparatus, but by its ability to transform limited resources into new capacities: infrastructure, skills, technologies, companies and industrial sectors.

This is what distinguishes it from a simple administering state. The multiplication of administrations, norms, procedures or expenditures does not, in itself, constitute an increase in power. A formula can sum up this distinction: the strategic state judges itself by its results; the bureaucratic state tends to judge itself by its means and the permanence of its procedures.

The success of the French model of modernization is thus due less to the quantitative scale of public intervention than to its selectivity. The Plan does not claim to organize every economic decision; it seeks to act on the sectors whose development must lead to that of the others. The arbitrations of the Monnet Plan illustrate this concentration of resources in concrete terms.[38]

4. A strategic state that does not content itself with celebrating its successes. Finally, the strategic state has a characteristic that is often overlooked: it does not confuse success with self-satisfaction. Those responsible for French modernization continue to measure the delays, inadequacies and gaps in productivity despite the progress made. The Plan, economic statistics and the work of the commissions serve as much to identify weaknesses as to note successes.

This logic explains the continuity of the effort: the first Plan had to be extended by the second, then by the following ones; the improvement of production called for new productivity gains; industrialization required new infrastructures; growth required the development of research, higher education and technology. Pierre Massé, who took over the direction of the General Planning Commission in 1959, gave this conception a particularly enlightening formulation in The Plan or Anti-Chance. The purpose of planning is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to prepare collective choices by exploring possible futures and their conditions for realization. It thus transforms uncertainty into a form  of « calculated adventure« .[39]

The strategic state is therefore, by definition, dissatisfied with itself. It is not satisfied with having created an institution, nor with having voted for a program, nor with having mobilized credits: it asks these instruments to produce observable transformations. This requirement allows us to better understand the dynamics of the period 1945-1974 and, above all, the place of economic Gaullism in this history. De Gaulle did not create the strategic state ex nihilo; he inherited an architecture built during the war, the Liberation and the Fourth Republic. But he gave it a new political orientation by making economic modernization one of the instruments of national power. The French heritage therefore did not lie in public intervention in itself. It lies in a more demanding conception: power is only real when it is translated into actually built capacities. This distinction between the state that builds capabilities and the state that maintains devices will constitute the guiding thread of the rest of our analysis.

In particular, it makes it possible to understand why the true strategic state does not seek to do everything. It must know what must be done, why, with what means, within what timeframe and according to what criteria of success. It is this culture of selection, competence and results that naturally leads us to examine the men and ideas which, from the thirties to the sixties, gave this tradition its intellectual and operational instruments.

B. The General’s Economists and Senior Officials: Conception and Authors of the Doctrine

The historical legacy of the strategic state is not enough to explain the singularity of the post-war French model. It still had to be taken up and transformed into instruments of government by a generation of economists, engineers and senior civil servants formed by the crises of the interwar period, the war and reconstruction. It was from this encounter between a political tradition of power and a new economic and administrative culture that the doctrine to which General de Gaulle gave its political coherence was gradually born.

1. From the crisis of the 1930s to reconstruction: the formation of a new generation. The essential break was less in 1958 than between the 1930s and the beginning of the 1950s. The world crisis, war, defeat, resistance, liberation and reconstruction upset the traditional representation of the relationship between the state and the economy. A new generation became convinced that the public authorities must be able to foresee, invest, coordinate, plan and mobilize national resources when circumstances required it. [40]However, this transformation did not result from a single school. It was the result of the encounter between Saint-Simonism, the planning of the 1930s, Keynesianism, the experience of the New Deal, the war economy and, after 1945, certain technical instruments of Soviet planning. The French model was therefore less ideological than pragmatic: it was a question of determining where, how and to what extent the state should intervene to promote growth and power.[41]

The creation of the General Planning Commission in January 1946 and the appointment of Jean Monnet, who came from private enterprise, as its head were the institutional culmination of this development. The French Plan was not an administered economy: it was based on consultation, programming and the mobilisation of stakeholders around a few priorities. The first Plan thus retained six sectors: coal, electricity, steel, cement, transport and agricultural machinery.[42] This choice reflected an already strategic conception of reconstruction. It was not only a question of restoring destroyed capacity, but of building the physical infrastructure for future growth. Jean Monnet brought to this approach his international experience and his method based on the setting of objectives, the concentration of resources and the search for consensus between administrations, businesses and the social partners.[43]

Around the Plan, the economic ministries, the public companies and the technical bodies, a real development technostructure was thus formed, bringing together engineers, finance inspectors, economists, statisticians and administrators. The creation of INSEE in 1946 completed this transformation: the modern state must henceforth have quantitative knowledge of production, employment, investment, income and trade in order to establish its diagnoses and set its objectives.[44]

2. Economists, engineers and senior civil servants: building the instruments of development. This generation is not content with organizing reconstruction; it is developing the intellectual instruments that will make it possible to think about development in the long term.

The demographer and economist Alfred Sauvy, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and founder of the National Institute for Demographic Studies, contributed to the dissemination of a dynamic conception of the economy that articulated population, employment, productivity and sectoral transformation. The economist Jean Fourastié, an engineer from the Ecole Centrale and a doctor of law, Controller-General of Insurance at the Ministry of Finance and then a world-renowned university teacher, provided, with Les Trente Glorieuses, a global interpretation of French growth based on productivity gains, technical progress and the transformation of the economic structure.[45] These analyses reinforced the idea that public action should accompany and, when necessary, accelerate productive transformation.

Pierre Massé, also a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, a civil engineer, a doctor of science, an industrialist and electrician before the war, appointed by General de Gaulle as General Commissioner for Planning in 1959, gave this approach a particularly elaborate formulation. In The Plan or Anti-Chance, he presented planning as a method of collective preparation for the future in the face of uncertainty. The objective was not to eliminate uncertainty, but to build the capacity to face several possible futures.[46] Planning thus became an instrument of strategic decision-making rather than a mechanism for administering the economy.

François Bloch-Lainé, a pre-war Finance Inspector, a great resistance fighter, banker and electrician, and director of the post-war Treasury, embodies the reflection on the modernization of the State, public finances and public enterprises. From this perspective, nationalization can be an instrument for collective control of strategic sectors, but it only makes sense if it is accompanied by requirements for management, productivity and responsibility.[47]

With Louis Armand, a pre-war mining engineer, founder of the great « Resistance-Railways » (« Resistance-fer ») network during the war, Companion of the Liberation, founder and first president of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the strategic culture took on a technological dimension. The engineer considered that French power presupposed mastery of technologies that were decisive for the future and sovereignty, especially in the field of energy and transport. Nuclear power is a particular illustration of this concept: it combined energy independence, scientific research, high-tech industry and export capacity.[48]

The same logic was to extend to transport, aeronautics, space, telecommunications and regional planning, with other engineers and general officers, with the participation of the prodigious network of the Companions of the Liberation born in the fighting. Paul Delouvrier, a Finance Inspector, doctor of law, resistance fighter close to François Bloch-Lainé, Prefect and President of EDF, committed to the construction of European institutions like most of the above-mentioned colleagues, shows in particular that modernisation must also organise the national space: infrastructures, development poles, industrial decentralisation and regional metropolises are part of the same search for productive efficiency and cohesion.[49]

3. The meeting with General de Gaulle: from modernization to power politics. However, it would be historically inaccurate to describe this generation as « Gaullist ». Monnet, Bloch-Lainé, Massé, Sauvy and Fourastié did not belong to the same political family. Their contribution was precisely due to their professionalism as a state and their ability to make their action long-term, beyond changes in government. This administrative continuity was one of the essential characteristics of the French model of the 1950s and 1970s. The technical bodies, the economic administrations, the Plan, the public companies and the research organizations ensured a certain permanence to strategic policies.[50]

Charles de Gaulle brought to this ensemble what he still lacked: an explicit political doctrine of power. He did not reason primarily as an economist, but as a statesman: France must remain capable of deciding for itself and must therefore have at its disposal the economic, scientific, industrial, military and diplomatic means corresponding to its ambitions. It is in this perspective that we must understand the formula placed at the top of this study:  » To increase one’s strength to the extent of one’s designs […] to proportion the stakes and the means « .[51] The logic is fundamental, both in the context and in its permanence even today: national ambitions must be proportionate to the capacities actually built.

The encounter between this political vision and the instruments developed by the senior administration then transformed economic modernization into a policy of programs: nuclear, aeronautics, space, electronics, telecommunications, infrastructure, agriculture and regional planning. It thus appears less a « Gaullist economy » in the doctrinal sense than a system of economic government, in which the political power sets the orientations and mobilizes administrations, public companies, engineers and private companies to achieve them.

4. From modernization to doctrine: the principles of an economic policy of power. Economic Gaullism is therefore the result of the meeting of two traditions: on the one hand, that of sovereignty and power; on the other hand, that of programming, statistics, planning and investment. De Gaulle gave the second a political purpose; economists, engineers and senior civil servants provided the former with the instruments for its implementation. This explains the singularity of the period 1958-1974. It was neither the product of a single economic theory nor that of an autonomous bureaucratic apparatus, but a pragmatic construction, based on the state’s ability to select the sectors in which its intervention could create new capacities.

The results are considerable: the development of civil and military nuclear power, the consolidation of aeronautics, participation in the European space programme, the modernisation of transport and telecommunications, the transformation of agriculture, the development of infrastructure and the raising of qualifications.[52] But this success is not due to undifferentiated intervention by the State. It is based precisely on its selectivity: the State intervenes where investments are heavy, time horizons are long, externalities are significant and sovereignty issues are clearly identified. The market thus remains the ordinary mechanism for allocating resources; the State intervenes when spontaneous mechanisms are not sufficient to build the capacities deemed necessary for the collective future. The strategic state is therefore not the one that does everything; it is the one that knows what it must do, what it can let happen and above all what it must not let disappear.

The real legacy of this generation lies less in the multiplication of institutions than in a method of public decision-making: thinking in the long term, prioritizing, measuring economic realities, investing, coordinating public and private skills, building and then evaluating results. It is this method — largely lost by some of those who today claim to be part of this heritage — that distinguishes the strategic state from the simple managing state. Behind the diversity of people and institutions thus appears a French third way, rejecting both absolute laissez-faire and the administered economy, making the market an instrument rather than a dogma and the state a strategist rather than a universal manager.

This doctrinal synthesis of the Gaullist third way, based on monetary stability, fiscal responsibility, competition, indicative planning, long-term investment, industrial policy, innovation and sovereignty, is now being examined in its principles.

C. The four founding principles of a French “Third Way” (“Troisième Voie”)

The men and institutions studied above have gradually led to the emergence of a particular conception of the relationship between the state and the economy. This is not based on classical liberalism, which reserves an essentially sovereign role for the state, or on the administered economy, which substitutes public decision-making for market mechanisms. It is based on a more demanding idea: to leave to the market what it knows how to do, but not to abandon to it what involves the power, the future and the independence of the Nation. This conception, resulting from the experiences of the crisis, war and reconstruction, finds its most coherent political formulation under the Fifth Republic. It constitutes the heart of what can be called a French third way.

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1. The strategic state is not the administrative state: restore the primacy of decision-making and the long term. The first principle is the distinction between the state that directs everything and the state that sets the essential orientations. Economic Gaullism does not claim to abolish the market or administer companies on a daily basis. On the other hand, it considers that certain decisions cannot be left to private anticipation alone when they involve heavy investments, very long horizons or major collective interests.[53]

This conception was a direct extension of French post-war planning. The Plan was not intended to replace the decisions of companies with those of the administration, but to identify needs, prioritize priorities, organize consultation and promote the convergence of public and private investments. The General Planning Commission was thus less a command centre than an instrument of strategic coordination.[54]

The strategic state does not have to know better than the entrepreneur about future demand or the particular conditions of an innovation. On the other hand, it must be able to determine that energy independence, the mastery of a critical technology, an essential infrastructure or an industrial capacity have a collective value greater than their immediate profitability. This is where the long term comes into play. The market is effective in quickly directing capital and punishing inefficient companies; it does not necessarily guarantee the constitution of the capacities that a nation will need in ten or twenty years. The public authorities intervene precisely when the initial costs are high, the returns uncertain and the horizons too far away for the market to be sufficient to encourage investment. Pierre Massé gives a particularly enlightening formulation in The Plan or Anti-Chance: planning does not aim to eliminate uncertainty, but to prepare for several possible futures and to preserve decision-making margins.[55] The Plan thus becomes an instrument for reducing collective vulnerability.

Major programmes — nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications, transport — illustrate this logic. They are considered less as ordinary sectors than as structuring capacities, capable of leading to research, training, subcontracting, innovation, productivity and exports. [56] The strategic state is therefore defined less by the volume of its intervention than by the quality of its choices. The question is not only how much the state intervenes, but on what, why, for how long and with what results. This last requirement implies a real culture of evaluation: a program can fail, a technology can become obsolete and a policy must be abandoned.

The distinction with the machinist state takes on its full meaning here: the strategic state judges public action by its results and agrees to modify its instruments; the machinist state risks measuring its effectiveness by the permanence of its procedures and structures. The first is based on the obligation of result, the second on the conservation of resources.

2. The market remains the ordinary principle of the economy: competition, property and private initiative. The second principle is just as essential: the strategic state is not the enemy of the market. Gaullist France never sought to abolish the market economy. Despite significant nationalisations and a powerful public sector, the period saw a profound modernisation of French capitalism, an increase in private investment and a growing openness to international trade.[57]

Public ownership is therefore conceived as an instrument, not as an ideological end. It is justified when public control of a sector makes it possible to achieve an objective that is difficult to achieve by the market alone: energy independence, essential infrastructure, strategic research or the creation of industrial capacity. Conversely, private companies are essential to the success of this policy. The State can finance research, support a programme or guarantee an initial order; it cannot replace the company in the long term. Public support only makes sense if it promotes productivity, innovation and, in the long term, the ability to face international competition.

This logic leads to a distinction between the market as a mechanism and the market as an ideology. As a mechanism, it remains essential for the allocation of resources, the selection of companies and the encouragement of innovation. As an ideology, it cannot alone determine the collective choices concerning energy, defence, critical infrastructure, fundamental research or strategic technologies. This is one of the essential contributions of the « high-tech Colbertism » analysed later by Élie Cohen: in sectors characterised by heavy fixed costs, technological externalities and economies of scale, public intervention can contribute to the emergence of companies capable of facing global competition. [58] The French third way therefore does not consist in choosing between the state and the market, but in determining the boundary between decentralized initiative and long-term collective decision-making.

3. Plan, invest, innovate: concentrate public power on the decisive sectors. The third principle is that of the concentration of resources. A strategic state cannot do everything: it must choose. French planning has historically been built on this logic of selecting priority sectors and seeking leverage effects on private investment.[59]

Public investment must therefore be distinguished from current expenditure. Roads, ports, railways, electricity networks, telecommunications, universities, research centres or scientific infrastructures are forms of collective capital that can sustainably increase national productive potential. Budgetary discipline therefore does not necessarily consist in reducing public spending indiscriminately, but in distinguishing between what sustains current operations and what prepares future capacities.

Scientific policy extends this logic. Fundamental research, the training of engineers and major technological programmes become instruments of power. Nuclear power is the emblematic example of this: it is a question of mastering not only a technology, but a complete scientific, industrial and human chain.[60] The same logic appears in aeronautics, space and telecommunications. International cooperation can also strengthen power when it makes it possible to share risks and increase technological capabilities. Sovereignty does not necessarily imply self-sufficiency.

The decisive issue is the ability to distinguish between strategic and ordinary sectors. Any sector can be economically important for those who work in it; however, a power policy must identify the technologies, infrastructures, skills and value chains whose disappearance would create disproportionate vulnerability. There is thus implicitly a threshold of sovereignty: some assets can be left to the market without compromising national freedom of decision-making; others must not disappear without a replacement solution. This question, which yesterday concerned energy, electronics or infrastructure, is now being asked for semiconductors, data, the cloud, artificial intelligence, batteries, medicines or critical minerals.

4. Sovereignty, openness and power: a third way between autarky and abandonment of power. The fourth principle concerns the international dimension. Economic Gaullism is in no way based on autarky. It is based on the idea that openness is beneficial only if it does not destroy the decision-making capacity of the one who opens up. A nation can trade, attract capital, import technology and cooperate with its partners while retaining control of the capacities it considers essential. Economic sovereignty does not therefore mean self-sufficiency: it means the ability to choose.[61]

This conception also helps to understand why Europe is not, in principle, contradictory to the strategic state. When it makes it possible to pool resources, expand markets, share risks and develop capacities that a state could not build alone, European cooperation can become a power multiplier. The problem is therefore not Europe as such, but the nature of the capacities it allows to be built.

Post-war history also shows that France did not regain its power by withdrawing from international trade, but by modernizing its productive apparatus sufficiently to participate in international competition under better conditions. Planning, industrial policy, scientific investment and European openness could thus be complementary.[62] The French third way can therefore be summed up in a simple equation: a strong state in its strategic functions, a free market in its ordinary functions, effective competition to select the best, indicative planning to prepare for the long term and international openness compatible with the preservation of essential capacities.

However, this synthesis cannot be mechanically transposed to the twenty-first century. Technologies, value chains, European rules and the nature of power have changed profoundly. It would be as futile to reconstitute the institutions of the 1960s as it would be to claim to reproduce their major programmes identically. The principles, on the other hand, remain relevant: prioritisation, long-term investment, preservation of critical skills, support innovation, use competition as an instrument of efficiency, evaluate public policies, preserve monetary and budgetary stability and, above all, proportion ambitions to the means actually available.

The French Third Way is therefore not a fixed economic model, but a method of governing power. Its essential lesson is not that the state must intervene more, but that it must intervene better, where its intervention is decisive, and withdraw when the market is more efficient than it is. The distinction with the machinist state regains its full scope here: the strategic state judges itself by the transformation it produces and accepts the selection, evaluation and suppression of devices that have become useless; the machinist state risks confusing the permanence of means with the success of policies. The Gaullist experience therefore invites us not so much to restore a « strong state » as to rebuild a state capable of choosing, preparing and obtaining results.  It is there, more than in the institutions or instruments specific to the 1960s, that the real relevance of this French third way lies.

II. Economic Gaullism in Action: Rebuilding an Industrial Power (1958-1974)

However, the doctrine is only as good as the results it achieves. After tracing the historical roots of the French strategic state and showing how, from the 1930s to the Fifth Republic, economists, engineers and senior civil servants developed its instruments, it is now necessary to confront this doctrine with the test of facts. Between 1958 and 1974, economic Gaullism became a method of government and a policy for transforming the French economy.

When General de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, reconstruction was underway, the Plan was working and the large public companies had begun to modernise their sectors. But France was still confronted with several weaknesses: monetary instability, inflation, insufficient investment, a still fragmented industrial apparatus, energy dependence, technological backwardness and territorial imbalances. It also had to finance its modernisation while assuming the cost of decolonisation and regaining an autonomous capacity for international action. The first challenge was therefore to restore order to the conditions of power. The major monetary and financial stabilisation policy initiated in 1958 with the Rueff-Pinay Plan was not unrelated to the industrial strategy: it was one of the conditions. A credible currency, controlled public finances and a sufficient capacity for savings and investment made it possible to free up the resources necessary for long-term transformation. With this monetary policy of the Rueff-Pinay design tandem, Gaull’s economic policy combined financial discipline, budgetary rigour and industrial ambition.[63]

This stabilization must, however, serve a more profound transformation of the productive apparatus. The instruments inherited from the Fourth Republic — the Plan, public enterprises, major technical bodies, credit and public research — are preserved and mobilized in a more explicitly strategic perspective. It is no longer just a question of rebuilding: it is necessary to make France cross the technological and industrial thresholds that condition its rank as a power. It is in this perspective that we must understand the policy of the major programs that took place over a period of fifteen years with great consistency: military and civil nuclear power, aeronautics, space, electronics, telecommunications, transport and energy equipment. The State concentrates resources, coordinates scientific and industrial skills and, when the conditions are right, creates the capacities likely to produce knock-on effects on the entire economy. But this policy goes beyond the high-tech sectors alone: agriculture, infrastructure, housing, transport and land use planning also contribute to the modernization of the productive environment.

The France of 1974 is no longer the France of 1958. The agricultural labour force has fallen sharply, productivity and skills have increased, urbanisation has accelerated, infrastructure has developed and industry has gained in concentration and technological capacity. Growth has therefore profoundly transformed the country’s economic and social structure, in accordance with the dynamic described by Jean Fourastié under the term « Glorious Thirty ».[64] However, this transformation must be placed in its international context. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, European integration progressed, the Common Market expanded and international competition intensified. The question then became how to use international and European openness without allowing the disappearance of industrial capacities deemed essential. The Gaullist response is neither autarky nor withdrawal: it consists in seeking, when possible, French or European mastery of strategic technologies and capabilities. Aeronautics and, gradually, space illustrate this possibility of using cooperation to increase rather than decrease power.

The period 1958-1974 must therefore be assessed not only through the programmes launched, but through their results: productivity gains, technological capacities, exports, energy independence, infrastructure development and industrial knock-on effects. The strategic state is not defined by the scale of its intervention, but by the capacities it manages to build. This requirement for evaluation will also make it possible to distinguish the true strategic state from the « machinist state« . The former selects, concentrates resources and measures its action by results; the latter risks multiplying structures and procedures without sufficiently verifying the capacities actually created. The challenge is therefore not to retrospectively celebrate all the action of the Gaullist state, but to identify what, in its method, actually produced power in order to better appreciate what evolved in a way that was detrimental to maintaining the dynamic.

