Abstract
The "events" around Dominique de Villepin's abortive promotion of the CPE in spring 2006 were seen by many as a great popular victory in the defense of France's social model & another, albeit modest, version of May 1968. Others, particularly Anglophone neoliberals, saw them as proof that the French were incapable of reform. Both conclusions were wrong. The events & defeat of the CPE may have been enjoyable for many involved, but they resolved none of France's underlying & debilitating economic problems. On the other hand, the neoliberal view that the French are averse to real social policy reform is incorrect. Instead, the unresolved dilemmas surrounding the CPE episode are in large part the product of a particular strategy of reform, the "social management of unemployment," that has nourished & intensified dangerous -- unavowed -- social dualism in France. The present problem, illustrated indirectly by the events, is that political actors & social partners are unable to cooperate sufficiently to confront this dualism. Tables. Adapted from the source document.