In 1970, the French sociologist Michel Crozier wrote a seminal book titled "La societe bloquee" ("The Stalled Society"). Building on his earlier breakthrough analysis of the "Bureaucratic Phenomenon," Crozier developed the idea that the bureaucratization of organizations and institutions had become the major obstacle to social progress.
At a time when France was healing from its most recent wave of social unrest (remember May 1968), the country was, Crozier argued, in a state of bureaucratic sclerosis with a passion for rigid decision-making processes. The French political and economic institutions suffered from a disconnect between the existence of social institutions of dialogue and the maintenance of a hierarchical top-down autocratic power structure. The forms of social dialogue had been emptied of their very substance.
France is currently going through a new wave of social protest. Strikes are being organized to protest the government's authoritative validation of a new labor law. The apparent difficulty to negotiate with all relevant stakeholders and reach a consensual agreement on a much-needed reform is again an illustration of the pertinence of Crozier's analysis. French society is still stalled! The institutions of dialogue are somewhat resilient in their forms but have lost their capacity to lead the necessary reforms.
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