The demonstration will follow four complementary dimensions. First, we will examine the monetary, financial and budgetary ordering, which is the condition of the transformation policy. We will then study the Plan, the investment and the modernization of the productive apparatus, in order to measure how resources are selected and directed. We will also analyze the major industrial and technological programs, from nuclear power to aeronautics, space, telecommunications and infrastructure, comparing their ambitions with their results, their costs and their limitations.  Finally, we will consider the territorial, social and European dimension of this transformation: land use planning, agricultural modernisation, training, qualifications and international openness.

These dimensions form the same system: financial stability makes investment possible; the Plan organises priorities; major programmes transform resources into industrial and technological capacities; training, regional planning and European openness enable them to be disseminated and exploited.

The period 1958-1974 thus appears to be a particularly instructive experience. It shows that a democratic state can, without abolishing the market or renouncing international openness, define priorities, mobilize resources and build capacities that the private sector could not always assume alone. It also shows that this action is only effective on the condition that selection, arbitration and correction are made: not all programs were successful, not all public enterprises were exemplary, and not all industrial decisions proved to be relevant. The real lesson of economic Gaullism therefore lies not in the reproduction of the instruments of the 1960s, but in the understanding of the method that made it possible, under certain conditions, to transform an ambition for power into real capabilities. It is this method in action that must now be examined.

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A. Restoring the Economic Foundations of Sovereignty

When General de Gaulle returned to power in June 1958, France already had a productive apparatus that had been profoundly transformed by reconstruction and the first modernization plans. But this modernization remained fragile: persistent inflation, external deficits, budgetary imbalances and the recurrent weakness of the franc limited the state’s room for manoeuvre. The 1958 crisis thus revealed an essential contradiction: France intended to exercise a power policy without yet having all the economic instruments to finance it in the long term. The first act of economic Gaullism was therefore to restore these instruments.

1. The 1958 crisis: restoring decision-making capacity. Since 1945, growth and reconstruction had profoundly modernised the French economy, but public finances remained fragile and the balance of payments was regularly in deficit. Spending linked to colonial conflicts, inflation and successive devaluations reduced the government’s ability to act. The crisis of May-June 1958 gave these difficulties a political dimension: France had to simultaneously re-establish its authority, resolve the Algerian question and restore its financial credibility. [65] Monetary stabilisation therefore became a question of sovereignty. For de Gaulle, a power that periodically depended on external assistance to defend its currency did not have full freedom of decision. The government entrusted Antoine Pinay and Jacques Rueff with the preparation of a recovery programme. The Rueff-Pinay Plan, presented in the autumn of 1958, combined deficit reduction, tax reform, limitation of inflationary mechanisms, liberalisation of certain trade and restoration of competitiveness. The franc was devalued by 17.55% in December 1958 and the new franc came into force on 1 January 1960.[66]

However, the essential thing is not each of these measures, but their coherence. It is a question of breaking with successive adjustments and re-establishing a monetary, budgetary and external framework that is sufficiently stable to allow a long-term policy. Financial discipline is therefore not conceived as an austerity end: it must restore the room for manoeuvre necessary for investment and modernisation.

Box 1 — From Napoleon III to General de Gaulle: two converging conceptions of French modernization

Nearly a century apart, Napoleon III and General de Gaulle presented concepts that were surprisingly close to economic modernization, even if they were part of very different political contexts. Both came to power in a country facing a deep crisis of its institutions and its economy. Both considered that the first duty of the state was to restore France’s capacity for action, its confidence and its power. This ambition was set out in the first major speeches of their exercise of power.

The speech in Bordeaux on 9 October 1852, delivered by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte a few weeks before the proclamation of the Second Empire, was a real programme of government. The future Emperor affirmed that « the Empire is peace« , but immediately specified that this peace must be put at the service of a vast policy of modernisation. He announced the development of railways, ports, canals, waterways, major urban works, agriculture, trade and credit, convinced that national prosperity was based on productive investment and on the movement of people, capital and goods. The State had to set the guidelines, create favourable conditions and mobilise private capital in the service of the general interest.[67]

General de Gaulle adopted a similar approach after his return to power in 1958. In his radio and television speeches, and then during his press conferences, he presented financial restoration, industrial modernization, planning, technological independence and economic recovery as the conditions for the restoration of French power. The Rueff-Pinay Plan, monetary stabilization, the development of the General Planning Commission, and the major nuclear, aeronautics and space programs were based on the same logic: to give France the necessary capabilities to control its future rather than to be subjected to international developments.[68]

The means used naturally differed from time to time. Napoleon III accompanied industrialization with the development of modern credit, the rise of investment banks, the construction of infrastructure and a gradual opening up of trade, illustrated by the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860. De Gaulle acted in an already industrialized economy by mobilizing planning, public enterprises, long-term investments and major scientific and technological programs. However, in both cases, the state was not intended to replace entrepreneurs: it guided, coordinated and accelerated economic development by creating the conditions for investment and innovation.[69] This relationship explains why many historians see economic Gaullism less as a break with the French tradition of modernization by the state. In both cases, public power is not conceived as an end in itself, but as the instrument of a national ambition combining financial stability, industrial development, technical progress and the assertion of power.[70]

Beyond the differences in regime, time and international context, both Napoleon III and General de Gaulle considered that economic power did not stem solely from the market or from the administration. It resulted from the State’s ability to give direction, to mobilize private initiatives and to make public action a long-term one. It is this conception of the State as a strategist that this article proposes to question in the light of the challenges of the twenty-first century.

More than a century after Napoleon III, de Gaulle took up a similar logic in a radically different technological and institutional environment. The objective was no longer to build the infrastructures of the first industrialization, but to master the complex systems that henceforth conditioned power: energy, nuclear, aeronautics, space, electronics, telecommunications and scientific research. In his speech of 8 May 1961, he asked that the Plan combine science, economics, technology and work and that it determine the objectives of the country and its regions.[71] In both cases, the strategic state did not claim to do everything: it identified the structuring capacities that the market could not build alone on the required horizon and mobilised public and private resources around them.  The comparison reminds us above all that international openness is not incompatible with sovereignty: it becomes an instrument of power when it strengthens national productive capacities.

2. The franc and public finances at the service of investment. The policy of 1958-1960 thus marked a break with an essentially defensive management of the currency. Jacques Rueff played a major intellectual role in this evolution by making monetary stability and external equilibrium the conditions for sustainable growth. However, economic Gaullism could not be equated with Rueff’s liberalism. He retained from the latter the requirement of financial discipline while maintaining a voluntarist conception of planning, public investment and industrial policy.[72] This combination is one of the essential characteristics of the Gaullist model: monetary and financial stability provides the foundation; the strategic state then uses this foundation to invest and transform the economy. The resources thus preserved must be able to be directed towards infrastructure, energy, research, training and major industrial programmes. Economic sovereignty therefore presupposes a minimum of financial sovereignty: a State incapable of controlling its fundamental balances in the long term cannot support investments whose results will only be perceptible in the long term.

This conception appears clearly in the declarations of General de Gaulle. On 28 December 1958, he presented financial recovery as the condition for an increased effort in housing, schools, hospitals, energy, equipment and communications. In September 1959, he noted the restoration of  » the balance of finances, trade and money  » and immediately linked it to the development of training and research. In January 1963, he finally presented the Plan as « the essence of our economic and social policy ».[73] The chronology was therefore significant: to clean up in order to be able to invest, then to organise investment according to long-term objectives.

3. Stabilize in order to modernize. The real paradox of the period then appeared : the government that restored financial rigour was also the one that amplified the effort of public and industrial investment. The growth of the 1960s was not based on a general reduction in state intervention, but on a transformation of its use. Resources were more oriented towards infrastructure, energy, research, public facilities, training and major programs likely to increase productive potential.

The distinction between expenditure and investment becomes essential here. The State is not intended to systematically replace companies; it must create the conditions that they cannot meet on their own on the same scale: motorway networks, electricity system, scientific infrastructure, telecommunications, ports or public facilities. These investments produce development externalities that justify public intervention.

Between 1959 and 1973, France experienced sustained growth, a strong increase in productivity and a profound transformation of its economic structure. Industry was modernised, agriculture underwent a productive change and services developed rapidly.[74] However, it would be excessive to attribute this dynamic to Gaullism alone: it was part of the broader movement of the « Glorious Thirty », also driven by the international context, the Common Market and the European technological catch-up.[75] The French specificity lies more in the State’s ability to use this favourable economic situation to cross industrial and technological thresholds.

4. From regained stability to power politics. The first aspect of economic Gaullism can therefore be summed up in a coherent sequence: restoring money and finance, freeing up investment capacities, and then using these capacities to transform the national economy. Sovereignty is based neither on monetary solidity nor on industrial power alone: it presupposes their articulation.

This logic also makes it possible to understand why Gaullist policy cannot be reduced to the creation of « national champions ». These can only appear on a base composed of savings, training, research, infrastructure, public procurement and macroeconomic stability. The first objective of the State is therefore less to designate the winners than to reconstitute the conditions in which competitive capacities can emerge.

This first step naturally leads to the following point: once the monetary and financial foundations have been restored, it is necessary to organize the allocation of resources, define priorities and accelerate the transformation of the productive apparatus. The Plan, the modernization commissions, the financing instruments and the investment policy then become the levers of a State that is no longer satisfied with restoring balances, but intends to methodically guide development.

B. The State as a strategist at the service of national mobilization

The restoration of monetary and financial equilibrium is, in the Gaullist conception, only the prerequisite for a broader undertaking:  to mobilize the economic, scientific, technical and human forces of the Nation in order to accelerate its modernization. Economic Gaullism is therefore not based solely on the direct intervention of the State, but on the organization of cooperation between the administration, companies, technical bodies, scientists, employees and financial institutions. The Plan, public enterprises, the major bodies of the State and credit mechanisms constitute the main instruments of this mobilization.

1. The Plan, an instrument of mobilization and coordination. Inherited from the Liberation, indicative planning was retained and strengthened under the Fifth Republic. It did not aim to substitute administrative decisions for the market, but to give economic actors a common representation of national objectives and the means necessary to achieve them. The Plan thus made it possible to concentrate scarce resources on sectors likely to produce the most significant knock-on effects.[76]

This concept, already present in the First Plan of 1947-1952, took on a new dimension with the Fourth Plan (1962-1965) and then the Fifth Plan (1966-1970). It was not a question of mechanically predicting the future, but of reducing uncertainty, coordinating investments, directing financing and giving companies sufficient visibility to make long-term decisions.[77]

Pierre Massé’s analyses reflect this philosophy well: the Plan is less a forecast than a method of collective choice under constraint, making it possible to compare objectives, available resources and the necessary trade-offs.[78] The State thus sets the course without claiming to « row in the place » of all economic actors.

The modernization commissions give this planning a special dimension: senior civil servants, industrialists, engineers, academics and employee representatives compare their analyses. The Plan thus becomes not only a programming instrument, but a place for mobilizing national skills. This articulation distinguishes the French model from an administered economy: the company retains its autonomy and the mechanisms of the market remain, but the environment in which private decisions are exercised is voluntarily structured by the public authorities.

2. Public companies, large bodies and investment financing. This mobilization was also based on the industrial and financial public sector that had emerged from the Liberation. EDF, GDF, Renault, Charbonnages de France, nationalized banks and specialized financial institutions offered the State instruments that made it possible to undertake investments whose horizons and risks sometimes exceeded those that private capital could spontaneously accept. EDF provided one of the most significant examples of this, with the gradual constitution of an electricity system capable of supporting the industrialization and then the development of nuclear power.[79]

However, the public sector is only one of the levers of a broader system. The State’s major technical bodies, in particular the Mines, Bridges and Roads, Telecommunications and Armaments, provide the public authorities with scientific and industrial expertise that allows them to dialogue with companies, assess technological choices and ensure the continuity of programmes. The strength of the model thus lies less in the volume of public intervention than in the State’s ability to know where, why and how to commit collective resources.

This capacity is complemented by an active policy of mobilising savings and credit. The Caisse des dépôts et consignations, the Crédit National, the Crédit Foncier, the nationalised banks and the specialised financing mechanisms make it possible to direct part of the resources towards the priorities of the Plan.[80] Financing thus becomes the natural extension of planning: the priorities defined collectively must be able to be translated into financial terms.

The originality of the system is particularly apparent when these instruments are combined: public procurement, credit, research, training and infrastructure can simultaneously reduce the initial risk, promote technological learning and enable the company to then conquer foreign markets. The State accepts part of the risk and creates the conditions for the private sector to gradually take over.

The system is obviously not without its weaknesses. Public companies can accumulate rigidities, large bodies can encourage excessive concentration of decisions and certain industrial choices can be questionable. But its fundamental ambition remains clear:  to transform national savings into productive and technological capacities rather than just immediate consumption.

3. A mobilization that combines economic power and social progress. However, national mobilization cannot be reduced to capital, infrastructure and technology. It also presupposes putting men and women in a position to contribute fully to national development. Economic Gaullism thus includes a social component that is not an appendage of industrial policy, but one of its conditions.

Improving access to healthcare, consolidating the pension system, and developing education, training and qualifications all follow the same logic: a modern economy cannot be sustainably productive if it does not guarantee its population a sufficient level of health, safety and skills. Social progress is therefore conceived as an investment in human capital and national cohesion.

This conception is also in line with the place given by de Gaulle to participation. This was to make it possible to involve employees more closely in the results and progress of the company, by overcoming the traditional opposition between capital and labour. Economic Gaullism thus intended to reconcile economic efficiency and the association of workers with collective prosperity.

Finally, the originality of this social policy lies in its articulation with growth. In the Gaullist conception, it is not a question of indefinitely multiplying taxes to finance the expansion of benefits: social progress must be made compatible as far as possible with the increase in the resources produced by the economy. Growth expands the available resources; these then make it possible to finance health, pensions, education, infrastructure and the improvement of living conditions. Economic power and social progress are therefore not conceived as two competing objectives, but as two dimensions of the same dynamic of modernization.

This concept also explains the importance given to scientific research, higher education and technical training. The development of nuclear power, aeronautics, space and telecommunications presupposes continuity between research, engineering, training and industrial production. Agricultural modernization follows the same logic: mechanization, dissemination of techniques, transformation of farms and training of farmers are part of the same policy of increasing productivity.[81]

Economic Gaullism thus appears as a French form of organized capitalism: the market remains the ordinary mechanism of the economy, while the state assumes responsibility for the long-term conditions of power, intervening where investments are too long, too risky or too interdependent to be spontaneously carried out by the market alone.

4. From general mobilization to strategic selection. However, national mobilization only makes sense if it is accompanied by a selection of priorities. A state that claims to support all sectors, all technologies and all territories simultaneously disperses its resources and loses precisely what makes its strategic strength.

The Gaullist model achieves its coherence here: the Plan identifies priorities, administrations and major bodies contribute their expertise, public companies and the financial system mobilize resources, while research, training and social policies provide the necessary skills and human conditions. When these instruments converge, the State can make the French economy cross industrial and technological thresholds that it would probably not have crossed at the same pace by the market alone.

The strategic State is therefore not the one that claims to do everything, but the one that knows what it wants to build and concentrates its resources on a few decisive objectives. It is precisely this selection that leads to the next point: the major programs through which France will transform this mobilization into concrete industrial, scientific and technological capacities.

C. Major industrial and technological programmes

National mobilization only takes on its full meaning when it translates into achievements capable of permanently modifying the country’s productive and technological capacities. Between 1958 and 1974, France thus embarked on programs characterized by their duration, their capital intensity, their technological risk and the need for continuity of public action. Nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications, information technology and large equipment became the privileged fields of a State that agreed to mobilize significant resources to cross technological thresholds that the market alone would not necessarily have made it possible to reach.

1. Nuclear power: energy as an instrument of sovereignty. The nuclear program is the most successful expression of this conception of the strategic state. It responds to a fundamental constraint: France has limited energy resources and remains dependent on imports of coal and oil. In the context of the Cold War, energy thus appears as a component of industrial and military power.

However, nuclear policy was not born in 1958. It has its roots in the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1945, then in the scientific and industrial work of the post-war period. Charles de Gaulle, who had participated in this creation, reactivated this orientation after his return to power. Military nuclear power, with the explosion of the first French bomb in 1960, was a major instrument of strategic independence; civil nuclear power pursues a complementary logic: to have an energy that is technologically controlled and less dependent on geopolitical hazards.[82]

The creation of EDF in 1946, the concentration of scientific expertise at the CEA and the existence of major technical bodies provided the State with the necessary instruments for this policy. The first generation of power plants was based on the graphite-gas sector, before France gradually moved towards pressurised water reactors. The launch of the Messmer Plan in 1974, at the end of the period studied, was the culmination of this accumulation of skills.[83] The result went beyond the production of electricity alone. Nuclear power helped to structure a vast entity combining research, engineering, metallurgy, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. It thus illustrates a conception of sovereignty based not on autarky, but on the mastery of skills that allow it to retain freedom of choice. France cooperates with Euratom and maintains international technological relations, but seeks to avoid any dependence that would deprive it of its decision-making capacity.

2. Aeronautics and space: reaching technological frontiers. Aeronautics is a second pillar of this strategy. The restructuring undertaken after the Liberation made it possible to reconstitute an industry capable of conducting complex programs. Under the Fifth Republic, the challenge became threefold: to preserve an autonomous military capability, to maintain a high-tech industry and to conquer international markets.

The Mirage family of fighter aircraft, developed by Dassault, illustrates this desire for autonomy. France retains a complete capacity to design and produce combat aircraft, contributing directly to its freedom of military action.[84] But the ambition quickly extends to civil aeronautics. The Concorde, built with the United Kingdom, shows that international cooperation and industrial sovereignty are not incompatible when the partners retain substantial technological skills. The first flight in 1969 demonstrates an ambition that goes far beyond the criteria of immediate profitability alone.

The same logic applies to space. The creation of the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) in 1961, followed by the launch of the Diamant rocket  in 1965, enabled France to acquire an autonomous capacity to access space. [85] This competence then paved the way for European cooperation within the ELDO and the ESRO,[86] and then for the creation of the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1975. The French experience here shows that cooperation can be a power multiplier when it is based on real national capabilities. Teaching is essential: cooperation does not mean renouncing sovereignty; it is also necessary to have the skills that allow cooperation to be negotiated from a position of strength.

3. Telecommunications and IT: identifying the technologies of the future. Telecommunications and IT illustrate another dimension of the strategic state: its ability to identify technologies whose strategic importance was still in the making. In the 1960s, France undertook a considerable effort to modernize its telephone network and electronic infrastructure.[87] The Plan Calcul, launched in 1966, then reflected the desire not to let IT become a field entirely dominated by American companies. In particular, the State supported the International Company for Informatics (CII) in order to create a national player capable of participating in international competition.

The result will be more uncertain than in nuclear or space: alas, CII  did not become a world champion and was finally integrated into Honeywell Bull in 1976.[88] But this industrial failure does not mean that the strategic diagnosis was wrong. IT was indeed destined to become an essential infrastructure of economic and technological power. This distinction is important: a state can correctly identify a strategic sector while being wrong about the company, the technology or the timetable. Industrial policy must therefore be judged not only by its immediate commercial results, but also by its ability to create skills, infrastructure and learning effects. Public procurement plays a decisive role here. By supporting the first applications, guaranteeing outlets and bringing research and industry closer together, it makes it possible to reduce the initial risk and to promote the emergence of a national technological base. The objective is not to replace private enterprise in the long term, but to enable it to cross thresholds that it could not reach on its own.

Box 2 — The Plan Calcul and the CII: a failure of the strategic State or an unfinished success?

The Plan Calcul, launched in 1966 on the initiative of General de Gaulle, was one of the most ambitious manifestations of the industrial voluntarism of the Fifth Republic. Its creation was a response to a twofold concern. On the one hand, the takeover of Bull by General Electric raised fears of the disappearance of national capacity in a sector that was destined to become strategic. On the other hand, American restrictions on access to certain high-performance computers, which were essential to French nuclear programmes, revealed the extent to which technological sovereignty was now a condition for national independence. The creation of the Compagnie Internationale pour l’Informatique (CII) in December 1966 aimed to provide France with a manufacturer capable of competing with the major American groups and to preserve its autonomy in a field that was destined to structure the economy of tomorrow.[89]  If the CII ultimately fails to establish itself on the world market, this failure cannot be reduced to an alleged inability of the State to conduct an industrial policy. Several closely related factors explain the difficulties encountered.

The first was  the overwhelming dominance of IBM, which at the time controlled most of the global computer market, at a time when Europe lacked the essential strategic tool of competition policy to control abusive practices. Its technological advance, the power of its research capabilities, the size of its commercial network and the economies of scale from which it benefited made it extremely difficult for an isolated European competitor to emerge.

The second factor is the exceptional speed of technological change. The investment required to design a full range of computers, operating systems, software and services requires financial continuity over several decades, while innovations follow one another at a pace that rapidly renders previous generations of hardware obsolete.

