Nicolas Coeurdacier
email: nicolas.coeurdacier@sciences-po.fr.

Hélène Rey
email: hrey@london.edu.

Pablo Winant
email: pablo.winant@gmail.com

Pablo Winant The

Michel Juillard

Ondra Kamenik

The risky steady state

teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers.

It is common practice in dynamic macroeconomics to consider the limit behavior of the economy when agents do not anticipate the effect of future shocks. This approximation is referred to as the perfect foresight path of the economy.

The corresponding equilibrium is called the deterministic steady-state. To take optimal decisions rational agents observe the gap with the steady-state values and choose a decision rule which maximizes intertemporal utility of returning to the steadystate.

By contrast, risk-averse agents are aware of the existence of future shocks hitting the economy. As a result, they anticipate the convergence of economic variables to some stochastic steady-state, which is defined as the ergodic distribution of these variables. The properties of this ergodic distribution are mathematically much more challenging than the deterministic steady-state of the perfect foresight case.

In order to avoid these difficulties and to restore some intuition about the convergence behavior of the economy, we propose to define a risky-steady state as follows. The risky steady-state is the point where agents choose to stay at a given date if they expect future risk and if the realization of shocks is 0 at this date. 1 More formally, given a decision rule Y t = g r (Y t-1 , ǫ t ) defining optimal decisions for states Y t-1 and shocks ǫ t , the risky steady-state satisfies: Ȳ = g r Ȳ , 0 Throughout the paper, for any variable u, we denote by ū its value at the risky steady-state. As its name suggests, the risky steady-state incorporates information about future expected risk and corresponding optimal decisions. Consider for instance a standard stochastic neoclassical growth model where anticipated volatility leads to precautionary capital accumulation. The level of the stock of capital is higher in the risky steady-state than in the deterministic steady-state, as shown in figure 1.

B. Linear approximation

Most standard dynamic macroeconomics problems can be summarized by a function f and a process of random innovations (ǫ t ) with covariance matrix Σ. The solution is a process (Y t ) such that

E t [f (Y t+1 , Y t , Y t-1 , ǫ t )] = 0
The local behavior of an economic model around the deterministic steady-state is well known (see Henry [START_REF] Kim | Calculating and using second-order accurate solutions of discrete time dynamic equilibrium models[END_REF]). Under the assumption that shocks are small enough, the perturbation approach consists in finding the deterministic steady-state Y * such that f (Y * , Y * , Y * ) = 0, then to compute a Taylor expansion of the perfect-foresight path, and finally, to correct for the presence of expected risk.

Nevertheless, if the deterministic steadystate, or the perfect foresight path is not properly defined, this method will fail. As we show below, it is the case in a small open economy model where equilibrium wealth is not defined (see Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martin Uribe ( 2003)), or in portfolio choice problems for which portfolios are indeterminate in the deterministic steadystate and along the perfect foresight path (see Michael [START_REF] Devereux | Country portfolios in open economy models[END_REF] or Cédric Tille and Eric van Wincoop ( 2010)).

For this reason, we are interested in characterizing directly the local behavior around the risky steady-state. As it implies a joint approximation of the steadystate and of the dynamic properties, it can be referred to as an approximation around the risky steady-state. We propose in this sub-section a simple way to build an approximation. In the next section we study some properties of this simple solution.

Let us assume for simplicity that some exogenous variables X t follow an AR(1) process

X t = ρ X X t-1 -X + ǫ t .
The endogenous ones Y t are chosen using a decision rule

Y t = g (Y t-1 , X t ) = g (S t ) where the state-space is S t = (Y t-1 , X t ). Denoting (X t+1 , Y t+1 , X t , Y t , X t-1 , Y t-1 ) by V t+1 we need to solve the optimality condi- tions E t [f (V t+1 )] = 0
which has the same dimension as vector Y t .

