The higher education system in France can be seen as a process of distillation—a series of competitive national exams leading to ever more exclusive schools. At the apex is the Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA)—a select handful of people who will govern and administer the country. Increasingly, however, many feel these exam-freaks are incapable of solving France's major problems: principally unemployment and poverty. Simmering discontent at the lack of democratic dialogue drives a popular desire "to do politics differently," according to Pierre Rosanvallon, president of the think tank La République des Idées. In May, 8,000 people gathered in Grenoble for a three-day conference co-organised by La République des Idées, "to create a democracy of active citizens, with interaction between civil and political society."
But more surprisingly, criticism of this system of choosing and educating the nation's rulers also comes from within the elite itself. Another organiser of the Grenoble conference, Martin Hirsch, epitomises a new and unconventional breed of énarque. Going through ENA catapulted him into the Conseil d'Etat, and "there I demythologised power," he told Le Monde. "Since I was in it, I didn't need to fantasise about it." Realising political rhetoric was failing to help the growing number of dispossessed, he now runs Emmaüs France, a nationwide network giving shelter and a means of livelihood to the homeless—while his former fellow students advise government or run major companies.
Some other graduates from the grandes écoles, similarly disillusioned by their experiences close to power, are innovating at a deeper level. Rediscovering democracy as an 18th-century ideal, not a 21st-century slogan, they formed Futurbulences to find new ideas that might unblock the apparently intractable mess of current French politics. "Mostly in our mid-thirties, we're inheriting a situation that is not brilliant," Elisabeth Lulin, a founder member of Futurbulences explained. "The older generation are bequeathing us huge debts, while behind us, people in their twenties are lost, with no work and no future. We've woken up to the fact it's down to us to do something."
Lulin went to a prestigious école normale supérieure, then Sciences Po before going to ENA, graduating in the top handful and becoming adviser to the prime minister. She quickly became convinced that the approach of politicians was wrong: "Politicians construct their programmes around existing problems, that is looking backwards, and to solve them they promise to restore something which existed before, French sovereignty or the welfare state. Whereas actually people are motivated by the future, by what society we want in ten years. But few politicians think like that."
The other traditional home of political thought, think tanks, are the realm of experts, and experts slice up people's lives into "issues": unemployment, housing, health. Futurbulences tries to take a more holistic view. Its methods owe nothing to the grandes écoles, which encourage the super-brain to work alone, in competition against his peers. The Futurbulences' method is collective, pooling the members' very different experiences to find a variety of solutions. Using brainstorming and role-play techniques, they produce scenarios—where democracy might be in ten years' time, for example. Sometimes black, sometimes pure fantasy, always thought-provoking, these scenarios are expressed in many forms, including board games, like snakes and ladders, and interactive computer games.
Will this change France? Possibly, for despite their education, the country's rulers receive no training in how to negotiate a creative compromise with those who disagree with them, let alone pilot a reform through a reticent public. Instead, they are taught that everything can be fixed by a new law, and consequently they become law-obsessed.
Going right to the heart of the problem, Lulin organises training sessions, using role-play and games, for the bright young politicians who may be the ministers and even presidents of tomorrow—"We teach them it's essential to stop looking back. Think about the future instead; it's not yet written, so there's nothing inevitable about it. Each of us should decide: what kind of world do I want? And then: how do I make that happen?" Already that idea is spreading—Ségolène Royal, currently ahead of the authoritarian Nicolas Sarkozy in the race for presidency, calls her website "Désirs d'avenir" (hope for the future). At least she is looking in the right direction. "At the same time," says Lulin, "we show these young politicians they must take risks, and assume the consequences of failure"—basic rules of management but unheard of in French politics and a hard lesson for those who have, by definition, never failed an exam. But it is one, I suspect, that can only be taught by those who have been through the same schools. And once learnt, all France may benefit.