In addition to these industrial constraints, there were political and institutional weaknesses. The changes in industrial policy after 1974, the abandonment of the European Unidata project, which was to bring together CII, Siemens and Philips, and then the merger with Honeywell-Bull, profoundly changed the initial strategy. The company gradually lost the stability that a high-tech industry needed to amortize particularly heavy investments.[90]

However, the Computing Plan cannot be considered a complete failure. It has profoundly transformed the French scientific and technological ecosystem. It promoted the creation of IRIA, which became INRIA, accelerated the development of higher education in computer science, supported the emergence of a national mini-computer sector with the Mitra 15, encouraged the work of the Cyclades network, several principles of which would later inspire the Internet, and contributed to training a generation of engineers, researchers and developers who would play a major role in the French digital economy.[91]

The lessons learned from this experience thus go far beyond the case of the CII. It shows that the strategic state cannot be judged solely by the commercial success of a company, but by its ability to create skills, scientific infrastructures, technologies and innovation ecosystems in the long term. From this point of view, the Calculation Plan has left a much greater legacy than the disappearance of the CII would suggest.

It also reveals the conditions under which an industrial policy can succeed in high-tech sectors. The continuity of public choices, the stability of funding, the constant adaptation to technological breakthroughs, the existence of a sufficiently large market and cooperation between research, industry and finance appear to be factors as decisive as the intervention of the State itself.

This last observation leads to a reflection that remains highly topical. The history of the CII highlights less the limits of the strategic state than those of a strategic state acting alone in a now global industry. As early as the 1970s, information technology required investments, research capacities and markets that a middle power could not mobilize in isolation. The difficulties encountered by France were already a foreshadowing of those faced today by all policies of technological sovereignty.

The lesson remains of direct significance for the twenty-first century. In the fields of semiconductors, artificial intelligence, the cloud, quantum technologies, batteries and cybersecurity, the question is no longer a choice between the market and the state. It consists in determining at what scale the  latter can act effectively. The contemporary strategic state can no longer be thought of in an exclusively national framework: it must articulate French capabilities with a genuine European industrial policy, the only one capable of achieving the necessary critical mass in the face of the large American and Chinese groups.

In the end, the Plan Calcul appears less as a failure of Gaullist voluntarism than as a pioneering experiment revealing the new requirements of technological sovereignty. It reminds us that an industrial policy is measured neither by the number of subsidies granted nor by the volume of public spending, but by its ability to include investment, research, industry and skills in a coherent and sustainable strategy. It should be noted that in 2026, the CII episode already foreshadowed the issues that are now at the heart of the Draghi report, the  American CHIPS Act and the European Chips Act.[92] 

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4. From dispersed programs to an integrated industrial system. The true scope of major programs becomes apparent when they are considered as components of an interdependent technological system. Nuclear power mobilizes engineering, metallurgy and electromechanics; aeronautics stimulates materials, electronics and engines; space accelerates telecommunications and computing; and defence provides an initial market for technologies that can then find civilian applications.

The State therefore does not only support isolated companies: it seeks to build chains of skills. Public procurement, major national operators, scientific establishments and private companies form an ecosystem in which the public authorities agree to assume part of the initial risk in order to then allow industry to take over.[93]

The balance sheet must nevertheless be qualified. Some programmes experience cost overruns, delays or commercial failures; the Calculation Plan provides an example of this. The system can also encourage an excessive concentration of decisions between administrations, large bodies and large companies. But these limits must not lead to a purely accounting assessment of the strategy. The decisive question is to know whether all the programmes have increased the Nation’s capacities.

From this point of view, the results of 1958-1974 are significant: France now has a powerful nuclear industry, an autonomous military aeronautics industry, recognized space skills, a civil aeronautics industry engaged in international cooperation, profoundly modernized telecommunications and a strengthened scientific and technical base.[94]

Several of these investments would produce their most significant effects after the Gaullist period: Concorde, Airbus, Ariane and the subsequent development of the nuclear fleet bear witness to this dissociation between the moment of decision and that of return. A long-term industrial policy must therefore be assessed in the light of the cumulative capacities it generates: engineers, infrastructure, suppliers, know-how, research, international reputation and export possibilities.

This is ultimately what distinguishes the strategic state fromthe « Machinist State« : the former accepts to take risks to create new capacities; the latter can multiply procedures without really increasing the nation’s means of action. The period 1958-1974 thus shows that a state can intervene strongly in the economy without abolishing the market, provided that it concentrates its action on infrastructure, research, critical technologies and long-term investments. Its function is not to replace companies in the long term, but to catalyze private and scientific capacities, by concentrating resources on a limited number of priorities.

This last condition leads directly to the following question: what were the overall economic, industrial and social results of this strategy, what were its costs and contradictions, and why would a model that had produced such large capacities gradually run out of steam?

D. Georges Pompidou, prolongator and adaptor of economic Gaullism

The disappearance of General de Gaulle from the political scene in April 1969 did not mean that the economic model built since 1958 would have been achieved. With Georges Pompidou, the Fifth Republic retained its main instruments, but adapted them to an economy that was now more open, more European and more competitive. Prime Minister for nearly six years, Pompidou was perfectly familiar with the mechanisms of the strategic state; as president, he intended not so much to question them as to preserve the objective of power by giving more space to business, competitiveness and international openness.[95]

1. De Gaulle and Pompidou: continuity and inflection. Georges Pompidou’s accession to the presidency in June 1969 did not therefore constitute a doctrinal break. He intended to continue the modernization begun in 1958 and to maintain the major industrial programs, the infrastructure effort and national independence. But his approach differed significantly from that of Charles de Gaulle: while the latter insisted primarily on the sovereignty and international rank of France, Georges Pompidou gave increasing importance to the competitiveness of French companies.[96] This inflection in no way meant the abandonment of the strategic state. Rather, it reflected a change in its function. The state should not only finance infrastructure and lead major programs; It must also enable French companies to reach a sufficient size and efficiency to face international competition.

The company thus became a fully-fledged component of national power. President Pompidou encouraged the modernization, investment, exports and industrial concentrations necessary for the emergence of groups with an international dimension. Economic sovereignty now also depended on the ability of French companies to conquer foreign markets.

However, continuity remained very strong in strategic sectors. Georges Pompidou continued the nuclear, space, aeronautics and military programmes, supported the development of Concorde and supported European industrial cooperation that would lead to Airbus. The objective was now to base French power on the combination of the State, major programmes and competitive companies.

2. The company at the heart of the new French capitalism. This evolution gave the company a more central place in the economic model. Georges Pompidou did not convert to Anglo-Saxon liberalism: the state retained important economic levers and the public sector remained considerable. But the state could not replace companies in the long term. Its function was to create the conditions for their development, investment and internationalization.

At the beginning of the 1970s, this orientation encouraged groupings and concentrations aimed at the emergence of groups capable of competing with American, German and Japanese companies.[97] Industrial policy thus gradually evolved from support for priority sectors to the creation of industrial champions. This change was a response to a profound transformation of the economic environment. The growth of American multinationals, the rise of Japan and the enlargement of the European market made a strategy based solely on the internal market insufficient. France must now have companies capable of producing, investing, mastering their technologies and exporting internationally.

Exports thus become an instrument of power. But this internationalization introduces a new contradiction: the more French companies insert themselves into world markets, the more dependent they become on capital, technologies and external outlets. Economic power therefore now presupposes a more subtle articulation between national autonomy and international integration.

3. Europe as a power multiplier. It is in this perspective that Georges Pompidou’s European policy must be understood. Far from calling into question the construction of Europe, he sought to reorient it so that it could serve French economic and industrial interests. The Hague Conference of December 1969 revived European integration, while the enlargement of 1973 and industrial cooperation opened up new areas for the French economy.

President Pompidou understood that some industries could no longer achieve a global size on the French market alone. Europe was then considered capable of becoming a power multiplier, provided that cooperation made it possible to add national skills rather than dissolve them. The Airbus programme is the most significant example of this. Launched at the end of the 1960s, it aimed to enable Europeans to compete with American manufacturers by pooling national industrial capacities. France retained a major position, while the Federal Republic of Germany, then Spain and other partners contributed their own skills.[98]

The logic is identical to that which had presided over space cooperation: cooperation to achieve a critical mass without renouncing national capabilities. This conception retains a profoundly Gaullist dimension. Europe is not seen as a substitute for national industrial policies, but as a space for amplifying them. This approach also applies to Franco-German relations. Industrial cooperation can considerably increase European power, but it presupposes real national capacities and a sufficiently balanced distribution of responsibilities. Pompidou’s economic Europe thus remains subordinated to a conception of national power.

4. The shock of 1973 and the end of a cycle. However, the context in which Georges Pompidou held office differed profoundly from that of the previous decade. The French economy had become more modern and more open, but also more exposed to international imbalances. Inflationary pressures increased while the international monetary system resulting from Bretton Woods began to disintegrate with the suspension of the convertibility of the dollar into gold in August 1971.[99]

The oil crisis of October 1973 brutally revealed the energy vulnerability of Western economies. For France, it confirmed the strategic importance of a national energy policy. The Messmer Plan of March 1974, decided a few months before the death of President Pompidou, massively accelerated the development of civil nuclear power.[100] This decision was particularly revealing: at a time when the international economic model was entering a new phase, France was once again responding with a major long-term industrial programme. The oil crisis did not therefore mean the immediate disappearance of the Gaullist model; rather, it marked the end of the favourable environment in which it had been able to operate.

Georges Pompidou died in April 1974. His successor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, gradually changed French economic priorities. But a large part of the capacities built up since 1958 — nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications, infrastructure and large industrial groups — continued to produce its effects for several decades. The balance sheet of the period must therefore be nuanced. With Georges Pompidou, economic Gaullism evolved from a model mainly centred on the power-building state to a model in which power must also be achieved through the competitiveness of companies and the use of Europe as a space for projection, sometimes with the substitution of a policy of action for a more ideological, rhetorical and sometimes theoretical policy.

This development revealed a difficulty that would become central in the following decades:  the more the French economy became international, the more the instruments of sovereignty had to be rethought. The State still had powerful levers at its disposal in 1974, but financial globalisation, the rise of multinationals, the deepening of the European market and technological changes gradually reduced its capacity for direct action.

Economic Gaullism thus succeeded in transforming France into a more solid industrial and technological power, but it left its successors with a new question: how to preserve the strategic autonomy of an economy that was now part of increasingly international markets and production chains? It is this tension between national power, European openness, competitiveness and autonomy that will structure the rest of our study.

III. From the doctrine of strategic industrial autonomy to hive-off and deindustrialization

The economic model built since the Liberation and brought to its most ambitious expression between 1958 and 1974 did not disappear with General de Gaulle. Its main instruments — indicative planning, major programs, public enterprises, major technical bodies, mobilization of savings and scientific policy — continued to produce their effects for a long time. In the mid-1970s, France still had a modernized industrial apparatus, large companies, scientific skills and several first-rate technological sectors. However, the doctrine that had made it possible to build these capacities gradually lost its coherence, its instruments and its intellectual legitimacy.

This development was not the result of a single decision and concerned several governments. It was also largely the result of a meeting between a transformation of the international environment and a gradual change in French economic choices. The first oil shock, the end of the Bretton Woods system, the slowdown in productivity (including probably the sudden drop linked to the transition to a 35-hour week paid for 40 hours, i.e. a brutal wage increase of more than 10% in the first year in 2001), « unconscious » inflation (through the transition from the French franc to the euro also in 2001) and the appearance of mass unemployment put an end to the exceptionally favourable conditions of the Glorious Thirty. The state must now act in an economy that is more unstable, more open and more subject to international monetary and financial constraints.[101]

However, the crisis in itself did not condemn the strategic state. It could lead to the renewal of its instruments. France is gradually choosing a different path: priority to monetary stability, development of financial markets, international openness and transformation of the role of the state. The state is not disappearing from the economic sphere; it is still intervening strongly, but is increasingly tending to act as a regulator, financier or corrector of the market, rather than as a direct builder of industrial capacity.[102]

However, it would be excessive to place an absolute break in 1974 or 1981. France is still pursuing ambitious industrial policies: nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications and infrastructure benefit from major public investments, while the nationalizations of 1981-1982 bear witness to an economic voluntarism that is unfortunately based more on ideology than on the concern for industrial efficiency that governed in the 1960s. Bad should therefore be a process, not a rupture. It lies less in the immediate abandonment of any industrial policy than in the gradual transformation of its purposes, its instruments and its time horizon.

The turning point of the 1980s was decisive in this respect. The priority given to monetary stability, followed by disinflation and European anchoring, restored France’s financial credibility but also reduced certain instruments of its economic autonomy. At the same time, the European single market increased competition and widened the outlets for French companies. Europe could thus be, as Georges Pompidou had already understood, a power multiplier; but it also introduced new constraints on national industrial policies. The question is therefore not to make Europe responsible for French hive-doing, but to understand how national power and European power have gradually been articulated — or insufficiently articulated.[103]

Globalization in the 1990s, followed by China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, accentuated this transformation. The international organization of value chains, the rise of Asian economies, financial liberalization and the internationalization of companies profoundly changed the conditions in which the French model had been conceived.[104] At the same time, privatizations and the rise of financial logics transformed the relationship between the state and large companies. Industrial temporality, often ten-year or generational, came into increasing tension with financial temporality.

It was in this new environment that French deindustrialization asserted itself. This was the result of multiple factors — productivity gains, tertiarization, changes in demand, international competition, relocations, business strategies and economic policy choices. But it also reflected the gradual weakening of certain productive capacities that had been considered strategic. The paradox was that France retained a powerful state through its spending, its taxes and its regulations, while at the same time experiencing more difficulty in transforming this administrative and financial power into new productive capacities.[105]

It is here that the distinction between the strategic state and what we have called the « Machinist State«   takes on its full meaning instead of a dynamic state. The strategic state is defined less by the scope of its intervention than by its ability to identify priorities, concentrate resources, assume risks, develop skills and produce new capacities. The machinist state can, on the other hand, multiply procedures, standards, agencies and mechanisms without obtaining a comparable increase in the economic, industrial or technological capacities of the country. The difference is therefore not more or less state, but which state, for what objectives and with what results.

This distinction also prohibits any nostalgic reading. Obviously, it must be stressed that the world of 2027 is no longer the world of the 1960s: value chains are globalised, financial markets are integrated, technologies are evolving much faster, the European Union is an essential framework for economic action and environmental constraints have changed scale. It is therefore not a question of mechanically restoring the Gaullist model, but of recovering its fundamental capacity to think and build power over the long term.

This part will therefore seek to understand how and why France has moved from a doctrine of capacity building to a policy that is progressively less capable of renewing them. It will first examine the turning point that took place after 1974 and the gradual transformation of the economic and industrial model, and then it will analyse the erosion of the strategic State’s instruments – disengagement, financialisation, privatisation and transformation of the relationship between the State and the company – as well as its consequences on industrial capacity. Finally, we will study the combined effect of European integration and globalisation, in order to determine to what extent France has been able to use these new spaces as power multipliers or, on the contrary, has gradually accepted to lose control of certain strategic capacities.

The challenge is therefore not to put on trial the policies carried out since 1974, but to identify the moment and the mechanisms by which France has gradually ceased to think of its economic power as a long-term policy. This question will naturally lead to the fourth part: not a return to the past, but the search for the conditions for a contemporary reconstruction of the strategic state, compatible with the market economy, Europe and global interdependencies.

The central question then becomes the one that runs through this entire study: how to remain open to the world without becoming dependent on it, to cooperate with Europe without giving up its own capacities, and to let the market play without leaving to others the task of determining the conditions of its power?

Box 3 — The double shock of the 35-hour week and the euro for competitiveness: a French singularity?

At the end of the 1990s, the French economy had to absorb two major transformations almost simultaneously: the entry into the single European currency and the reduction of the legal working time to thirty-five hours. While all the states of the future euro zone had to adapt to the disappearance of their monetary sovereignty, France was practically the only major European economy to have to carry out, at the same time, such a profound reform of the organization of work.[106]

The introduction of the euro was a major breakthrough. From 1 January 1999 for financial operations, then from 1 January 2002 with the introduction of banknotes and coins, competitiveness adjustments could no longer be achieved by national devaluations. French companies now had to improve their competitive position solely through productivity gains, innovation, product quality, investment and sustainable cost control.[107] It was in this context that the Aubry laws of 13 June 1998 and 19 January 2000 came into play, instituting the legal working time of thirty-five hours. The reform was based on a complex balance: the reduction in working hours was to encourage job creation, while companies were invited to reorganise their production in order to preserve their competitiveness. The reductions in social security contributions and the expected productivity gains were to compensate for part of the additional costs linked to the reduction in working hours.[108]

The first evaluations have indeed highlighted several hundred thousand job creations as well as a significant increase in hourly productivity in companies that have undertaken a profound reorganization of work.[109] However, these favourable effects were gradually counterbalanced by growing questions about their medium- and long-term consequences. Several parliamentary reports, academic studies and economic analyses have stressed that the rise in the hourly cost of labour in certain sectors, combined with the impossibility of resorting to monetary adjustments, may have contributed to the gradual erosion of French competitiveness, particularly in the industrial activities most exposed to international competition.[110]

Other economists, however, dispute this interpretation. They believe that the French industrial decline can be explained above all by deeper factors: insufficient productive investment, delay in the dissemination of digital technologies, less favourable industrial specialisation, low private research spending and the lack of upgrading of many productions.[111]

Whatever the interpretations adopted, a French singularity remains. While Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands mainly had to integrate the new constraints of the single currency, France was simultaneously undertaking a structural reform of its labour market. This dual adjustment, monetary and social, profoundly changed the operating conditions of its productive apparatus at the very moment when globalisation, China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation and the intensification of international competition were accelerating.[112]

This concomitance is obviously not enough to explain, on its own, the French economic difficulties observed since the early 2000s. These are the result of a set of more complex factors. The fact remains that it is an important explanatory variable of the French trajectory and deserves to be integrated into any reflection on deindustrialization, competitiveness and the conditions for future reindustrialization.

 

A. The doctrinal break of 1974

The turning point of 1974 cannot be reduced to the succession of Georges Pompidou by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. It corresponds to a gradual transformation of the French representation of economic policy. The first oil shock, inflation and the end of the Bretton Woods system certainly imposed new constraints, but these did not automatically imply a withdrawal of the State. The decisive choice lay in the way in which they were to respond. While the Gaullist generation saw external constraints as an additional reason to invest and strengthen national capacities, a new doctrine gradually favoured the adaptation of the French economy, monetary stability, competition and international openness.

1. 1974: two responses to the crisis. In this respect, the year 1974 was almost symbolic. On 6 March, Pierre Messmer announced a nuclear programme on an exceptional scale: thirteen power plants were to be launched in 1974 and 1975, for an announced investment of 13 billion francs. The decision was a response to the oil crisis, but above all reflected a logic already characteristic of economic Gaullism: to identify a strategic vulnerability, to concentrate public and industrial resources and to accept a massive investment, the benefits of which would be mainly future.[113]

A few months later, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s speech expressed a different inflection. On 25 September 1974, the new president spoke of « another era of economic growth » and the need for « new growth », based on an effort to « adapt and redeploy ». He did not renounce public action or planning, but the frame of reference began to change.[114]

The difference was significant: Prime Minister Pierre Messmer responded to the crisis by accelerating the productive transformation; President Giscard d’Estaing intended to adapt the French economy more to an environment that had become more constrained in the long term. The break was therefore not yet a disengagement of the State, but a modification of the central question: it was less a question of determining what new capacities France should build than of knowing how its economy could adapt to the new international constraints. This gradual reversal of reasoning constituted the real break of 1974.

2. Adaptation to the priority given to balances. The deterioration of the economic situation from 1974-1975 deepened this inflection. France entered a period of stagflation, combining a slowdown in growth, high inflation and rising unemployment. The governments of Jacques Chirac and then Raymond Barre gradually placed the fight against inflation, external balance and monetary stability at the top of the list of priorities. The Barre Plan of 1976 was an important step in this respect.[115]

This orientation responds to real difficulties: inflation weakens savings, disrupts investment and deteriorates competitiveness. The question is therefore not to dispute the need for stabilization, but to observe its consequences on the hierarchy of economic objectives. In the previous model, financial equilibrium was mainly the conditions for development strategy; they are now tending to become themselves structuring objectives of economic policy.

The same shift affected planning. The Plan was not abolished, but its role was gradually transformed: from an instrument for mobilizing national resources around industrial priorities, it became more of a tool for forecasting, reflection and consultation. The Plan remained; it gradually ceased to be the centre of gravity of economic policy.[116]

Industrial policy is evolving at the same time. The State continues to intervene and support certain sectors, but it is increasingly favouring the general conditions of competitiveness and the adaptation of companies rather than the direct determination of priority sectors and technologies. It is therefore not disappearing: it is gradually moving from a State that builds capacity to a State that is more responsible for organising the conditions for their « adaptation to the market », even if it means allowing deindustrialisation to progress, in principle in favour of financialisation and the tertiary sector (but without concern for competitiveness, which is nevertheless being called into question).