In order to take risk into account we replace this original equation by its second order-expansion Φ around expected future variables:

Φ = 0 = f (E t V t+1 ) +E t f ′′ . [V t+1 -E t V t+1 ] 2 (1)
where second order derivatives are taken at point E t V t+1 . Our strategy consists in postulating a linear decision rule for Y t around the unknown risky steady-state Ȳ :

Y t = Ȳ + R Y S t -S
and to identify the risky steady-state Ȳ and the coefficients R Y jointly by solving numerically using indeterminate coefficients the two following local conditions:

Φ S = 0 ∂Φ ∂S t = 0
The intuition on these conditions will be more easily understood in the next section example. The condition Φ S = 0 characterizes the risky-steady state. It is analogous to the condition f (Y * , Y * , Y * ) = 0 defining the deterministic steady-state.

II. Intertemporal consumption decisions in a small open economy

Consider a representative agent maximizing the following life-time utility function:

U = ∞ 0 c 1-γ t 1-γ with γ > 0.
We assume that this agent receives an endowment process y t and can save an amount w t at an exogenous world interest rate r t according to the budget constraint:

c t = y t + w t-1 r t -w t
The exogenous variables (y t ) and (r t ) are two autocorrelated lognormally distributed processes with mean y and r, autocorrelation ρ y and ρ r and with standard deviations σ y and σ r . Conditional correlation between y t and r t is ζ, set to zero for simplicity.

From the maximization program, we can derive the usual Euler equation:

βE t c t+1 c t -γ r t+1 = 1
The deterministic steady-state (c * , w * ) would be defined by:

c * = ȳ + w * (r -1) βr = 1
These two equation do not define equilibrium values c * and w * uniquely. Instead they imply a counterfactual relation between two independent structural parameters β and r. This does not imply that the original model is not valid 2 but it indicates a limitation of the usual perturbation approach. As we will show, it is still possible to get an approximation of the solution if we compute the risky steady-state and the coefficients for the dynamics at the same time. The state space being reduced to (w t-1 , y t , r t ), let us postulate a linear solution for w:

w t = w + W w ŵt-1 + W y ŷt + W r rt
2 Theoretical results by Gary [START_REF] Chamberlain | Optimal intertemporal consumption under uncertainty[END_REF] state the existence of a solution if βr < 1 and if (rt) is stochastic enough.

In this equation w is the unknown risky steady-state value for net foreign assets holdings, ( ŵt-1 , ŷt , rt ) the deviations from this value and (W w , W y , W r ) three coefficients to be determined. The Euler equation equivalent of equation ( 1) above can be approximated as follows:

1 β E t [c t+1 ] c t γ = (2) E t [r t+1 ] 1 + γ (γ + 1) V ar t (c t+1 ) E t [c t+1 ] 2 -γ Cov t (c t+1 , r t+1 ) E t [c t+1 ]
At the risky steady state, it becomes:

1 β = r 1 + γ (γ + 1) var t (c t+1 ) c2 -γ cov t (c t+1 , r t+1 ) c
where cov t (.) and var t (.) denote second order moments evaluated at the risky steadystate.

In the absence of risk the return on investment must be equal to the inverse of time preference. But a foreign asset whose returns are positively correlated with consumption is less able to provide consumption smoothing which is reflected in the risk-premium term γ covt(ct+1,rt+1) c . The second term γ (γ + 1) vart(ct+1) c2 comes from precautionary savings. It denotes the desire to save more when the variance of consumption growth is higher.

Table 1 shows the decision rules for various levels of income risk. It stresses that in this model riskier countries will tend to accumulate more wealth than safer ones. Also the evolution law of the state space (w t-1 , y t , r t ) has only stable eigenvalues. Note that this result contradicts the common belief in small open economy applications that consumption follows a unitroot and net foreign asset positions are nonstationary. Various tools have been used in this literature to make the problem stationary (Schmitt-Grohé and Uribe ( 2003)). We show here that the non-stationarity is an artefact of the approximation around a de- Solution is computed with β = 0.96, γ = 2.0, ȳ = 1.0, ρ y = ρ r = 0.9, σ r = 0.025, ζ = 0 and r = 1 β -0.014 (such that w = 0 with σ y = 0.025 ) terministic steady-state instead of the risky one.

