ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting the international political economy unlike any event since WWII. Consequently, France reversed years of fiscal consolidation by instating, at least temporarily, a costly emergency furlough scheme reaching a third of the workforce. This provides a natural setting to investigate a potential ‘critical juncture’, and whether the French public still accepts austerity politics today, as it seems to have after the Global Financial Crisis. We observe crisis narratives’ salience across social classes, employing an original quantitative approach for Critical Political Economy, which uses panel data and two experiments. We test if citizens’ viewpoints are sensitive to the trade-off between health and economics, receptive to austerity and conditioned by their socioeconomic status. We find that public opinion shifted after an authoritative and dire economic forecast at the pandemic’s first peak in April 2020, but that acquiescence to austerity did not occur during the phase-out of the first lockdown in June, with the exception of the upper class. Overall, public support favours increased social spending, and pro-austerity crisis narratives might not shape the majority’s ‘common sense’, as they had after the GFC. We conclude with implications for the study of class and public policy in a post-pandemic world.

摘要

不同于二战以来的任何事件，Covid-19 大流行正在扰乱国际政治经济。因此，法国扭转了多年的财政整顿，至少暂时实施了一项代价高昂的紧急休假计划，该计划惠及三分之一的劳动力。这为调查潜在的“关键时刻”提供了一个自然背景，以及法国公众今天是否仍然接受紧缩政治，就像在全球金融危机之后那样。我们观察了危机叙事在社会阶层中的重要性，采用了批判政治经济学的原始定量方法，该方法使用面板数据和两个实验。我们测试公民的观点是否对健康和经济之间的权衡敏感，是否接受紧缩并受其社会经济地位的制约。我们发现，在 2020 年 4 月大流行的第一个高峰期做出权威而可怕的经济预测之后，公众舆论发生了转变，但在 6 月第一次封锁的逐步取消期间，除了上层阶级之外，并未默许紧缩政策。总体而言，公众支持有利于增加社会支出，而支持紧缩危机的叙述可能不会像全球金融危机之后那样塑造大多数人的“常识”。最后，我们对大流行后世界的阶级和公共政策研究产生了影响。和支持紧缩的危机叙述可能不会像全球金融危机之后那样塑造大多数人的“常识”。最后，我们对大流行后世界的阶级和公共政策研究产生了影响。和支持紧缩的危机叙述可能不会像全球金融危机之后那样塑造大多数人的“常识”。最后，我们对大流行后世界的阶级和公共政策研究产生了影响。