3. 1981-1983: the last voluntarism and the paradigm shift. The arrival of the left in power in 1981 initially seemed to interrupt this evolution. The nationalizations of 1981-1982 and the extension of the public sector showed a spectacular return to economic voluntarism, unfortunately on a basis very tinged with the workerist ideology forged in the nineteenth century. Nationalizations aimed, in principle, to give the state the means to control credit, to restructure large groups and to conduct a more directly proactive industrial policy.[117]

But experience quickly came up against the constraints of an open economy: external deficits, capital outflows, inflation and tensions on the franc made it difficult to pursue an autonomous policy of recovery. The decision in March 1983 to remain in the European Monetary System and to give priority to stabilisation therefore marked a decisive turning point.[118]

France thus chose to adapt in the long term to a restrictive European and international monetary environment rather than seeking complete autonomy in economic policy. This choice was economically understandable and helped to restore the country’s monetary credibility; but its doctrinal significance was considerable. Monetary stability, competitiveness and European integration now became the frameworks within which industrial policy had to be conceived.

The paradigm shift was then underway. Industrial policy did not disappear: major technological programs, nuclear, aeronautics, space, defence, TGV or telecommunications continued to strongly mobilize the State. But these interventions were no longer as evident in a general doctrine making productive transformation and the constitution of long-term national capacities the organizing principle of economic policy.

The State gradually became more of an arbiter, regulator, accompanist and incentive. The privatisations of 1986-1988, financial liberalisation and the construction of the European single market continued this evolution.[119]

The rupture of 1974 must therefore be understood less as the end of the strategic state than as the beginning of its doctrinal transformation. Economic voluntarism is not disappearing; it is gradually losing its status as a guiding principle. Industrial policy continues to exist, but it tends to be thought of less and less as a general policy of power and more and more as a policy of adaptation and competitiveness.

It is this gradual erosion of the instruments and the coherence of the strategic state that must now be examined.

B. Truncated reindustrialization: the ambiguities of a neoliberal paradigm applied without a real industrial doctrine

The doctrinal break that began in 1974 did not lead to the disappearance of the French economic state. It gradually transformed its function: the industrial state, which organized sectors and built capacity, was replaced by a state more responsible for creating the general conditions for the functioning of the market. Industrial policy has therefore not disappeared; it has mutated towards competitiveness, attractiveness, cost reduction, the opening up of markets and the adaptation of companies to international competition. This evolution is not unique to France. Deindustrialization has affected all developed economies, under the combined effect of productivity gains, tertiarization, changes in demand and globalization. But its scale in France remains remarkable: since 1980, industrial branches have lost nearly half of their workforce, i.e. around 2.2 million jobs, while the share of manufacturing in value added has fallen from levels above 20% to less than 10% since 2018.[120] This evolution reflects not only a sectoral transformation, but also the loss of productive capacities, skills and certain technological masteries.

1. From sector policy to horizontal policy. The real change took place in the 1980s. After the experience of nationalisations and the revival of 1981, the turning point of 1982-1983 gave lasting priority to monetary stability, competitiveness and integration into a more open European and world economy.[121] The state did not give up intervening, but it gradually assumed less direct responsibility for the country’s productive structure.

Industrial policy is thus becoming more « horizontal »: research, training, infrastructure, taxation, financing and improvement of the business environment. This orientation is based on a conviction that has become dominant: the State is less capable than the market of identifying the sectors of the future and should avoid « picking the winners ».[122]

This development is a response to real failures. Some major French technology programmes have shown that the mobilisation of public resources does not guarantee commercial success or industrial sustainability.[123] But these failures did not demonstrate that all sectoral policies were doomed to failure. Rather, they underlined the need for a more rigorous selection of projects, an evaluation of results and a capacity to abandon when objectives are not achieved.

The difference with the strategic state is therefore less the opposition between intervention and non-intervention than the ability to define priorities. A strategic state is not intended to replace companies in the long term; on the other hand, it must be able to identify essential capacities, mobilize financing, coordinate actors and reason in a horizon that the market cannot always assume.

The privatizations initiated from 1986 onwards illustrate this evolution. They are not in themselves incompatible with a power policy: a strategic company can be private while remaining subject to a doctrine of control of essential assets. The problem arises when the transfer of ownership is accompanied by a weakening of the public capacity to define and protect strategic interests.[124]

France thus retains an economically powerful state, but progressively less capable of thinking of its productive apparatus as a coherent whole. It is still involved in restructuring, funding research and supporting businesses, but more to correct or support market developments than to organise a long-term industrial transformation.

2. Competitiveness cannot be a substitute for industrial policy. This transformation has been accompanied by the rise of a central concept: competitiveness. This is essential to any open economy, but it cannot constitute an industrial policy on its own.

A competitiveness policy seeks mainly to improve the conditions in which companies produce and compete. An industrial policy raises a broader question: what productive capacities does France intend to preserve, develop or create in ten, twenty or thirty years, and what means must be mobilized to achieve this?

The distinction is decisive. Reductions in charges, tax measures, administrative simplification or general support for investment can improve the business environment; they are not enough to reconstitute a vanished industrial sector, a technological skill or a supply chain. The CICE, and then the permanent reductions in contributions, have thus been able to contribute to the competitiveness of companies without being able, on their own, to rebuild the lost industrial ecosystems.[125]

Globalization has amplified this difficulty. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 accelerated the fragmentation of value chains and offered European companies new markets and lower production costs. But this opening up also increased the vulnerability of economies that did not sufficiently protect certain strategic capabilities. For a long time, France benefited from the immediate gains of opening up without sufficiently measuring some of its deferred costs: dependence on imports, disappearance of suppliers, loss of skills and deterioration of the trade balance.[126] The problem is therefore not to oppose competitiveness and industrial policy in the abstract. It is to understand that competitiveness is a means, not a doctrine of power.

3. Europe and globalisation: the challenge of a strategic link. However, it would be excessive to attribute French deindustrialisation solely to European integration or to globalisation. These transformations would have profoundly affected French industry, regardless of the European institutions. The national responsibility lies rather in the difficulty of articulating European and global openness with a strategy of economic power.

The European Union has long favoured the internal market, competition and the limitation of State aid. This framework has produced considerable gains in integration and efficiency, but it has also limited certain national industrial policy instruments.[127] France could have made greater use of the European level to build markets, pool investments and build common sectors, rather than considering Europe as an external constraint to which it was mainly necessary to adapt. The problem was therefore not that it had chosen Europe, but that it did not sufficiently define what France wanted to obtain from Europe. A contemporary power strategy must articulate precisely three levels: preserving certain sovereign functions at the national level; building markets and sectors at the European level capable of competing on a global scale; and finally maintaining the international openness necessary for exports, investment and innovation. The period 1980-2010 too often favoured this third level without sufficiently consolidating the first two.

4. From de-industrialisation to reindustrialisation: a late change. The crises of 2008, and especially the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, have revealed the limits of this approach. Shortages of medicines, electronic components, equipment, raw materials and energy have reminded us that productive capacity is itself a strategic capacity.

Industrial sovereignty is therefore back at the heart of public policies. France 2030, relocation policies, industrial territories, support for green industries and economic security measures bear witness to this reorientation. With a budget of €54 billion, France 2030 aims in particular to support innovation, industrialisation, research and training.[128] In recent years, France has also experienced a favourable shift in industrial establishments: the Directorate General for Enterprise recorded more than 400 net factory openings or extensions between 2022 and mid-2024.[129] The change is therefore real.  But this reindustrialization remains truncated.

It is so first of all because it remains largely restorative: relocating, rebuilding lost capacities and reducing certain dependencies is not enough to determine the technologies and value chains that France and Europe want to master in twenty or thirty years. Secondly, it is because the multiplication of aids, tax credits, subsidies and calls for projects does not constitute, in itself, an industrial doctrine. Without prioritization, public policy risks juxtaposing programs that respond to successive emergencies rather than building coherent capacities. Finally, it is because the obstacles to reindustrialization are not only financial. Energy, technical skills, applied research, industrial land, infrastructure, long-term financing and the ability of companies to reach a global scale are all conditions for productive reconstruction.

The French situation thus presents a paradox: the state is rediscovering the virtues of strategic intervention after having lost part of the doctrine that allowed it to structure it. The vocabulary has changed — sovereignty, resilience, relocation, reindustrialization, strategic autonomy — but a large part of the instruments remain the result of the previous paradigm: incentives, subsidies, calls for projects and horizontal support for investment.

This is why the notion of « bad bank » seems more accurate than that of « dismantling ». In just a few years, the state has not destroyed the industrial apparatus built since 1945; it has gradually undone the institutional, financial and doctrinal articulations that made it possible to think of it as a strategic whole. Some companies have become world champions, certain scientific skills remain remarkable and infrastructure is still a major asset. But the whole has become more fragmented, more dependent and less controlled. Moreover, because of its normative inflation, it is not certain that the state is clear about its industrial objectives despite the repeated remarks that are sometimes more incantatory than operational.

The question is obviously not to return to the industrial model of the 1960s, which has become impossible in its old form. It is to know whether France can rebuild an industrial doctrine adapted to the twenty-first century, reconciling market and power, private initiative and public investment, international openness and economic security, European belonging and national sovereignty.

It should be noted that with a view to the 2030s, economic Gaullism does not provide a catalogue of instruments that can be immediately transposed in this respect. Rather, it offers a method : identifying the essential interests of the nation, setting a long-term horizon, concentrating resources on decisive capacities and organizing the complementarity of the State, companies, research and funding around these objectives.

Reindustrialization will only truly become a power policy on this condition: that the state no longer limits itself to promoting the emergence of capacities, but that it knows how to determine which ones are essential, why they are essential and how their control can be ensured in the long term.

C. The economic and strategic consequences of bad bank

The « hive-off » of the strategic state is not only measured by the gradual disappearance of certain industrial policy instruments. It is measured above all by its cumulative consequences on France’s ability to produce, innovate, trade, master its technologies and, ultimately, freely decide on its economic future. Deindustrialization, deterioration of foreign trade, loss of scientific and technical skills, growing dependencies and foreign takeovers are the various manifestations of the same weakening of the productive base of French power.

However, France remains a developed economy, with large global groups, high-level scientific research and efficient infrastructure. But it has gradually lost some of the control of the ecosystem that allows these assets to be renewed. An economic power cannot be reduced to the value of its companies; it also depends on the ability to retain the skills, technologies, capital, decision-making centres and intellectual property rights necessary for their development.

1. A loss of industrial substance. The first consequence is deindustrialization. It is less the result of a single decision than of several decades during which France has supported the transformations of its productive apparatus more than it has controlled its trajectory. The decline in the share of industry in value added is only the most visible indicator. Behind jobs and production, subcontracting chains, skills, design offices, specialized equipment and training capacities are also disappearing. A factory that closes can thus lead to the disappearance of a set of know-how that is difficult to reconstitute.[130]

Deindustrialization then becomes self-perpetuating: contraction of a sector, loss of outlets and economies of scale, disaffection of the younger generations for the professions concerned, disappearance of training and decline in investment. In technological sectors, the loss of production can even lead to the loss of innovation capacities, because industrial experience and the interactions between research, design offices and production are themselves factors of innovation. The challenge is therefore not only to preserve factories, but to preserve complete productive ecosystems.

2. The weakening of foreign trade and dependencies. The second consequence is the deterioration of France’s trade position. An open economy can naturally import part of what it consumes. The situation becomes strategic when imports concern essential goods or production that the country previously controlled. The health crisis has revealed this vulnerability for medicines and medical equipment; the war in Ukraine has highlighted it for energy and certain raw materials; the competition around semiconductors has shown that critical technologies are now directly linked to power. Dependence is therefore no longer just a question of competitiveness: it is becoming a question of economic security.

France retains world champions in aeronautics, luxury, transport, defence and certain services, but this excellence coexists with significant deficits in many industrial sectors. The concentration of exports on a few sectors is not enough to compensate for the erosion of the productive base. Economic sovereignty obviously does not mean autarky. It consists in distinguishing between what can be freely acquired on world markets and what must remain under control in France or, failing that, in a sufficiently integrated and reliable European area. A nation that is permanently dependent on the outside world for goods that are essential to its functioning necessarily reduces its freedom of decision.

3. The loss of technological capital. A less visible consequence concerns the intangible capital accumulated by companies: patents, software, processes, data, industrial secrets, trademarks and human skills. A foreign acquisition can therefore displace not only physical capital, but also part of intellectual capital. Opening up to foreign investment remains desirable; the question is to know under what conditions a company holding critical technological assets can be sold when this operation risks having a lasting effect on economic sovereignty.

For a long time, the French approach has mainly focused on employment and the location of establishments. However, a company can keep a factory in France while gradually transferring its decision-making centres, patents, software, research teams or investments outside the country. Industrial sovereignty must therefore be conceived as sovereignty over capacities, and not only as sovereignty over jobs.

The Senate recently highlighted this double threat: foreign takeovers constitute a « capital threat », while the capture of intellectual property and strategic information constitutes an informational threat. The SISSE recorded 694 economic security alerts in 2022, 45% more than in 2021.[131]

France has gradually strengthened its system: the decree of 14 May 2014, the PACTE law of 2019 and the decree of 31 December 2019 have broadened the control of foreign investments and the means of intervention of the State.[132] However, this development reflects a relatively late realization.

4. Foreign takeovers: from reaction to anticipation. The problem is not that every French company acquired by a foreign investor is a mistake. Some operations provide capital, markets and development capacities. The difficulty lies in the absence, for a long time, of a sufficiently precise doctrine to distinguish an ordinary financial operation from an operation that has a lasting effect on the country’s strategic capacities.

Alstom is an emblematic example. When the energy activities were sold to General Electric in 2014, the State had to put in place guarantees concerning nuclear activities, Arabelle turbine technology and EDF‘s access  to certain intellectual property.[133] The protection was therefore developed while the transfer process was already underway.

The case of Photonis, on the other hand, shows that determined public intervention is possible. In 2020, the Government favoured a national takeover solution rather than a takeover by the American Teledyne, due to the strategic nature of some of the company’s activities for French defence.[134]

But between the company directly linked to defence and the ordinary company, there is a whole continuum of technologically critical companies: components, robotics, materials, industrial software, cybersecurity, biotechnologies or dual technologies. It is these « nuggets » that can, by their disappearance, gradually weaken an entire sector.

5. Latécoère : the deferred cost of a loss of control. The case of Latécoère illustrates this difficulty particularly well. Founded in Toulouse in 1917, the group is a long-standing player in the French aeronautics industry. In 2019, Searchlight Capital Partners, an American investment fund, took control of the group, after reviewing the operation under foreign investment control. The State approved the operation under certain conditions.[135]

It would therefore be inaccurate to say that it did not react. But the case is precisely instructive: the control of foreign investment does not necessarily mean the maintenance of an industrial capacity under French control. As early as December 2019, the Senate had warned of the risks associated with the operation and questioned the Government on the guarantees relating to Latécoère‘s jobs, activities and technologies. It confirmed the existence of conditions imposed on the investor, some of which remained confidential.[136]

What follows reveals the limits of this protection. In 2023, Latécoère announced the industrial closure of the Toulouse-Montredon site, inaugurated a few years earlier as a « factory of the future », with the transfer of equipment to the Czech Republic and Mexico. Around 110 industrial jobs were affected.[137]

The Latécoère case  thus makes it possible to distinguish the protection of a company from the long-term protection of a strategic capacity. An authorisation with one-off guarantees is not enough if the shareholder can then reorganise production, move equipment or redirect investments. The paradox was reinforced by the group’s financial situation: in 2023, the State had to intervene again through the CIRI. The shareholder contributed an additional €100 million, after €450 million had already been invested, while the banks agreed to a reduction in their debts of €188 million, including €128 million in state-guaranteed loans. In return, the shareholder undertook to maintain the group’s French roots and jobs.[138]

The state could therefore be led to financially support a company whose capital it no longer controlled, after having accepted its passage under foreign control a few years earlier. It is precisely this type of situation that a true strategic state doctrine should seek to prevent.

Box n°4 — Latécoère: the deferred cost of a loss of control

The Latécoère case  illustrates an essential distinction between the protection of a company and the protection of a strategic asset. In 2019, the State conditionally authorised the takeover of Latécoère by Searchlight Capital Partners. In 2023, the same group, which had become the majority shareholder, announced the reorganisation of its production system and the transfer of machinery from Toulouse-Montredon to the Czech Republic and Mexico. At the same time, the State had to intervene, via the CIRI, to support the company’s financial difficulties.

The problem is therefore not only that of « foreign takeover ». It is that of the gradual loss of control of an industrial and technological capacity. A sovereignty policy should be able to identify, before the sale, the assets that must not be able to leave the national or European perimeter: critical patents, research centres, software, industrial data, processes, rare skills, test facilities, specialised equipment and production lines that are essential.

The objective would not necessarily be to maintain 100% French capital. It could be, more pragmatically, to ensure that strategic assets remain under some form of French or European sovereignty, for example by means of specific rights, location clauses, perpetual licences, mandatory retention of certain research centres, veto rights on the transfer of critical assets or, where justified, public or European participation in the capital.

6. From industrial independence to technological autonomy. Recent crises have revealed multiple dependencies: industrial, energy, health, technological, financial and sometimes military. Economic sovereignty in the twenty-first century can therefore no longer be defined solely by the ownership of capital. It must include the mastery of critical technologies and value chains.

The strategic company is no longer necessarily a large public group or an essential infrastructure. It can be a mid-sized company with a single industrial process, a decisive patent or a dual technology. The development of the SISSE, with the identification of strategic companies, critical technologies and research laboratories, reflects this evolution.[139]

The challenge now is to intervene upstream: the State must not only wait for a takeover operation to be filed; it must identify companies likely to become prey and organize French or European solutions early on. This policy requires a permanent mapping of strategic assets, monitoring of capital movements and financing to offer credible alternatives to foreign investors.

7. Energy, health, defence: when dependence becomes strategic. Some sectors directly illustrate the link between economic dependence and freedom of action.

Energy is a first example of this. France had developed its nuclear fleet in the 1970s to reduce its dependence and strengthen its sovereignty. However, energy sovereignty is not only based on the ownership of power plants: it presupposes mastery of the technologies, equipment, maintenance and skills necessary for their operation.

Health follows the same logic: the ability to produce certain medicines, active ingredients and medical equipment constitutes collective insurance in times of crisis. Defence takes this requirement even further: a modern army cannot be truly autonomous if it is permanently dependent on foreign suppliers for critical components, software, sensors, ammunition or communication systems.

The fundamental question therefore becomes: what must we absolutely continue to know how to produce?

8. The ultimate consequence: a reduced decision-making capacity. Finally, industrial hive-off has an institutional consequence: it reduces the effective capacity of the state to act. A state that no longer possesses the companies, technologies, skills or financial capacities necessary for a given policy must act indirectly, through regulation, subsidies or negotiation. These instruments may be effective, but their scope diminishes when the material capacities on which they were based have disappeared.

The real issue of economic Gaullism was therefore not public ownership in itself, but the effective capacity of the state to direct the economic destiny of the country.

Contemporary sovereignty must therefore be thought of as a sovereignty of capabilities. It involves answering five questions: what productions should we control? What technologies should we preserve? What skills should we transmit? What assets should we prevent from leaving the French or European perimeter? What financial resources should we mobilize to offer a credible alternative to foreign capital?

France has begun to answer these questions, but still largely in a reactive manner. The real doctrinal break would be to move from a policy of loss control to a policy of anticipation of strategic assets.

Economic sovereignty is therefore not closure to the world. It is the ability to choose in which areas dependence is acceptable, in which areas it should be reduced and in which areas it should be refused. France will not regain its strategic capacity by mechanically rebuilding the industrial state of the 1960s. On the other hand, it will have to rediscover its guiding principle: identify essential interests, anticipate risks, mobilise funding, retain skills and organise long-term coherence between industry, research, energy, defence and foreign trade. It is precisely this capacity that will have to be rethought for 2027.

IV. Rethinking the Strategic State: What Gaullist Inspirations for 2027?

The fifty years between 1974 and 2026 have gradually distanced France from a conception of the state in which economic policy was part of a long-term vision of national power. The « bad bank » analysed in the third part did not abolish the economic state; above all, it weakened its ability to think, anticipate and sustainably organise the conditions of this power.

However, this observation should not lead to a nostalgic conclusion. It is not a question of restoring the state of the 1960s, nor of resurrecting the Plan, nor of mechanically reproducing the instruments of economic Gaullism. The world of 2026 is no longer the world of 1960: the globalization of value chains, the digital revolution and artificial intelligence, the energy transition, Sino-American technological competition, the return of war in Europe and demographic changes require us to rethink the forms of public action. The relevant question is therefore not how to return to economic Gaullism, but what its method can still teach us in order to rebuild a capacity for economic and strategic action adapted to the twenty-first century.

In this respect, economic Gaullism is not an economic model that can be directly transposed. It refers more to a conception of the state and power: knowing where to lead the country, identifying the capacities essential to its independence, accepting the long term, organizing complementarity between research, industry, funding and skills, and preserving the ability to decide when the market is not sufficient to guarantee the fundamental interests of the nation.

This conception leads to the rehabilitation of a simple principle: a nation cannot permanently delegate to others the task of determining the conditions of its own power. It can trade, cooperate, attract capital and participate in global value chains; it must nevertheless retain control of the functions whose loss would compromise its freedom of decision. Sovereignty therefore does not imply autarky, but the ability to distinguish between acceptable dependencies and those that must be reduced or denied, whether in energy, critical technologies, data, health, defence, infrastructure or industrial capacity.