The stabilizing effect of the precautionary term has already been highlighted by Richard [START_REF] Clarida | Consumption, liquidity constraints and asset accumulation in the presence of random income fluctuations[END_REF] and Christopher [START_REF] Carroll | A theory of the consumption function, with and without liquidity constraints[END_REF]. The fact that foreign assets are risky implies an additional stabilizing force on the consumption path: following positive income shocks, agents will increase their stock of foreign assets. This will increase the covariance of their consumption with the world stochastic interest rate (term γ Covt(ct+1,rt+1) Et [ct+1] ) in equation ( 2) and reduce the demand for foreign assets.

III. Conclusion

We develop a new way of approximating standard dynamic stochastic macroeconomics models by solving simultaneously for a linear dynamics of state variables and the risky steady-state. The risky steadystate is the equilibrium at which state variables stay constant in presence of expected future shocks but when the innovations for these shocks turn out to be zero. We study the properties of this approximation in a small open economy model of intertemporal consumption decisions with stochastic incomes and stochastic world interest rates. Contrary to standard approximation around the deterministic steadystate, net foreign assets are well defined at the risky steady-state and are stationary. We believe that such a method can be applied more broadly to models involving portfolio decisions where standard perturbation methods have shown some limitations. Moreover, the welfare implications for risk-sharing can be quite different in these types of models since uncertainty directly affects steady-state variables.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Decision rules for capital accumulation with and without expected shocks.

Table 1 -

 1 Decision rules for different levels of income risk

	σ y	w	W w	W y	c	σ (c)
	0.01 -0.161 0.944 0.516 0.995 0.032
	0.025	0.0	0.945 0.52	1.0	0.032
	0.05	0.607	0.95 0.537 1.017 0.034


Peter Rupert

Elena Stancanelli

Etienne Wasmer

Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power

A search model of the labor market is augmented to include commuting time to work. The theory posits that wages are positively related to commute distance, by a factor itself depending negatively on the bargaining power of workers. Since not all combinations of distance and wages are accepted, there is non-random selection of accepted job offers. We build on these ingredients to explore in the data the relationship between wages and commute time . We find that neglecting to account for this selection will bias downward the wage impact of commuting, and marginally affect the coefficients on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also use the theory to calculate the bargaining power of workers which largely varies depending on demographic groups: it appears to be much larger for men than that for women and that the bargaining power of women with oung children is essentially zero.

Introduction

The job search model, based on the work of McCall-Mortensen-Pissarides, has become the workhorse to describe the outcome of decisions by workers and firms in terms of the aggregate labor market.

Such models can be characterized by search and recruiting frictions and by the necessity of reallocating workers to jobs due to separations. As such, workers are willing to accept any job that pays a wage higher than their reservation wage. However, the wage is only one attribute of the decision to accept a job. We argue in this paper that commuting time or distance plays an important role in the decision to accept or reject a job.