This reflection necessarily leads to a re-examination of the relationship between France and Europe. The purpose of this section is in no way anti-European. Europe can be a powerful power multiplier thanks to its market, its currency, its scientific and industrial capacities and its common commercial policy. But European integration cannot be an end in itself: it finds its political justification when it makes it possible to better meet the needs of citizens and to strengthen the continent’s collective capacity to act in the world.

For France, Europe must therefore not replace national power, but constitute one of its instruments when the European level is more effective than the national level. This complementarity is particularly necessary in defence, energy, aeronautics and space, digital technology, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, research and the financing of innovation. Sovereignty in the twenty-first century will often be exercised at several levels; however, it will not be abandoned. The reconstruction of the strategic State must therefore avoid two symmetrical mistakes: believing that the market can organise everything or that the State can decide everything. The challenge is to find an effective link between the State, companies, investors, researchers, territories and citizens.

The strategic state is neither the one that produces in place of companies, nor the one that distributes public aid indiscriminately. It is the one that sets a course, prioritizes priorities, concentrates resources, evaluates results and corrects or abandons policies that fail. This definition presupposes the rediscovery of several principles of the Gaullist experience: long-term vision, sovereignty, innovation, indicative planning, concentration of resources and continuity of public action.

It also presupposes appropriate institutions: an economic administration capable of coordinating public policies, sufficiently strong technical skills, research that is better linked to industry, funding adapted to innovation and mechanisms for monitoring the implementation of decisions. Industrial power is also a social power: reindustrialization implies simultaneously dealing with work, skills, training, wages, pensions and social mobility, without which industrial policy would remain incomplete.

Finally, the strategic State must rediscover a real culture of evaluation. The major programmes of the Gaullist period were based on an administration capable of setting objectives, mobilising scientific and industrial skills and monitoring their results. The contemporary challenge is to restore this ability to distinguish an effective policy from a simple piling up of expenditure and measures.

Understood in this way, the reference to economic Gaullism ceases to be a nostalgia and becomes a method of thinking about the future. The question of 2027 is not whether France should return to the same position as it was in 1962, but whether it can once again become, in the conditions of the twenty-first century, a nation capable of defining its interests, prioritizing its priorities, mobilizing its resources and mastering the technologies on which its future depends.

It is this ambition that leads us to examine successively the principles of economic Gaullism that remain relevant, the instruments that should be rebuilt and, finally, the conditions for the exercise of a French strategic state within a renewed Europe and in a world henceforth structured by the competition of the great powers.

A. Which principles remain fully current?

While economic Gaullism cannot be reproduced identically, some of its guiding principles remain surprisingly relevant. They do not constitute a ready-made economic program. Rather, they form a method of governing the economy, based on a simple idea: an economic policy cannot be sustainably effective if it is not part of a vision of national power and a sufficiently long horizon to allow investments, skills and innovations to produce their effects.

This method is based on five principles that remain particularly relevant for France in 2027: long-term vision, sovereignty, innovation, evaluation and indicative planning. These principles must naturally be adapted to contemporary conditions. But their overall coherence retains all its value.

1. The long-term vision: rediscovering the time of power: The first lesson of economic Gaullism is perhaps the simplest and the most difficult to implement: a state must be able to think beyond the electoral horizon; this lesson is sorely lacking in the current electoral period.

French economic policy in the post-war period was marked by this ability to set public choices within ten, fifteen or twenty year horizons. The Plan was not only an instrument of economic programming; it made it possible to give temporal coherence to public and private investments. Major nuclear, aeronautics, space, rail and electronic programmes were all based on decisions whose results could not be assessed at the level of a legislature.[140]

This temporal dimension is fundamental because the main assets of economic power are long-term assets. A nuclear power plant, a railway line, an aircraft, a defence system, a research laboratory, a university, a semiconductor factory or a technical training course often require several years to produce their effects. Conversely, contemporary public policies are too frequently evaluated according to immediate indicators: the number of jobs announced, the amount of promised investments, quarterly changes in production or annual budgetary costs. The result is a contradiction: decisions are made in the short term while strategic assets are built in the long term.

Of course, regaining a long-term vision does not mean predicting the economy of 2040 with certainty. Modern planning cannot claim to know in advance technologies, markets or international power relations. Rather, it must define robust objectives, identify major risks and build capabilities to adapt when circumstances change. This is where the notion of strategy becomes essential. A strategy is not a prediction; it is an ability to act in uncertainty.

The State must therefore be able to distinguish between the trends that it can leave to the market and those that justify early public action. The energy transition, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, biotechnology, the defence industry, digital infrastructures or quantum technologies are precisely areas in which the absence of a decision today can make it extremely costly to correct errors tomorrow. The long term so dear to the great historian Fernand Braudel must therefore once again become a criterion for public decision-making, even if this is unknown for the administrative or accounting rules of Matignon or Bercy.

2. Sovereignty: controlling dependencies without seeking autarky: The second principle is that of sovereignty. The term has sometimes been reduced to an opposition between international openness and national withdrawal. This would be to misunderstand the Gaullist conception of power. Sovereignty does not mean that France must produce everything itself. It means that it must retain the freedom to decide in the areas that condition its independence.[141]

This distinction has become even more important in the twenty-first century. Globalization has multiplied interdependencies; it has also created new vulnerabilities. Ordinary trade dependence can be economically rational. A dependence on a single supplier for military technology, an essential medicine, an electronic component or a critical energy resource can, on the other hand, become a strategic vulnerability.

Sovereignty policy must therefore proceed by hierarchization. Not everything can be strategic. Not everything must be produced in France. But certain goods, certain technologies, certain infrastructures, certain know-how and certain data must be considered as critical capabilities. This conception leads to a distinction between three levels.

The first is that of strictly national sovereignty: certain capabilities must remain directly controlled by France because they affect defence, security, energy or certain essential sovereign functions.

The second is that of European sovereignty: when the size of the market, the cost of investment or international competition make the national scale insufficient, France must seek a European capability. The aeronautics industry, space, certain defence equipment, semiconductors, artificial intelligence or certain digital infrastructures are part of this logic.

The third is that of organized interdependence: in sectors where no complete autonomy is rational, France and Europe must diversify their suppliers, secure their supply chains and maintain alternative solutions.

This conception makes it possible to resolve an apparent contradiction, provided that one has a strong capacity for discernment: French sovereignty can sometimes be better ensured by Europe than by France alone. This is why a coherent policy of economic sovereignty must not be anti-European. On the contrary, it must seek to make Europe an instrument of power. But it must also refuse to allow European integration to lead mechanically to the abandonment of all national capacity. The right question is not to choose between France and Europe; it is to determine at what level each capacity should be controlled.

Sovereignty can thus become a principle for the selection of acceptable dependencies.

3. Innovation: not only to accompany progress, but to provoke it. The third principle is that of innovation. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Gaull’s economic policy lay in its ability to consider scientific research and technological progress as instruments of power. Nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications or the TGV were not only economic projects: they were conceived as investments in the country’s future capacity.[142]

This concept retains all its relevance, but it must be thoroughly modernized. The main challenge is no longer just to finance research. It is to transform research into industrial capacities.

France has high-level scientific research in many fields, but it still encounters difficulties in sufficiently transforming its discoveries into companies, patents, industrial processes and exportable products. The challenge of the twenty-first century is therefore less to choose between public and private research than to rebuild the interfaces between the two. This means bringing together laboratories, universities, grandes écoles, companies and investors. It also means promoting applied research, industrial demonstrators, innovative public procurement and the financing of the growth phases that precede industrialisation.

The case of artificial intelligence is a perfect illustration of this new challenge. The question is not only to have researchers capable of publishing in the world’s best journals. It is also necessary to have models, computing capacities, data, research centres, companies capable of scaling up and an industry capable of using these technologies. The same logic applies to semiconductors, biotechnology, quantum, new materials, batteries or energy technologies. The strategic state must therefore accept to take technological risks. It cannot guarantee that all programmes will succeed. On the other hand, it must accept that some fail so that others can succeed. This is where innovation meets the principle of evaluation: taking risks does not mean financing failures indefinitely. It means experimenting, measuring, learning and rapidly redirecting resources.

The Research Programming Act of 24 December 2020 provides a contemporary illustration of this desire to return to multi-year programming: it sets a budgetary trajectory until 2030 and explicitly affirms the link between research, innovation, technology transfer and competitiveness.[143]

4. Evaluation: moving from the spendthrift State to the responsible State. The fourth principle is probably the one that has been the least developed in the Gaullist tradition and which must now be considerably strengthened: evaluation. A strategic State cannot be satisfied with defining ambitions. It must verify that the resources mobilized actually produce the expected results. This requirement is particularly important in a France where public spending reaches a high level. The question is therefore no longer just: « how much does the State spend? » It is: « What does this expenditure produce? »

The distinction is essential. An industrial policy can be generously financed and yet ineffective. Conversely, relatively limited public intervention can have a considerable effect if it makes it possible to trigger private investment, secure a technology or structure a sector. The evaluation must therefore focus not only on expenditure but also on results: jobs actually created, productivity, exports, patents, production capacities, technological autonomy, knock-on effect on SMEs and mid-caps, diffusion of innovations, return on public investment.

It must also include a comparative dimension. A French policy should not be considered successful simply because it achieves its administrative objectives. We must ask ourselves whether other countries obtain better results with comparable means. This culture of evaluation implies an important political consequence: accepting the end of a policy that does not work. The strategic state is therefore not the state that accumulates measures. It is the state that knows how to concentrate, measure, correct and, when necessary, give up. This requirement is directly related to the criticism developed in the third part. The hive-off was not only the result of the withdrawal of the state; It has also been fostered by the accumulation of insufficiently evaluated public policies, whose objectives, costs and results have not always been related.

Evaluation must thus become a constitutive function of the strategic State. The work of France Stratégie also shows that the evaluation of public policies has gradually become institutionalized in France, while highlighting the country’s historical lag behind the precursor states.[144]

5. Indicative planning: regaining the ability to set a course. The fifth principle is that of planning. Any misunderstanding must be avoided here. Planning for the twenty-first century cannot be the imperative planning of an administered economy. It must be indicative, strategic, flexible and revisable, rather inspired by that practiced by Japan, South Korea or Taiwan for the past twenty-five years.[145]

The French Post-War Plan was precisely original in that it was not a production programme imposed on each company. It was an instrument of coordination and mobilisation. It enabled the State, companies, social partners and financial institutions to share a representation of national priorities and to coordinate their decisions.[146] It is this coordination function that must be recovered.

Modern planning should answer a few fundamental questions: what industrial capacities do we want to have in fifteen years’ time? what infrastructure do we need to build? what skills do we need to train? what technologies do we need to master? what dependencies do we need to reduce? what investments should we encourage? which sectors should be developed at European rather than national level? It should not seek to determine in advance the totality of economic responses. Rather, it should set capacity targets.

This distinction is fundamental. The State should not necessarily say which company will produce a particular technology. It should determine that a given technological capacity must exist in France or in Europe at a given time, and then organize the conditions that will allow several actors to contribute to its realization. Indicative planning thus becomes a method of coordination between public authorities and private initiative. It could also make it possible to reintroduce a dimension that is too often absent from contemporary economic policy: coherence between public policies. An industrial policy cannot be effective if energy policy simultaneously increases the cost of production, if training does not provide the necessary skills, if research remains far from companies, if long-term financing is lacking and if infrastructure does not keep up. Planning is therefore less about planning than about coordinating. This definition makes it possible to reconnect with the spirit of the Plan without reproducing its old forms.

6. Five Principles for a New Doctrine of Power: These five principles are actually interdependent.

The long-term vision gives direction to public action. Sovereigntymakes it possible to identify the capacities that must be mastered. Innovation provides the technological means to build future capacities. Evaluationmakes it possible to verify that the choices made produce the expected results. Indicative planning ensures coherence between these different dimensions. Taken in isolation, each of these principles can lead to dead ends. The long term without evaluation produces perpetual programs. Sovereignty without openness leads to protectionism. Innovation without an industrial strategy can produce discoveries without industrialization. Evaluation without vision leads to short-term steering. Planning without a market leads to rigidity. It is their combination that constitutes the real lesson of economic Gaullism.

This combination leads to a renewed definition of the strategic state: not a state that replaces the market, but a state that organizes the conditions of power, sets priorities, mobilizes actors, protects critical capabilities, accepts technological risk, measures results, and places its action in the long term. This definition also makes it possible to go beyond the traditional opposition between interventionism and liberalism. The real issue is not the quantity of the state, but the strategic quality of the state.

A France of 2027 therefore does not need more government in all areas. It needs a state that is more selective, more competent, more far-sighted, more evaluative and more determined in the areas that condition its power. It is precisely this qualitative transformation that leads to the following question: if the principles can be updated, what are the institutional, administrative, financial, scientific, industrial — but also social — instruments that need to be rebuilt to give them concrete expression? This is the subject of the next subsection.

B. Which instruments should be rebuilt?

The rehabilitation of the principles of the strategic state cannot remain theoretical. If France wants to regain an effective capacity for economic decision-making by 2027, it must rebuild the instruments that will make it possible to transform a long-term vision into sustainable investments and capacities. It is not a question of reconstituting the economic apparatus of the Gaullist state, but of regaining the functions it fulfilled, by adapting them to an open, European, digitized economy subject to intense global competition.

This reconstruction should focus on several complementary entities: the strategic State and the State shareholder, planning, economic administration, skills, research and its transfer to industry, the financing of innovation, the conservation of strategic assets and, finally, the social dimension of industrial policy.

1. Reconstitute a real strategic state. The first reconstruction was institutional. France already has many bodies involved in the economy: ministries, France Stratégie, Bpifrance, the State Shareholding Agency, the Banque de France, specialized agencies, research organizations, local authorities and European institutions. The problem therefore lies less in their absence than in their dispersion and the insufficient continuity of decisions.

The multiplication of programmes – France Relance, France 2030, decarbonisation, reindustrialisation, support for innovation – cannot be a substitute for a strategy. France 2030, with a budget of €54 billion, is a major effort; its ex-ante macroeconomic assessment published in 2026 reflects a more strategic and multi-year approach.[147] But above all, the State must be able to prioritise these instruments and check their coherence. The economic strategy function placed under the Prime Minister should therefore be strengthened. France Stratégie, created in 2013 as an extension of the General Planning Commission, constitutes a relevant institutional basis, but its forecasting and evaluation capacities should be more closely linked to budgetary and industrial decisions.[148]

The strategic state should be able to answer a few essential questions at all times: what capabilities should be preserved? what dependencies should be reduced? what technologies should be mastered? what skills should be trained? what capacities should be developed on a European scale? Its function would be less to manage programmes than to set objectives, distribute responsibilities, monitor results and correct failures. The reconstruction of the strategic state would therefore be first and foremost that of its capacity for intellectual command.

 

2. Recreate a long-term planning function. France has retained its capacity for foresight, but it has lost the instrument for transforming this foresight into the coordination of public and private decisions. It would not be a question of resurrecting the General Planning Commission in its historical form, but of creating a national strategic plan for ten or fifteen years, periodically revised, politically approved and broken down into measurable objectives.

This Plan would identify a limited number of priorities — energy, defence, industry, digital and AI, health, infrastructure, critical resources, research and skills — and would specify, for each one, the capacities to be achieved, the investments needed, the skills to be trained and the dependencies to be reduced.

The function of the Plan would thus be less to forecast production than to coordinate expectations. It could constitute the common matrix of the budget, public investment, France 2030, sector contracts, training and research programming. Ecological planning also shows that the State is rediscovering the need for coordination between economic, industrial, energy and social policies.[149]

 

3. Strengthen a truly strategic economic administration. The strategic state presupposes an administration capable of understanding companies, technologies, international markets and the strategies of the great powers. The issue is not the number of civil servants, but the quality of the strategic skills available within the state.

It is therefore necessary to rebuild high-level sectors of expertise in the industrial, financial, technological, energy, digital, commercial and geopolitical fields. The State cannot negotiate effectively with large groups, investment funds or foreign powers if it does not have comparable expertise.

This competence must also include economic intelligence. The development of the SISSE is a step forward, but the State must be able to identify strategic companies in advance, their technologies, the risks of takeovers and the consequences of a possible loss of control.

Finally, each major policy should have a clearly identified leader, objectives, a timetable and indicators. The strategic state must be both more powerful and more responsible.

 

4. Rethink skills, grandes écoles and training. The reconstruction of the strategic state requires bringing administrative, scientific and economic cultures closer together. Complex technological policies require engineers who are able to understand their economic and geopolitical environment, senior civil servants who master scientific and industrial realities, and managers who are able to dialogue with researchers and administrations.

The grandes écoles should therefore strengthen cross-training between engineering, economics, science, law, management and geopolitics, while vocational and technical training should be directly linked to the needs identified by planning.

Reindustrialisation requires skilled workers, technicians, engineers, maintenance workers, cybersecurity specialists and industrial executives. France compétences underlines the growing importance of these needs linked to the digital and ecological transformations.[150] Industrial policy must therefore once again become a policy of qualification and social advancement.

 

5. Reconnecting research, innovation and industry.  France’s main challenge lies not so much in the quality of its research as in its ability to transform scientific discoveries into industrial innovations, and then into commercial successes on an international scale. The strategic State must thus ensure the continuity of the entire innovation value chain, from fundamental research to applied research, the development of technological demonstrators, industrialization, the financing of the growth of innovative companies and, finally, their access to global markets. It is on this articulation between science, industry, capital and exports that the transformation of scientific potential into a real economic power now depends.

The research programming law for 2021-2030 has reintroduced a multi-year programming of resources; technology transfer and industrial exploitation of results must now be strengthened.[151] Researchers must be encouraged to create companies where relevant, investors must finance the riskiest phases and large groups must be encouraged to integrate the innovations of SMEs and mid-caps.

The objective is clear: to no longer finance the birth of a technology in France whose industrial value and intellectual property would then be developed elsewhere.

6. Rebuild a French innovation financing chain. Financing is the other critical link. Technology companies often encounter difficulties between creation and access to capital markets.

In this respect, Bpifrance is a major instrument, which must be strengthened as  a patient capital  tool in sectors where investments are heavy and returns are long: defence, energy, quantum, AI, biotechnologies, semiconductors, new materials, space or robotics.

The objective is not to replace private capital, but to reduce the initial risk in order to allow its intervention. French long-term savings should also be better directed towards productive capital, innovation and infrastructure.

The strategic state must therefore find a capital policy that is equal to its industrial policy.

7. Redefine the State as a shareholder: fewer in number, but more strategic. It would be inconsistent to want to return to a strategic industrial policy while denying the State the possibility of holding capital on principle. But it would be just as useless to reconstitute the public portfolio of the 1980s.

The relevant route is that of selective public shareholding. The State should retain or acquire shareholdings when a company carries out a sovereign activity, holds a critical technology, constitutes an essential infrastructure, plays a decisive role in a sector or represents a major risk to national or European independence in the event of the disappearance of the sovereignty perimeter.

The State Shareholding Agency, created in 2004, is already the instrument of this policy.[152] However, its action should be more oriented towards power policy: maintaining a research centre, preserving intellectual property, investing in production capacity, developing a sector or preparing a European alliance.

The patrimonial logic must therefore be complemented by a strategic logic.

 

8. Make industrial policy a social policy. Reindustrialization cannot be reduced to factories, capital and technologies. It must also reconstitute the skilled jobs, careers, training and prospects for social advancement destroyed by several decades of deindustrialization.

We must break with a conception of competitiveness based mainly on labour costs and seek productivity through investment, automation, qualifications, research and innovation. The industrial worker must be considered as a strategic asset of the company.

This means rehabilitating vocational education, apprenticeships and technical training, but also improving careers and the remuneration associated with industrial qualifications. When a sector declines, the State must organise the reconversion of skills and territories at an early stage.

Industrial policy should therefore include a structural social component, relating to skills, training, careers, mobility, remuneration and territories.

 

9. Moving from the protection of companies to the conservation of capacities. The bad bank analysed in the third part finally leads to a rethinking of the protection of strategic assets. The State must no longer intervene only when a company is about to be sold; it must identify upstream the companies whose technologies, patents, skills or production capacities are of particular importance.

This presupposes a permanent mapping of strategic assets and an early warning system. In some cases, a minority public participation will suffice; in others, specific rights, location clauses, the retention of research centres or guarantees on intellectual property will be more appropriate. The principle should be simple: the State is not intended to own all companies; it must prevent the disappearance of the capacities on which the country’s freedom of decision depends. The relevant criterion is therefore not the size of the company, but the critical nature of the assets it holds. Industrial policy must therefore move from a logic of rescue to a logic of anticipation.[153]

10. Build a coherent system rather than pile up mechanisms. However, all of these instruments will only take on their true meaning if they are part of a coherent architecture. The main risk would be to reproduce precisely what we claim to go beyond: creating a new High Commission, a new agency, a new fund or a new plan without profoundly modifying the decision-making mechanisms. The strategic State must not be an additional bureaucratic State; it must be a State capable of giving direction, prioritizing and concentrating its resources in the long term.

This coherence presupposes, first of all, that a strategic vision for ten or fifteen years can determine a few clearly identified national priorities, to which the necessary financial, industrial, scientific and human resources are then associated. Research and innovation policy, skills training, public investment, support for companies and State shareholding must therefore contribute to the same objectives and be regularly compared with their results. Evaluation must no longer take place after expenditure; it must make it possible to guide its continuation, revision or termination.

Such an organisation also presupposes a new articulation between the State, businesses, the social partners, local authorities and the European institutions. The strategic State is not called upon to decide everything alone; it must be able to set a common course, to mobilise the actors who have the necessary skills and capital, and then to verify over time that the objectives pursued are actually achieved.

France already has a large number of the necessary instruments: France Stratégie, Bpifrance, the State Shareholding Agency, the SISSE, research organisations, the grandes écoles, France 2030 and the various European mechanisms.  France’s weakness is therefore due less to the absence of instruments than to their dispersion, their insufficient articulation and the too frequent absence of a clear hierarchy of priorities. The real doctrinal break would therefore consist in moving from a policy of mechanisms to a policy of capacities. It is no longer a question of measuring the public authorities by the number of programmes they create, but by their ability to produce sustainable results: a mastered technology, a consolidated sector, a preserved competence, a rebuilt industrial capacity, reduced dependence or a strengthened strategic position.

It is on this condition that the strategic state will be able to regain its true function: not to replace economic actors, but  to organize over time the convergence of public and private decisions around the country’s essential interests. It remains to be determined in what framework this regained power should be exercised. Because France cannot now think about its industrial, technological, energy or military future without taking into account the European scale, any more than it can ignore the constraints of an open, digital, ecological world marked by the return of competition between great powers.

The question therefore becomes that of the adaptation of the strategic State to the realities of the twenty-first century: how to reconcile national power and European construction, international openness and protection of essential interests, ecological transition and reindustrialization, technological innovation and social cohesion? This is the subject of the next point.

C. A strategic state in France adapted to the constraints of the twenty-first century

The reconstruction of the strategic state cannot consist of reproducing the French model of the Glorious Thirty. In 2027, France belongs to the European Union, its economy is deeply internationalized and value chains are global, while digital technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, data, semiconductors and energy technologies have profoundly transformed the conditions of economic power.

The question is therefore not to « return » to the Gaullist state, but to understand why, over the past twenty years, the great powers have themselves reinvented the instruments of the strategic state. The comparative analysis of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and India shows that globalization has not led these countries to renounce the strategic intervention of the state: it has led them to transform it.[154]

Japan has moved from a Developmental State to an Economic Security State more focused on critical technologies, supply chains and economic security.[155] South Korea has adapted its developing state to technological competition by articulating large groups, research, innovation, exports and economic security.[156] Taiwan has focused its industrial policy on a few critical capabilities, first and foremost semiconductors. [157] The United States, with the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, investment controls and technological restrictions targeting China, has explicitly reintroduced industrial policy at the heart of its power strategy.[158] India, for its part, is seeking to use the state to accelerate its manufacturing ramp-up, attract investment and develop its domestic value chains.[159]

The European singularity is therefore not the return of the strategic state, but the delay in recognising that its main competitors had never really abandoned it – and in rebuilding, on the relevant scale, the instruments to respond to this new competition.

1. Europe and the global paradigm shift. It is in this perspective that Mario Draghi’s report takes on its full importance. Its interest lies first and foremost in the diagnosis of the European stall: the Union retains a considerable market, abundant savings, a solid scientific base and large industrial companies, but struggles to transform these assets into technological and industrial power.

The lag is particularly marked in the digital sector. Since the mid-1990s, digital technology has been the main driver of the productivity gap with the United States. Since 2017, around 70% of fundamental artificial intelligence models have been developed in the United States; three large US companies account for more than 65% of the global and European cloud market, compared to around 2% for Europe’s largest operator.[160] These figures reveal less a simple sectoral lag than a problem of growth model: Europe still knows how to produce research and industrial goods, but finds it more difficult to transform innovation into companies capable of scaling up.

This observation is in line with previous comparative analyses: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and India have each developed mechanisms that bring together the state, capital, research and industry. Europe has these same resources, but still articulates them imperfectly.[161]

 

2. Digital technology and technological diffusion: the new frontier of the strategic state. The first challenge for the strategic state of the twenty-first century is therefore digital. In addition to nuclear, aeronautics, space, telecommunications and electronics, which were the technological supports of Gaullist power, there are now data,  the cloud, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, cybersecurity, software and robotics.

However, Europe has a worrying deficit in precisely these areas. The Draghi report underlines its lag in the adoption of advanced technologies and in their diffusion within the productive fabric; the European Commission itself makes the spread of artificial intelligence and robotics a condition for future competitiveness.[162]

The French difficulty is not so much that of the quality of research as that of scaling it up: having researchers and engineers is not enough if France does not simultaneously possess the infrastructure, capital, data and companies capable of transforming innovation into economic power. The challenge also applies to robotization, which has become decisive for industrial productivity in a context of ageing population and international competition.

The strategic State must therefore now pursue a dual objective: to bring out the technologies of tomorrow and to ensure their dissemination throughout the economy. It is no longer enough to finance a laboratory; it is necessary to allow thousands of companies to use the technologies that it helps to develop.

 

3. The lessons of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese experiences provide three complementary lessons in this respect.

Japan has adapted its former developing state to the requirements of economic security, focusing on critical technologies, semiconductors, supply chains, and industrial resilience. South Korea has retained its ability to coordinate between the state, large corporations, research, and exports, while reorienting it toward semiconductors, batteries, artificial intelligence, and defence industries.[163] In both cases, the state does not necessarily seek to produce itself: it creates the conditions for domestic companies to conquer global positions.

Taiwan provides a third lesson, that of concentration. Its strategy has not been to seek autonomy in all sectors, but to build a dominant position in a few critical technologies by bringing together public research, financing, infrastructure, training and business.[164]

The common lesson is essential: sovereignty does not mean producing everything; it means controlling the capacities on which the loss would make us dependent. France and Europe must therefore identify a limited number of critical assets and concentrate their financial, scientific, industrial and regulatory resources on them.

4. The United States and the end of the myth of the self-regulating market. The American experience confirms this evolution. Long presented as the model of an economy based on the market and the withdrawal of the state, the United States now combines industrial policy, trade policy, national security, investment controls, support for research and technological restrictions on China. The CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act are the most visible manifestations of this.[165]

The objective is not to substitute the state for the market, but to rebuild national capacities in sectors deemed essential. The market remains an allocation mechanism; the public authorities intervene to determine in which areas it must be secured, accelerated or reoriented.

This development calls into question an opposition that has become artificial between the market and the State. Above all, it shows that a competition policy alone cannot constitute an economic policy. Europe must be able to preserve competition while at the same time adopting a genuine industrial and technological policy.

 

5. India and the new geo-economic dimension. India brings another lesson: a contemporary industrial policy can simultaneously seek to open up to foreign investment and strengthen domestic capacities. Make in India and production incentives thus aim to attract capital while developing value chains and domestic production content.[166]

The challenge is therefore not to choose between protection and openness, but to determine whether openness actually contributes to the accumulation of productive, technological and human capacities in the territory. Foreign investment is beneficial when it brings capital, technologies, jobs, skills and access to markets; it becomes much less favourable when it leads to the transfer of technology, intellectual property or a promising company out of the country. The attractiveness policy must therefore be complemented by a policy of value capture and preservation of strategic capacities.

 

6. From international comparison to a French and European doctrine. These experiences are obviously not transposable as they are to France. They nevertheless make it possible to identify common functions: defining priorities, mobilising funding, bringing research and industry closer together, protecting strategic assets, securing value chains and evaluating results. This is precisely what the comparative analysis of the strategic state in Europe and in France since China’s accession to the WTO shows.[167]

The European scale becomes essential here. France alone cannot support certain necessary investments in the face of the United States or China; but the European Union can no longer remain a simple zone of regulated competition between Member States. It aims to become an organized space of economic and technological power, capable of mobilizing its market, its savings, its research, its industrial capacities and its commercial instruments.

The Draghi report identified three priorities that sum up this transformation: closing the innovation gap, linking decarbonization and competitiveness, and reducing strategic dependencies.[168] For France, the challenge is therefore twofold: to contribute to this European reconstruction while maintaining national capacities, which remain essential. We must therefore think of France and the European Union, and not France against the EU or the EU against France.

 

7. The strategic state as a power multiplier. International comparison finally makes it possible to clarify the doctrine of the new French strategic state. It would be neither the state that owns the economy, nor the minimal state, nor an additional administration distributing subsidies. It would be a power multiplier: a state capable of concentrating public resources on sectors where they can lead to private investment, of bringing research and industry closer together, of bringing together companies with a global dimension, of protecting critical assets, of training the necessary skills and of coordinating these policies with the European level.

Above all, it should learn to act before the crisis. This is one of the main lessons of the bad bank analysed in the third part: too often, French public intervention has come after the closure of a factory, the sale of a company, the loss of a technology or the obvious appearance of dependence. On the contrary, the strategic state must identify risks when they are still reversible.

The France of 2027 therefore needs neither to return to the 1960 Plan, nor to reproduce the Japanese MITI or the Korean model of the 1980s. It must rediscover what, behind these different experiences, remains a permanent rule of power: a country only retains its rank if it knows how to organize its resources, skills, capital, research and companies over the long term around a few clearly defined strategic objectives.

Economic Gaullism can thus be surpassed without being denied. What must be preserved is not the historical form of the Gaullist state, but its conception of power: knowing what is essential, investing before the market makes the investment profitable, accepting the technological risk, preserving critical capacities and making public action a long-term one.

In the end, the strategic state is measured neither by the number of mechanisms it creates, nor by the volume of credits it distributes, but by its ability to transform the resources granted by the nation into sustainable results. It is in this sense that the demand formulated by General de Gaulle in 1938 takes on its full significance:  » to provide a proportion of the stakes and the means ». The real ambition of a strategic state is not so much to promise more as to restore to France a sustainable capacity for initiative and decision-making in the Europe of the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

Economic Gaullism is now part of history. It was born in exceptional circumstances — national reconstruction, the beginnings of the Fifth Republic, the Cold War, decolonization, the Glorious Thirties, and an international economic system profoundly different from ours — for which no parameter is reproducible today.

It would therefore be futile to try to restore it in a quasi-idolatrous way through nationalizations, the General Planning Commission, major industrial programs or the modalities of State intervention that responded to the realities of their time. But the opposite error would be to conclude that General de Gaulle’s economic thought had lost all relevance. His essential contribution did not lie in his instruments, but in his method.

This method is based first of all on an explicit rejection of dogmatism. In The Edge of the Sword, Charles de Gaulle warns against a profoundly French temptation: « The French mind is constantly striving to construct a doctrine that allows it a priori to direct action and to conceive its form, without taking into account the circumstances that should be its basis. It finds, it is true, a kind of satisfaction, but a dangerous one (…). To believe that one is in possession of a means of avoiding the perils and surprises of circumstances and of dominating them, is to provide the mind with the rest to which it constantly tends, the illusion of being able to neglect the mystery of the unknown. No doubt the French mind is more particularly drawn to it by its pronounced taste for abstraction and the system, its cult of the absolute and the categorical (…), but exposes it to error in the order of action. » A[169] few pages later, he formulates what is probably the heart of his political philosophy: « Principles have value only in the way they are adapted to circumstances. To appreciate the circumstances in each particular case is therefore the essential role of the leader. » [170] This political philosophy can be considered to be of the most burning relevance for France in 2027.

This double assertion sheds light on all of General de Gaulle’s work. The true Gaullist legacy is therefore neither the Plan, nor the nationalizations, nor the public companies considered in isolation: these instruments constituted the responses of an era to specific challenges. What remains astonishingly modern is a method of government based on a few permanent requirements: to define a long-term vision; to preserve national freedom of decision-making; to invest before the market spontaneously reveals needs; to prepare the scientific, industrial and technological capacities of tomorrow; to make strategic interest prevail over short-term considerations alone; and finally, to evaluate public policies in order to adapt them to new realities.

The analysis developed in this article shows that the decades following 1974 gradually distanced France from this logic and brought it back to some of its previous historical demons. Deindustrialization, inconstancy in choices, structural trade deficits, loss of productive capacities, weakening of certain strategic sectors and increasing technological dependencies are the main manifestations. However, France is by no means condemned to decline.

International comparison shows that the major industrial powers have reinvented their strategic state instruments: Japan has adapted them to economic security, South Korea to critical technologies, Taiwan to semiconductors, the United States has rehabilitated an assumed industrial policy, while India is mobilizing public action in the service of its manufacturing emergence. Europe itself, particularly since the Draghi report, is rediscovering the need for a coherent industrial, technological and financial strategy. The European singularity is therefore no longer to have renounced the strategic state, but to have been slow to understand that its main competitors had never really abandoned it.

This reflection is in no way directed against European integration. On the contrary, a Europe capable of strengthening innovation, competitiveness, technological sovereignty, economic security and the industrial capacities of its Member States would constitute a powerful force multiplier. But European integration cannot be an end in itself: it only finds its full legitimacy to the extent that it allows France and Europe to act better, innovate, produce and protect their essential interests. Europe does not therefore replace the strategic State; it modifies its scale and makes it necessary to link the national and European levels more complexly.

This articulation will have to be assessed realistically in the areas vital to sovereignty — energy, defence, digital, innovation, infrastructure or critical technologies. France will have to determine, for each of them, which capabilities should be maintained at the national level, which can be developed within a European framework and under what conditions. This requirement applies in particular when the industrial interests of the Member States diverge or when some of them, first and foremost Germany, favour national strategies likely to affect French interests. European integration does not therefore dispense with a clear definition of national interests; on the contrary, it requires better identification of them in order to determine which ones can be effectively pursued jointly.

Basically, General de Gaulle’s major lesson remains remarkably topical: instruments change, technologies evolve, power relations are transformed, but the State’s responsibility remains the same. It consists in preparing for the future, preserving the nation’s freedom of decision and passing on to future generations the means of their independence. Economic Gaullism should therefore not be seen as a model to be reproduced, but as a method of action.

Being faithful to General de Gaulle does not consist in repeating in 2027 what he did in 1958-1969. Being faithful to one’s thinking consists, in accordance with one’s own lesson, starting from the realities of the present time, in rejecting fixed doctrines and in building, with lucidity, the instruments that France needs to remain a free power and that restores its influence in the world of the twenty-first century.

Appendix 1

Towards a Redefinition of the Strategic State: From the Machinist State to the State of Results (1958-1974)

The analysis developed in this study leads to the distinction between two profoundly different conceptions of public action.

We propose to use the expression « machinist state«   to designate a form of organization in which the accumulation of administrative structures, procedures, standards, plans, agencies, calls for projects and financial mechanisms gradually tends to become an end in itself. Public action is then assessed more in terms of the resources mobilized than the results actually obtained. The creation of a system, the announcement of a plan, the adoption of new regulations or the opening of additional credits can give the appearance of resolute action without permanently modifying the economic, industrial, scientific or strategic capacities of the country.

In this conception, the State does not disappear; it changes its nature. It often becomes larger, more complex, more costly and more procedural. It produces more rules, control mechanisms and financial interventions, without this growth in the administrative apparatus necessarily translating into a proportional increase in the effectiveness of public action. The existence of national strategies, sectoral plans or regulatory obligations is not, in itself, a criterion of success; only their effective implementation and the results they produce make it possible to assess their scope.

The illustration can be observed in a wide variety of areas. The prevention of forest fires, adaptation to extreme weather events, housing policy, reindustrialisation, administrative simplification and the control of public finances regularly give rise to the adoption of successive plans, measures or reforms. However, the public debate often continues to focus on the gap between the objectives announced and the results actually achieved. This observation does not imply that the State is inactive; it invites us to question its ability to transform its decisions into concrete and sustainable achievements.

Conversely, the strategic state is defined neither by the volume of its expenditure, nor by the extent of its administrative apparatus, nor even by the intensity of its intervention in the economy. It is characterized above all by its ability to identify a few clearly prioritized national priorities, to concentrate the resources necessary for their achievement in the long term, and to evaluate its action on the basis of the results actually obtained.

Its effectiveness is therefore measured neither by the number of standards adopted, nor by the amount of appropriations opened, nor by the number of structures created. It is measured by the capacity to produce sustainable achievements: infrastructure built, industrial capacities restored, technologies mastered, skills developed, sovereignty consolidated, public finances cleaned up and growth sustainably strengthened. From this perspective, the means are never an end; they only make sense in terms of the objectives they actually achieve. This distinction leads to a shift in the traditional debate between interventionism and liberalism. The real question is not whether the State intervenes much or little, but whether it intervenes in a sufficiently coherent, selective and effective manner to increase the nation’s capacities in the long term. A State can be relatively modest in its administrative organization while being profoundly strategic; conversely, a highly developed public apparatus can lose its strategic dimension if the accumulation of procedures ends up replacing the search for results. This conception is ultimately in line with one of General de Gaulle’s constant intuitions: public power has legitimacy only if it transforms the resources it mobilizes into achievements in the service of the Nation. In this respect, the true measure of the strategic State is not the scale of its intervention, but its ability to produce lasting effects.

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[1] « To increase one’s strength to the measure of one’s designs, not to expect from chance or formulas what one neglects to prepare, to proportion the stakes and the means: the action of peoples, like that of individuals, is subject to these cold rules. Inexorable, they allow themselves to be bent neither by the most beautiful causes nor by the most generous principles. »

[2] Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses ou la Révolution invisible de 1946 à 1975, Paris, Fayard, 1979, 299 p. V. pp. 23-76 and 201-235. The book highlights in particular the extent of the transformation of productivity, the structure of employment and the standard of living between 1946 and 1975 and highlights the reduction of the agricultural labour force from 36% to 10% between 1946 and 1975 in relation to the overall labour force.

[3] Michel Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie. Histoire d’une conversion (1932-1952), préf. François Bloch-Lainé, 2 vol., Paris, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1991, 717 p.

[4] Charles de Gaulle, La France et son armée, Paris, Plon, 1938, p. 196.

[5] On the transformation of the relationship between the state and the economy and on the emergence of a mixed economic order oriented towards modernization, see Richard F. Kuisel, Le capitalisme et l’État en France. Modernisation et dirigisme au XXe siècle, trans. André Charpentier, pref. Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Paris, Gallimard, 1984, 480 p., Bibl. des histoires, p. 20-21. In this major work, Georgetown University  professor Kuisel emphasizes precisely that modernization and « dirigisme » are mutually reinforcing and that the post-war French economy remains a mixed economy in which the state intervenes to promote modernization rather than to replace the market entirely.

[6] Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses, op.cit.; Philippe Mioche, Les Trente Glorieuses. L’industrie française de 1945 à 1975, Aix en Provence, Presses Univ. de Provence, 2015, 150 p.

[7] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., p. 20-21; Michel Margairaz, op.cit.; Pierre Rosanvallon, L’État en France de 1789 à nos jours, Paris, Seuil, 1990, 370 p.

[8] On the possibility of articulating European integration, industrial policy and national capacities, see in particular Jean-Louis Quermonne, L’Europe en quête de légitimité, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2001, 128 p.; on the major European industrial programmes and their strategic dimension, see Élie Cohen, Le Colbertisme « high tech ». Économie des Telecom et du Grand Projet, Paris, Hachette, 1992, col. Pluriel, 404 p. We can measure the strategic break that occurred in the mid-1970s, but unfortunately there has been no return for the time being.

[9] Nicholas R. Lardy, China in the World Economy (Washington, D.C., Institute for International Economics, 2002), xii+156 p., pp. 1-20; Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy. Transitions and Growth, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2007, 528 p.: p. 385 ff.

[10] On the renewal of US industrial policy and the logic of recent interventions in strategic sectors, see in particular CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, Public Law 117-167, 9 August 2022; Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Public Law 117-169, 16 August 2022.

[11] European Commission, An EU Industrial Strategy for a Competitive, Green and Digital Europe, COM(2020) 102 final, Brussels, 10 March 2020, pp. 1-6; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness. Part A: A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, 9 September 2024, pp. 1-18.

[12] Pierre Rosanvallon, op.cit. ; Élie Cohen, op.cit.

[13] On the transformations of the French economic state and the implementation of planning and modernization instruments at the Liberation, see Michel Margairaz, op.cit. ; François Bloch-Lainé and Jean Bouvier, La France restauratione, 1944-1954. Dialogue sur les choix d’une modernisation, Prologue by Jean-Pierre Rioux, Paris, Fayard, 1986, 338 p.

[14] Pierre Rosanvallon, op.cit. , p. 199 ff.

[15] Jean Meyer, Colbert, Paris, Hachette, 1981, 255 p.; Michel Vergé-Franceschi, Colbert. La politique du bon sens, Paris, Payot, 2003, 306 p.

[16] Denis Woronoff, Histoire de l’industrie en France du XVIe siècle à nos jours, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1994, 656 p., p. 245 ff.; François Caron, Histoire économique de la France, XIXe-XXe siècles, Paris, Armand Colin, 1981, 437 p., p. 165 f.

[17] Philippe Séguin, Louis Napoléon le Grand, Paris, Grasset, 449 p. This is an essential work for putting economic Gaullism into historical perspective, which was very much inspired by the development policies of the Second Empire.

[18] Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), Napoléon III et l’économie, Paris, CNRS Éditions, 2024, 384 p.

[19] Éric Anceau, « Les idées économiques de Napoléon III », in Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), p. 21-33.

[20] Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), Napoléon III et l’économie, op.cit.. ; on trade openness and credit development, see the contributions devoted to free trade and industrialization and not. Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), op.cit. , David Todd, « Bonapartisme, impérialisme et libre-échange », op.cit. p. 215-245 and round table « Banks and credit », p. 95-130.

[21] David Creighton, « Gouin, Sir Lomer, » Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. XV, 1921-1930, available online; François Souty, « L’École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, la fondation des Écoles des Beaux-Arts de Québec et Montréal, 1900-1948, » in Guy Martinière and Éric Monteiro (eds.), Les Échanges culturels internationaux, France, Brésil, Canada-Québec, Les Indes Savantes – Rivage des Cantons, 2013, pp. 247-272.

[22] David Creighton, « Gouin, Sir Lomer, » op.cit.; François Souty, « L’École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, la fondation des Écoles des Beaux-Arts de Québec et Montréal, 1900-1948 , » op.cit, pp. 247-272.

[23] Fernand Harvey, « La politique culturelle d’Athanase David, 1919-1936 », Les Cahiers des Dix, n° 57, 2003, p. 31-83; François Souty, ibid..

[24] Ibid.

[25] François Souty, « L’École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, la fondation des Écoles des Beaux-Arts de Québec et Montréal, 1900-1948 », op.cit.., p. 247-272; Fernand Harvey, La vision culturelle d’Athanase David, Montréal, Del Busso, 2012, 265 p.

[26] Fondation Charles de Gaulle, « Commemoration of General de Gaulle’s Official Trip to Quebec in July 1967, » July 24, 2017; Serge Joyal and Paul-André Linteau (eds.), France-Canada-Québec, 400 Years of Exceptional Relations, op.cit.

[27] Gouvernement du Québec, Chronologie des relations internationales du Québec, 1960-1967, Québec, Ministère des Relations internationales, in particular the events of 1965 relating to the representation of Québec in Paris, the Franco-Québec agreement on education and the « Gérin-Lajoie doctrine ».  See also François Souty and Didier Poton, « Les relations commerciales franco-canadiennes: de la culture à l’économie (1763-2008) », in Serge Joyal and Paul-André Linteau (eds.), France-Canada-Québec. 400 ans de relations d’exception, Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2008, pp. 183-208, pp. 183-190 and 191-201. Eighteen years ago, this contribution analysed the interactions between international trade, investment, technology transfer and economic development from a long-term historical perspective. It constitutes one of the first milestones in the author’s reflection on industrial policies, the strategic state, economic sovereignty and the conditions of power.

[28] Charles de Gaulle, « Speech delivered by General de Gaulle, President of the Republic, on the balcony of Montreal City Hall, Quebec, July 24, 1967, » Speeches and messages, texts relating to the trip to Quebec.

[29] V. Serge Joyal and Paul-André Linteau (eds.), France-Canada-Québec. 400 ans de relations d’exception, Montréal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2008, 328 p. V. François Souty and Didier Poton, op.cit., at note 26.

[30] M. Margairaz, op.cit.

[31] F. Bloch-Lainé and J. Bouvier, op.cit. ; M. Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, op.cit., t. II.

[32] P. Griset, Le Plan Monnet. La France dans la modernisation européenne, 1945-1952, Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1989, chaps. V and VII.

[33] P. Griset, Le Plan Monnet, op.cit., chap. VII. The preparatory work shows in particular that the 1946 arbitrations led to a significant reduction in several envelopes in order to concentrate investment on the sectors considered to be priorities.

[34] « The Monnet Plan and the French Economy in 1950 », L’Information géographique (Geographical Information), vol. 14, no. 5, 1950, pp. 193-196, p. 194.

[35] Ibid., pp. 193-196. The contemporary source indicates that the Plan was drawn up with the assistance of 25 modernization commissions and more than 1,000 participants from the administration, agriculture, industry and the working class.

[36] Commissariat général du Plan, Deuxième Plan de modernisation et d’équipement, 1954-1957, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1954; P. Massé, Le Plan ou l’anti-hasard, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Idées », 1965, 255 p.

[37] High Commission for Strategy and Planning, « From the Plan to France Strategy », recalling the creation of the General Planning Commission on 3 January 1946 by General de Gaulle, on the proposal of Jean Monnet.

[38] P. Griset, Le Plan Monnet, op.cit., chap. VII. The 1946 arbitrations concretely illustrated the concentration of resources on the sectors considered to be decisive for modernization.

[39] P. Massé, Le Plan ou l’anti-hasard, op.cit., chap. I, pp. 11 ff. From the very first pages, the author develops the notion of « calculated adventure », which sums up his conception of planning intended to rationally prepare collective choices in the face of uncertainty.

[40] Michel Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie. Op.cit. , vol. I, pp. 17-45 and 497-535; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 1-35. On the transformation of the relationship between the State, finance and the French economy between the crisis of the 1930s and reconstruction, see also M. Margairaz, « De la conversion. An operative concept for grasping the relations between the State, finance and economy in France (1932-1952) », Les Cahiers de l’Institut d’histoire du temps présent, n° 18, June 1991, p. 27-32.

[41] Richard F. Kuisel, op. cit., pp. 36-74; Michel Margairaz, op.cit., vol. I, pp. 497-560; Jean-Pierre Rioux, op.cit. , pp. 147-175. On the different currents of French planning in the interwar period and their posterity, see also Sir Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes. Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946, London, Macmillan, 2000, 704 p., for international comparison.

[42] Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris, Fayard, 1976, 642 p., pp. 315-355; Pierre Massé, op.cit. , pp. 31-55. The method of the first French Plan and the choice of priority sectors are also analysed in Michel Margairaz, op.cit. , vol. II, p. 735 ff. Contemporary literature emphasizes that the French Plan differs precisely from imperative planning by its indicative, concerted and incentive nature.

[43] Jean Monnet, op.cit. ., pp. 55-76, 315-355; François Duchêne, Jean Monnet. The First Statesman of Interdependence, New York, W. W. Norton, 1994, 304 p., pp. 1-64; Eric Roussel, Jean Monnet, 1888-1979, Paris, Fayard, 1996, 854 p., pp. 83-151 and 457-512. On Monnet’s experience in the mechanisms of Allied economic coordination and his role in French reconstruction, see also Jean Monnet, op.cit., p. 105 ff.

[44] On the creation of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies by the law of 27 April 1946 and the progressive constitution of a statistical apparatus enabling the State to have a quantitative knowledge of the economy, see in particular Michel Margairaz, op.cit., vol. II, pp. 735-780; Alfred Sauvy, La bureaucratie, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1956, 268 p.; Jean Fourastié, Machinisme et bien-être. Le progrès technique du XIXe au XXe siècle, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1961, 372 p. The constitution of the statistical apparatus thus appears to be one of the technical conditions of flexible French planning.

[45] Alfred Sauvy, Théorie générale de la population, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1952-1954, 2 vols., 1,080 p.; Alfred Sauvy, La Machine et le emploi. Le progrès technique et l’emploi, Paris, Dunod, 1980, 314 p.; Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses op.cit.; in the revised and updated edition, v. pp. 11-35 and 67-101. On the place of Sauvy in French reflection on population, productivity and the transformation of the structure of employment, see also the work of the National Institute of Demographic Studies. Also, Jean Fourastié, Le Grand Espoir du XXe siècle. Progrès technique, progrès économique, progrès social, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1949, 308 p. The first work has become the classic reference for the analysis of the French economic, social and cultural transformation of the post-war decades.

[46] Pierre Massé, op.cit., pp. 15-32, 65-90 and 177-204. The book brings together several texts previously published or presented by Pierre Massé and develops in particular the notion of « calculated adventure  » as well as a reflection on foresight, decision making and uncertainty.

[47] François Bloch-Lainé, La France restauratione. 1944-1954. Dialogue sur les choix d’une modernisation, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1976, 287 p., pp. 31-76 and 151-196; François Bloch-Lainé and Francis Jeanson, Le socialisme ouvrier et le socialisme des fonctionnaires (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966); Michel Margairaz, op.cit., vol. II, p. 790 ff. On the role of Bloch-Lainé in the economic and financial modernization of the French state, see also the preface by François Bloch-Lainé to Michel Margairaz, op.cit.

[48] Louis Armand and Michel Drancourt, Plaidoyer pour l’avenir. Propos prospectifs sur les sociétés humaines de notre époque, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, coll. « Questions d’actualité », 1961, 252 p., pp. 17-46 and 147-181. The book testifies to the confidence of this generation of engineers and senior officials in scientific and technical progress and in the need to adapt economic and social institutions to technological transformations.

[49] Paul Delouvrier, La politique régionale en France, Paris, La Documentation française, 1966; Pierre Grémion, Le pouvoir périphérique. Bureaucrates et notables dans le système politique français, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1976, 478 p., spec. pp. 83-125; Jean Monod and Philippe de Castelbajac, L’aménagement du territoire, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Que sais-je? », 1971, 128 p. On Paul Delouvrier’s action in the development of the Paris region and in regional development policy, see also the archives and publications of the Commissariat général au Plan and the DATAR.

[50] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 170-222; Michel Margairaz, op.cit. , vol. II, p. 795 ff.; Élie Cohen, op.cit., pp. 13-58 and 307-351. Cohen shows in particular how this tradition of technological intervention continued after the Gaullist period in the major French telecommunications, transport and energy programs.

[51] Charles de Gaulle, La France et son armée, Paris, Plon, 1938.

[52] Jean Fourastié, op.cit., pp. 67-101 and 173-214; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989, 2 vol., vol. I, La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, pp. 151-240; Élie Cohen, Le Colbertisme « high tech », op. cit. , pp. 45-104. On French science and technology policy and major industrial programmes, see also M. Margairaz, L’Etat, les finances et l’économie, op. cit., and the work devoted to sectoral policies by the General Planning Commission.

[53] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit. , pp. 219-247; Michel Margairaz, op.cit. ., vol. II, pp. 1053-1090. This work shows that the evolution towards a more active economic state is part of a long-term transformation and cannot be reduced to the rupture of 1958 alone.

[54] Jean Monnet, op.cit. , pp. 315-355; Pierre Massé, op.cit. pp. 15-55; Pierre Bauchet, L’expérience française de planification, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1958, pp. 9-42. On the indicative, concerted and incentive nature of the French Plan, see also Michel Margairaz, op.cit., t. II.

[55] Pierre Massé, op.cit., pp. 15-32, 65-90 and 177-204. Massé presents planning as a method of collective decision-making in uncertainty, intended less to predict the future exactly than to preserve room for choice.

[56] Élie Cohen, op.cit. , pp. 45-104 and 307-351; Louis Armand and Michel Drancourt, op.cit. , pp. 147-181. On scientific and technological policy and the major industrial programmes of the period, see also Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989, 2 vol., t. I, La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, p. 181-240.

[57] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 248-271; François Bloch-Lainé, op.cit., pp. 151-196; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, op.cit., t. I, p. 151-240.

[58] Élie Cohen, op.cit., pp. 13-58 and 307-351. On the link between public intervention, major technological programmes, economies of scale and the constitution of industrial capacities, see also Élie Cohen, Le nouvel âge du capitalisme, Paris, Fayard, 2005, pp. 181-215.

[59] Pierre Massé, op.cit., pp. 31-55; Jean Monnet, op.cit., pp. 315-355; Michel Margairaz, op.cit. , t. II, pp. 735-780 and 1237-1355. On the mechanisms for selecting and modernising investments, see also M. Margairaz, op.cit., t. II.

[60] Louis Armand and Michel Drancourt, op.cit., pp. 17-46 and 147-181; Pierre Piganiol, La recherche scientifique et technique en France, Paris, La Documentation française, 1967; Élie Cohen, op.cit., p. 45-104. This work makes it possible to place the major technological programmes in a more general policy of scientific and industrial control.

[61] Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, Paris, Plon, 1970, vol. I, Le Renouveau, pp. 155-190 and 231-265; Stanley Hoffmann, Le paradoxe français. Nationalisme, réformisme et intégration européenne, Paris, Albin Michel, 1996, pp. 145-202. On the articulation between national independence, international openness and European integration, see also Pierre Gerbet, La construction de l’Europe, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1983, pp. 285-340.

[62] Élie Cohen, op.cit., pp. 13-58; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 272-298; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, op.cit., t. I, p. 241-300. On the articulation between industrial policy, international openness and European integration, see also Stanley Hoffmann, Le paradoxe français, op.cit. , pp. 203-245.

[63] Jacques Rueff, Le redressement, 1958-1962. Entretiens avec André Piettre, Paris, Plon, 1963, 312 p., p. 13-74; Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, Leçon d’histoire pour une gauche au pouvoir. La faillite du Cartel (1924-1926) et le redressement de 1958, Paris, Seuil, 1977, 286 p., p. 181-246; Alain Prate, Les Batailles économiques du général de Gaulle, Paris, Plon, 1995, 311 p., p. 41-88; Michel-Pierre Chélini, « Le plan de stabilisation Pinay-Rueff, 1958 », Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 2001/4, n° 48-4, p. 102-125. We will mention later the Rueff-Pinay Plan, adopted at the end of 1958, which constitutes the real founding act of Gaull’s economic policy. Designed to restore the major macroeconomic balances before the entry into force of the Common Market, it combined a policy of budgetary austerity, the fight against inflation, devaluation and the creation of the new franc, the restoration of monetary convertibility, the gradual liberalization of foreign trade and the strengthening of the competitiveness of the French economy. Its objective was not to introduce lasting austerity, but to restore confidence in the currency and in public finances in order to create the conditions for sustained growth, productive investment and the major industrial programs that would characterize the 1960s. In this sense, the Rueff-Pinay plan is not a parenthesis of austerity, but the indispensable, essential prerequisite for the exercise of a strategic State capable of conducting an ambitious policy of economic modernization

[64] Jean Fourastié, op.cit.

[65] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 219-247; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, op.cit. , t. I, La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989, p. 15-55.

[66] Jacques Rueff and Louis Armand, op.cit. . pp. 5-36; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, op. cit., t. I, p. 37-55.

[67] Napoléon III, Discours de Bordeaux, 9 Oct. 1852, in Œuvres de Napoléon III, Paris, Plon, t. II; see also Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), Napoléon III et l’économie, op.cit., pp. 13-32 and 55-102.

[68] Charles de Gaulle, Discours et Messages, t. III, Avec le renouveau (1958-1962), Paris, Plon, 1970, p. 9-35; Philippe Séguin, Louis-Napoléon le Grand, Paris, Grasset, 1990, p. 399-441.

[69] Éric Anceau and Pierre Branda (eds.), Napoléon III et l’économie, op.cit., pp. 103-254; Philippe Séguin, Louis-Napoléon le Grand, op.cit., pp. 401-465; Jean Bouvier, Le Crédit Lyonnais de 1863 à 1882. Les années de formation d’une banque de dépôts, Paris, SEVPEN, 1961, t. I, p. 15-63.

[70] On this continuity of the French tradition of economic modernization by the State, see in particular Éric Anceau, Napoléon III. Un Saint-Simon à cheval, Paris, Tallandier, 2008, p. 255-322; Philippe Séguin, Louis-Napoléon le Grand, op.cit., p. 431-465.

[71] Charles de Gaulle, « Discours prononcée le 8 mai 1961 », in Discours et messages, t. III, Avec le renouveau, 1958-1962, Paris, Plon, 1970.

[72] Jacques Rueff, L’Âge de l’inflation, Paris, Payot, 1963, 267 p., p. 19-55; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., p. 219-247.

[73] Charles de Gaulle, « Speech delivered at the French Radio-Television, 28 December 1958 », in Discours et messages, t. III, Avec le renouveau, 1958-1962, Paris, Plon, 1970, pp. 163-168; « Radio and television address of 16 September 1959 », ibid.  ; press conference of 14 January 1963, in Discours et messages, t. IV, Pour l’effort, 1962-1965, Paris, Plon, 1970.

[74] Jean Fourastié, Les Trente Glorieuses, op.cit., p. 67-101; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, op. cit., t. I, p. 151-240.

[75] Angus Maddison, The World Economy. A Millennial Perspective, Paris, OECD, 2001, pp. 125-139; Barry Eichengreen, The European Economy since 1945. Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2007, pp. 91-129.

[76] Pierre Massé, op.cit. , pp. 17-43; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit. ., pp. 248-285.

[77] Commissariat général du Plan, IVe Plan de développement économique et social, 1962-1965, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1962, pp. 9-38; Cinquième Plan de développement économique et social, 1966-1970, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1966, pp. 7-42; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, op.cit. , vol. I, La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989, pp. 181-215.

[78] Pierre Massé, op.cit., p. 44-71; Pierre Massé, Le Plan, la croissance et l’avenir, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, 250 p., p. 19-48.

[79] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit. ., pp. 286-321; François Bloch-Lainé and Francis Jeanson, L’État et l’entreprise, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1976, 280 p., pp. 53-93.

[80] François Bloch-Lainé, op.cit., p. 161-190; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit. , pp. 286-321.

[81] Antoine Prost, Histoire de l’enseignement en France, 1800-1967, Paris, Armand Colin, 1968, 524 p., p. 455-492; Pierre Papon, Histoire de la science et des scientifiques en France, Paris, Le Livre de poche, 1989, p. 243-278; Dominique Pestre, « Science, argent et politique dans la France de l’après-guerre », Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, vol. 47, no. 2, 2000, pp. 359-381.

[82] Bertrand Goldschmidt, Le complexe atomique. Histoire politique de l’énergie nucléaire, Paris, Fayard, 1980, 449 p., p. 47-89; Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France. Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1998, 476 p., p. 75-118.

[83] Gabrielle Hecht, op. cit., pp. 119-166; Antoine Beltran and Patrice Griset, Histoire de l’électricité en France, vol. III, 1946-1987, Paris, Fayard, 1996, in particular the developments devoted to EDF and nuclear policy.

[84] Claude Carlier, Dassault. 1916-2000, Paris, Perrin, 2002, 510 p., p. 235-310; Emmanuel Chadeau, L’Aviation civile française, 1920-1975, Paris, Economica, 1987, 344 p., especially pp. 217-276.

[85] Jacques Villain, À la conquête de l’espace. De la fusée allemande à Ariane, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1993, 345 p., p. 173-223; Philippe Varnoteaux, Les Pionniers de l’espace. Histoire de la naissance de l’espace en France, Paris, Nouveau Monde éditions, 2015, 352 p., p. 193-241.

[86] The European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) and  the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), created in 1962 and 1964 respectively, illustrate the first European attempts to pool space capabilities; their merger gave birth to the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1975, demonstrating that certain strategic technologies already required a scale of cooperation beyond the national framework.

[87] Pascal Griset, Histoire des télécommunications en France, Paris, La Découverte, 1990, 327 p., p. 219-270

[88] Pierre-Eric Mounier-Kuhn, L’Informatique en France de la Seconde Guerre mondiale au Plan Calcul. L’émergence d’une science, Paris, PUF, 2012, 768 p., p. 473-542.

[89] Pierre E. Mounier-Kuhn, L’Informatique en France de la Seconde Guerre mondiale au Plan Calcul. L’émergence d’une science, Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010, p. 285-336; Pierre E. Mounier-Kuhn, Le Plan Calcul (1966-1976). De Gaulle, Pompidou et l’industrie informatique, Paris, Economica, 1987, op.cit. p. 21-74; Alain Beltran, Pascal Griset et al., Histoire des techniques en France. XIXe-XXe siècle, Paris, Armand Colin (for the developments devoted to the Plan Calculus).

[90] Pierre E. Mounier-Kuhn, Le Plan Calcul, op.cit., p. 145-228; Valérie Schafer and Benjamin G. Thierry, Le Minitel. Une histoire de l’innovation française, Paris, Nuvis, 2012, the introduction; on the Unidata project, see also Pierre E. Mounier-Kuhn, L’Informatique en France… , op.cit., p. 337-380.

[91] Pierre E. Mounier-Kuhn, L’Informatique en France… , op.cit., p. 381-456; Valérie Schafer, Des réseaux et des hommes. Internet en France (années 1970-1990), Paris, Nuvis, 2012, Les développements devoted to the Cyclades network; Gérard Le Lann, « Les Cyclades et Internet : Leçons d’une expérience française », various retrospective articles.

[92] See also, for an overall approach to these questions, see our previous works François Souty, « The European Union and the Draghi Report on the Future of European Competitiveness: What Inspiring Strategic Consequences for France?  « , Le Diplomate Média, 9 Dec. 2025, 14 p.; id., « European Digital Markets Act, competition policy and sovereignty: geopolitical consequences and strategic impact of the law on the digital economy« , Le Diplomate Média, 4 Feb. 2026, 30 p.; id., « The strategic state in Europe and France since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): reindustrialisation, competitiveness, economic sovereignty and efficiency of l’action publique« , Le Diplomate Média, 23 July 2026, 70 p.; id., « The European Commission and Google (2000-2026): from institutional inaction to the attempt at ex ante regulation of digital platforms« , Le Diplomate Média, July 2026, 67 p.  These four studies, available online in English and French, constitute the main foundations of this analysis devoted to the recomposition of the strategic state in France and in Europe, to digital sovereignty and to the articulation between competition policy, industrial policy and the strategic autonomy of the European Union.

[93] Élie Cohen, Le Colbertisme high tech, op.cit., p. 21-74 ; Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., p. 286-321.

[94] Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, vol. I, La République gaullienne, 1958-1969, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1989, pp. 239-286; Serge Berstein, Histoire du gaullisme, Paris, Perrin, 2001, pp. 277-315.

[95] Georges Pompidou, Pour rétablissement une vérité, Paris, Flammarion, 1982, 342 p., p. 127-151; Serge Berstein, Pompidou, l’héritier, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1998, 436 p., p. 247-278.

[96] Georges Pompidou, Le Noeu Gordien, Paris, Plon, 1974, 232 p., p. 117-145; Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, t. II, L’apogée pompidolienne, 1969-1974, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1990, p. 115-161.

[97] Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, vol. II, op. cit., pp. 163-213; Richard F. Kuisel, op. cit., pp. 322-350.

[98] Emmanuel Chadeau, L’Aviation civile française, 1920-1975, Paris, Economica, 1987, pp. 277-318; Pierre Müller, Airbus, l’ambition européenne. Logique d’Etat, logique de marché, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989, 220 p., pp. 31-72.

[99] Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Alliance incertaine. Les rapports politico-stratégiques franco-allemands, 1954-1996, Paris, Fayard, 1996, pp. 329-354; Jean-Marie Boisson, Le Franc et la construction européenne, Paris, Economica, 1994, pp. 117-153.

[100] Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France., op.cit., p. 201-246; Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex. Histoire politique de l’énergie nucléaire, Paris, Fayard, 1980, p. 283-318; Pierre Messmer, Après tant de batailles, Paris, Albin Michel, 1992, 540 p., p. 398-414.

[101] Jean-Jacques Becker and Serge Berstein, La France de l’expansion, vol. II, L’apogée pompidolienne, 1969-1974, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1990, pp. 351-385; Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Alliance incertaine. Les rapports politico-stratégiques franco-allemands, 1954-1996, Paris, Fayard, 1996, pp. 329-354.

[102] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit., pp. 322-350; Serge Berstein, Histoire du gaullisme, Paris, Perrin, 2001, pp. 377-414.

[103] Jean-Marie Boisson, Le Franc et la construction européenne, Paris, Economica, 1994, pp. 117-153; Élie Cohen, La Tentation hexagonale. La souverain à l’épreuve de la mondialisation, Paris, Fayard, 1996, in particular pp. 67-112.

[104] Élie Cohen, La Tentation hexagonale, op. cit., pp. 113-175; Robert Boyer, La Théorie de la régulation. Une analyse critique, Paris, La Découverte, 1986, pp. 45-83.

[105] For a perspective on French deindustrialisation and its determinants, see in particular Louis Gallois, Pacte pour la compétitivité de l’industrie française, Report to the Prime Minister, Paris, 2012, pp. 15-39; Jean-Louis Beffa, La France doit choisir, Paris, Seuil, 2012, p. 25-67.

[106] L. n° 98-461, 13 June 1998, on guidance and incentives relating to the reduction of working hours, JORF, 14 June 1998; L. n° 2000-37, 19 Jan. 2000, on the negotiated reduction of working hours, JORF, 20 Jan. 2000; Treaty on European Union (Maastricht), 7 Feb. 1992; introduction of the euro on 1 Jan. 1999 (scriptural money) and 1 Jan. 2002 (banknotes and coins).

[107] Jean Pisani-Ferry, Le Réveil des démons. La crise de l’euro et comment nous en sortir, Paris, Fayard, 2011, p. 19-46; Patrick Artus and Marie-Paule Virard, Pourquoi il faut partage les revenus, Paris, La Découverte, 2008, p. 67-96.

[108] Ministry of Employment and Solidarity, Les lois Aubry et la réduction du temps de travail, Paris, 2000; DARES, La semaine de 35 heures, l’emploi et les salaires, Dec. 2000.

[109] INSEE, Économie et Statistique, n° 376-377, 2005, dossier devoted to the reduction of working hours; DARES, 35 hours: three years of implementation of the Aubry I scheme, Feb. 2002.

[110] Assemblée nationale, Rapport d’enquête sur l’impact sociétal, social, économique et financier de la réduction progressive des heures de travail, rapport n° 2436, décembre 2014, p. 93-145 ; Sénat, Temps de travail : un défi pour la compétitivité, l’emploi et les finances publiques, rapport d’information, 2025.

[111] Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness. A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, 9 Sept. 2024; Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin and Simon Bunel, The Power of Creative Destruction, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, p. 245-287; François Souty, « The Strategic State in Europe and France since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001-2026): Reindustrialization, Competitiveness, Economic Sovereignty and Effectiveness of Public Action, » Le Diplomate Média, July 23, 2026

[112] François Souty, « The State as a strategist in Europe and France », op.cit. ; id., « The European Commission and Google (2000-2026): competition policy, digital sovereignty and European competitiveness », Le Diplomate Média, 2026; Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, op.cit.

[113] Pierre Messmer, Après tant de batailles, Paris, Albin Michel, 1992, 540 p., p. 398-414; Bertrand Goldschmidt, Le Complexe atomique. Histoire politique de l’énergie nucléaire, Paris, Fayard, 1980, 449 p., p. 283-318. On the announcement of 6 March 1974 and the launch of the nuclear programme, see also Institut national de l’audiovisuel, « 6 mars 1974, le choix du tout-nucléaire avec Pierre Messmer », INA audiovisual archives.

[114] Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, statement of 25 September 1974 at the end of the lunch offered to ministers and secretaries of state in Paris, in particular on ‘ another era of economic growth ‘, ‘ new growth ‘ and the ‘ Central Council for Economic Planning ‘.

[115] Raymond Barre, Une politique pour l’avenir, Paris, Plon, 1981; Yasuo Gonjo, « Le plan Barre (1976). Origine historique de l’adaptation de l’économie française à l’environnement international moderne », in Jean-Claude Daumas (ed.), Histoire sociale et politique de l’économie, Besançon, Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2010, p. 337-348.

[116] Richard F. Kuisel, op.cit.. p. 322-350 ; Serge Berstein, The Giscard Years. La politique économique, 1974-1981, Paris, Armand Colin, 2009, 192 p.

[117] Jean-François Duhamel, L’Expérience socialiste, 1981-1984, Paris, Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1984, pp. 101-145; François Fourquet, Les Comptes du pouvoir. Histoire de la politique économique française, Paris, Éditions Recherches, 1980, pp. 565-601.

[118] Jean-Marie Boisson, Le Franc et la construction européenne, Paris, Economica, 1994, pp. 153-190; on the turning point of 1983 and the maintenance in the European Monetary System, see also Jean-Pierre Patat, Monnaie, institutions et mécaniques monétaire (Paris: Economica).

[119] Vincent Aussilloux, Philippe Frocrain, Mohamed Harfi, Rémi Lallement et Guilhem Tabarly, Politiques industrielles en France. Évolutions et comparaisons internationales, Paris, France Stratégie, novembre 2020, 591 p., in particular pp. 25-74 and 165-243; Élie Cohen, op.cit. , pp. 21-74.

[120] Vincent Aussilloux, Philippe Frocrain, Mohamed Harfi, Rémi Lallement and Guilhem Tabarly, op.cit., Paris, France Stratégie, November 2020, spec. chap. 1, p. 31-100; Franck Esratty, Vincent Hecquet and Nicolas Loaec, « Entreprises industrielles en 2023 : diverses dans leurs activités, plus grandes, plus productives et internationalisées que les autres », Insee Première, n° 2084, 2025.

[121] Jean-Pierre Rioux, La France de l’expansion. 1958-1973, t. I, Paris, Seuil, 1989; François Morin, Le nouveau mur de l’argent, Paris, Seuil, 2006, p. 119-145.

[122] Vincent Aussilloux et al. , op.cit., chap. 2, p. 101-122.

[123] Élie Cohen, op.cit., pp. 35-61 and 307-351.

[124] Michel Bauer and Élie Cohen, Les grandes manœuvres industrielles, Paris, Belfond, 1985, pp. 9-34 and 287-312.

[125] Vincent Aussilloux et al. , op.cit., pp. 123-167, and chap. 4, pp. 169-211.

[126] Ibid., chap. 1, pp. 67-100, in particular the developments devoted to competitiveness, the trade balance and the internationalization of value chains.

[127] Élie Cohen, op.cit., pp. 307-351; Élie Cohen, Le nouvel État industriel, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2004; Vincent Aussilloux et al. , op.cit. , chap. 10, pp. 531-587.

[128] French Government, France 2030. Un plan d’investissement pour la France, Paris, 2021.

[129] Direction générale des entreprises, « Le plan d’action de l’État pour la réindustrialisation », 2 December 2024; see also Direction générale des entreprises, « Baromètre industriel de l’État : un solde net positif avec 89 ouvertures et des extensions significatives d’usines en 2024 », 13 March 2025.

[130] Vincent Aussilloux, Philippe Frocrain, Mohamed Harfi, Rémi Lallement and Guilhem Tabarly, op.cit., p. 31-100.

[131] Marie-Noëlle Lienemann and Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, Anticiper, s’adapter, influencer : l’intelligence économique comme outil pour retrouver notre souveraineté, Rapport d’information du Sénat, No. 872 (2022-2023), 12 July 2023, see developments relating to capitalistic and informational threats and the 694 economic security alerts recorded in 2022.

[132] Décret n° 2014-479, 14 mai 2014, relatif aux investissements étrangers sous réserve d’autorisation préalable ; L. n° 2019-486, 22 mai 2019, relatif à la croissance et à la transformation des entreprises, connu sous le nom de « Loi PACTE » ; Décret n° 2019-1590, 31 déc. 2019, relatif aux investissements étrangers en France.

[133] Assemblée nationale, Réponse ministérielle à la question écrite n° 22084 de M. José Evrard, prise de contrôle d’Alstom auprès de General Electric, 3 mars 2020.

[134] Assemblée nationale, réponse à la question écrite n° 32266 de M. Sylvain Waserman, Quelle souveraineté technologique et industrielle pour la France ? , 9 mars 2021 ; Sénat, réponse ministérielle à la question écrite sur la situation Photonis, 10 juin 2021.

[135] Autorité française de la concurrence, déc. n° 19-DCC-98, 24 mai 2019, relatif à l’acquisition du contrôle exclusif de Latécoère par le groupe Searchlight Capital Partners, publié le 21 juin 2019 ; Direction du Trésor français, Investissements étrangers en France, 12 septembre 2019.

[136] Question écrite n° 13500 par Mme Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, Conséquences d’une tentative de rachat pour Latécoère, Sénat, 19 déc. 2019 ; réponse du ministre de l’Économie et des Finances, 27 février 2020, OJ Sénat, p. 1031.

[137] Question orale n° 490 par M. Pierre Médevielle, Relocalisation de l’usine de Latécoère et remboursement de l’aide publique, Sénat, séance du 4 avril 2023 ; réponse du ministère de l’Industrie, 5 avril 2023. The CIRI (Interministerial Committee for Industrial Restructuring), created in 1982 and attached to the Directorate-General of the Treasury, responsible for supporting the restructuring of major companies in difficulty.

[138] Réponse du ministère de l’Industrie à la question écrite sur le transfert de la société Latécoère, Sénat d’Orange, 28 sept. 2023, p. 5631.

[139] Direction générale des Entreprise, Consolidation de notre politique de sécurité économique, 2025, développements relatifs au Service stratégique de l’information et de la sécurité économique (SISSE), the confidential national list of strategic companies and the list of critical technologies. The SISSE (Strategic Information and Economic Security Service), created by Decree No. 2016-66 of 29 Jan. 2016 and attached to the Directorate General for Enterprises, in charge of economic security policy, the identification of critical sectors and technologies and the protection of France’s strategic economic interests

[140] Pierre Massé, op.cit. pp. 13-35 and 83-108; François Fourquet, op.cit. . pp. 247-302.

[141] Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, t. I, Le Renouveau, 1958-1962, Paris, Plon, 1970, 314 p., p. 151-177; Jean-Pierre Rioux, La France de la Quatrième République, 2. L’Expansion et l’impouvoir, 1952-1958, Paris, Seuil, coll. « Points Histoire », 1983, 368 p., p. 287-312. On the Gaullist conception of national independence and its economic implications, see also Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, t. II, La France redevient la France, Paris, Fayard, 1997, 645 p., p. 350-390.

[142] Jean-Pierre Gougeon, De Gaulle et les grands projets de la Ve République, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2012, p. 67-108; François L’Yvonnet, De Gaulle, la France et la politique industrielle, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2020, p. 91-132. On the relationship between major technological programmes and French power policy, see also François Léotard, Déclaration sur la politique aéronautique et spatiale de la France, Assemblée nationale, 18 janvier 1995, who points out that the French aeronautics and space industry has benefited greatly from the technological policy conducted in the Gaullist context.

[143] L. n° 2020-1674, 24 déc. 2020, sur les programmes de recherche pour les années 2021 à 2030 et contenant diverses dispositions relatives à la recherche et à l’enseignement supérieur, arts. 1 et 2, JORF, 26 déc. 2020; see also the report annexed to the law, which affirms the link between fundamental research, innovation, technology transfer and competitiveness and sets out a multi-year programming of resources.

[144] Adam Baïz, with the collaboration of Mathilde Guyot, Marianne Lewandowski and Achille Suty, Quelles évaluations des politiques publiques pour quelles utilisations ? , Paris, France Stratégie, June 2022, p. 13-28; Sébastien Huyghe, Jean-François Eliaou and Laurent Saint-Martin, L’évaluation des politiques publiques en France, Paris, France Stratégie, Working Paper, No. 2019-13, Dec. 2019, p. 7-26. France Stratégie notes in particular the gradual institutionalization of evaluation in France and the country’s historical lag behind the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

[145] François Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy in the face of the Chinese challenge and American digital domination (2001-2025): from the Developmental State to the Economic Security State« , Le Diplomate Média, 17 June 2026, 53 p.;  id., « The transformation of South Korean industrial policy (1997-2025): from the Asian crisis to economic security« , Le Diplomate Média, 24 June 2026, 40 p.;  id., « The recomposition of the Taiwanese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from globalization to economic security« , Le Diplomate Média, July 1, 2026, 33 p. These three studies show, according to different national trajectories, the evolution of developing states towards true strategic states of economic security, articulating industrial policy, innovation, mastery of critical technologies, securing supply chains and protecting strategic interests in the face of intensifying geoeconomic competition.

[146] Pierre Massé, op.cit., pp. 13-35 and 109-135; François Fourquet, Les comptes de la pouvoir, op.cit., pp. 247-302; Michel Margairaz, op.cit., t. II, p. 907-954.

[147] Direction générale du Trésor, rapport d’évaluation macroéconomique ex ante du plan d’investissement France 2030, Paris, 20 avril 2026 ; Gouvernement, France 2030 : un plan d’investissement pour la France, 13 oct. 2023.

[148] Décret n° 2013-333, 22 avril 2013, créant la Commission générale de la stratégie et de la prévoyance, JORF, 23 avril 2013 ; France Stratégie, Présentation de France Stratégie, Paris, 2025.

[149] France Stratégie, Programme de travail 2024, Paris, 2024, « Réussir la planification écologique » and the work devoted to reindustrialisation by 2035.

[150] France compétences, Rapport d’activité 2024, Paris, 26 juin 2025, p. 10-15 ; voir aussi France compétences, revue 2024 de la feuille de route stratégique, 14 avril 2025.

[151] Loi n° 2020-1674, 24 décembre 2020, de la programmation de recherche pour les années 2021 à 2030; see also Antoine Petit, Pour une recherche française plus competitive, report to the Prime Minister, Paris, 2023, p. 17-43.

[152] Décret n° 2004-963, 9 septembre 2004, créant le service à compétence nationale « Agence des participations de l’État », JORF, 10 septembre 2004 ; Décret n° 2014-915, 19 août 2014, modifiant le décret susmentionné.

[153] Direction générale des Entreprises, Consolidation de notre politique de sécurité économique, Paris, 2025 ; Agence des participations de l’État : rapport annuel 2024-2025, Paris, 2025 ; Nicolas Dufourcq, La désindustrialisation de la France (1995-2015), Paris, Odile Jacob, 2022, pp. 17-55 and 169-204; Pierre Massé, Le Plan ou l’anti-hasard, Paris, Gallimard, 1965, pp. 13-35 and 109-135.

[154] François Souty, « The transformation of Japanese industrial policy in the face of the Chinese challenge and American digital domination (2001-2025): from  the Developmental State to the Economic Security State« , Le Diplomate Média, 17 June 2026, 53 p.; id., « The transformation of South Korean industrial policy (1997-2025): from the Asian crisis to economic security », Le Diplomate Média, June 24, 2026, 40 p.; id., « The recomposition of the Taiwanese industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from globalization to economic security », Le Diplomate Média, July 1, 2026, 33 p.; id., « The return of the strategic state: the industrial policy of the United States between power, national security and technological competition (2001-2025) », Le Diplomate Média, 11 June 2026, 45 p.; id., « The recomposition of India’s industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from manufacturing emergence to geoeconomic power », Le Diplomate Média, 9 July 2026, 38 p. These five studies form the comparative basis of this analysis

[155] François Souty, « The Transformation of South Korean Industrial Policy (1997-2025): From the Asian Crisis to Economic Security », supra; Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London, Anthem Press, 2002, 187 p.; Robert H. Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press, 1990, XIV-438 p.

[156] François Souty, « The Transformation of South Korean Industrial Policy (1997-2025) », op.cit.. ; Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London, Anthem Press, 2002, 187 p.; Robert H. Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization, Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press, 1990, XIV-438 p.

[157] François Souty, « The Recomposition of the Taiwanese Industrial State since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001-2026) », op.cit. ; Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, London, Anthem Press, 2013, 266 p.

[158] François Souty, « The Return of the Strategic State: The Industrial Policy of the United States Between Power, National Security and Technological Competition (2001-2025) », op.cit.; CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-167, 136 Stat. 1366 (2022); Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Pub. L. No. 117-169, 136 Stat. 1818 (2022).

[159] François Souty, « The Recomposition of India’s Industrial State since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001-2026): From Manufacturing Emergence to Geoeconomic Power », op.cit. ; see also the developments devoted to Make in India and production incentive instruments.

[160] Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness. A Competitiveness Strategy for Europe, Brussels, European Commission, 9 Sept. 2024, Part A, pp. 10-12, « Closing the innovation gap » and Part B, Chapter 3, « Digitalisation and advanced technologies », pp. 67-78.

[161] François Souty, « The State as a strategist in Europe and France since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): reindustrialisation, competitiveness, economic sovereignty and effectiveness of public action », Le Diplomate Média, 23 July 2026

[162] Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness, op.cit. , part B, chap. 3, « Digitalisation and advanced technologies », pp. 67-104, esp. pp. 67-77; European Commission, EU Competitiveness Compass, COM(2025) 30 final, Brussels, 29 Jan. 2025, spec. pp. 8-12; see also European Commission, « Competitiveness Compass

[163] François Souty, « The Transformation of Japanese Industrial Policy in the Face of the Chinese Challenge and American Digital Domination (2001-2025): From  the Developmental State to the Economic Security State« , supra; id., « The Transformation of South Korean Industrial Policy (1997-2025) », op.cit.; Ha-Joon Chang, Kicking Away the Ladder, op.cit.; Robert H. Wade, Governing the Market, op.cit..

[164] François Souty, « The Recomposition of the Taiwanese Industrial State since China’s Accession to the WTO (2001-2026): », op.cit.

[165] CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, op.cit.; Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, op.cit.; François Souty, « The Return of the Strategic State: The Industrial Policy of the United States (2001-2025) », op.cit.

[166] François Souty, « The recomposition of India’s industrial state since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): from manufacturing emergence to geoeconomic power », Le Diplomate Média, 9 July 2026, 38 p.

[167] François Souty, « The State as a strategist in Europe and France since China’s accession to the WTO (2001-2026): reindustrialisation, competitiveness, economic sovereignty and effectiveness of public action », Le Diplomate Média, 23 July 2026; id., « The European Union, the Draghi report on the future of European competitiveness: what inspiring strategic consequences for France? », Le Diplomate Média, 9 Dec. 2025, 14 p.

[168] Mario Draghi, The Future of European Competitiveness. op.cit. ., part. A, in particular pp. 10-15 and 55-70. The three imperatives identified — closing the innovation gap, linking decarbonization and competitiveness, and reducing dependencies — are also the axes of the European Commission’s Competitiveness Compass.

[169] Charles de Gaulle, Le Fil de l’épée, Paris, Librairie Plon, 1932 (numerous reprints, notably coll. « 10/18 »), chap. « De la doctrine », pp. 112-113 of the ed. 10/18. The General explicitly criticizes  » a priori doctrines  » and « the secular attraction of abstraction and the system  » to the detriment of the appreciation of circumstances.

[170] Charles de Gaulle, Le Fil de l’épée, op.cit., chap. « De la doctrine », p. 118 (ed. 10/18). The formula « Principles have value only in the way they are adapted to the circumstances. Assessing the circumstances in each particular case is therefore the essential role of the leader » is one of the foundations of Gaullist political and strategic thought.

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