Search theory has long recognized the role of geographical distance and commuting costs. [START_REF] Stigler | The Economics of Information[END_REF] argued that price ignorance was in large part due to geographical dispersion. [START_REF] Lucas | Equilibrium Search and Unemployment[END_REF] have a spatial dispersion of labor markets and there is a cost (a period of unemployment) of moving between islands are. [START_REF] Diamond | Mobility Costs, Frictional Unemployment, and Efficiency[END_REF][START_REF] Diamond | Wage Determination and Efficiency in Search Equilibrium[END_REF] introduces costs of making draws to get a new offer which is, implicitly or explicitly, a moving cost, i.e., the cost of finding a trading partner. [START_REF] Gaumont | Alternative Theories of Wage Dispersion[END_REF] show that the introduction of commuting costs can resolve the Diamond Paradox, leading to a dispersion of wages. [START_REF] Wasmer | Does Space Affect Search? A Theory of Local Unemployment[END_REF] show that labor and housing markets interact when distance affects search efficiency. [START_REF] Manning | The Real Thin Theory: Monopsony in Modern Labour Markets[END_REF] uses the dependence of separations due to commute distance as evidence of monopsony power of employers, as wages do not fully reflect the cost of commuting. Van Ommeren, [START_REF] Van Ommeren | Estimating the Marginal Willingness to Pay for Commuting[END_REF] estimate a structural search model with on-the-job mobility and identify the marginal cost of commuting time found to be approximately half of the hourly wage per hour of commute. [START_REF] Van Den Berg | Job Search and Commuting Time[END_REF] find that among demographic groups, females with children face a higher disutility of commuting, while being in a region with higher unemployment reduces this disutility parameter. [START_REF] Gautier | Car Ownership and the Labor Market of Ethnic Minorities[END_REF] show that the cost and difficulty of black workers to buy a car leads to an amplification of spatial mismatch, that is, the difficulty of black workers to access jobs located in suburbs. Despite these papers, there are very few search models in macroeconomic theory where commute costs play a central role. [START_REF] Rupert | Time to Move and Aggregate Unemployment[END_REF] build the dual of a search and matching model, where random wage offers are replaced by random "commute-distance offers" and where workers can relocate at some cost to better locations. They argue that housing frictions differ across countries, and that cross-country differences in housing frictions can (i) explain large differences in geographical mobility between Europe and the US, and (ii) explain a significant part of the difference in unemployment rates.

In this paper, we document further the role of commute distance. First, we present some evidence showing the importance of commuting time. Second, we develop a simple theory of job offers in which jobs have two components: A productivity component and a commute distance component. We show reservation strategies and the role of distance in determining wages. Third, we document the correlation between wages and commute distance using a very detailed French time-use survey. Finally, we use the theory to measure the bargainaing power of workers.

In the model, workers have a reservation strategy where wages and commute distance matter:

Accepted offers must generate a positive link between commute distance and wages. Productivity itself may depend on commute distance. That is, workers may be more tired from long commutes, thus generating a negative link between productivity and commute distance. Conversely, job offers located in more remote locations may be of higher productivity if workers' skills are heterogeneous and match productivity is idiosyncratic, as workers might target their job search to the most profitable areas when commutes are long.

The empirical results are as follows: We find that neglecting the commute distance equation in the estimates of wage equations seriously biases downward the wage impact of commute, and marginally affects the coefficient on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also derive a formula linking bargaining power and the coefficients of the wage equation and find that the overall bargaining power of workers is 0.42 on average with large heterogeneity: 0.73 for men, 0.15 for women and almost zero for women with young kids.

Commuting

In this paper, we argue that commuting distance plays an important role when deciding whether to accept a job. Table 1 reports data from a European-wide panel (the ECHP panel 1994(the ECHP panel -2001) ) for a sample of currently unemployed job seekers.1 These individuals received a job offer during the past 4 weeks and rejected it. Finally, the last column indicates that the impact of commute distance is roughly a third lower than the impact of the wage rate when the job acceptance decision has to be made.

Model

Standard search setup

In the standard search model à la McCall, workers decide whether to accept a job offer based on the wage they get and the distribution of the known potential wage offers. The decision to work is based on a comparison of the value of being in an employment relationship to the value of remaining unemployed. In a continuous time setup, the canonical job-search model can be summarized as:

rU = b + λ Max(0, E(w ′ ) -U)dF(w) (1) rE(w) = w -C(h) + δ (U -E), ( 2
)
where r is the rate of interest, b is the value of unemployment benefits, λ is the arrival rate of job offers, δ is an exogenous job destruction rate, F is the c.d.f. of wage offers, C(h) is the cost of working h hours (assumed to be fixed due to some indivisibility) and E and U are the presentdiscounted values of being employed and unemployed, respectively.

Noting that equation Eq. ( 1) is increasing in w with constant slope 1/(r + δ ) leads to

E(w) -U = w -w R r + δ . (3)
The positive slope implies that there is a well-defined reservation rule w R , which can be defined

implicitly by U = E(w R ), that is w R = b +C(h) + λ r + δ +∞ w R (w -w R )dF(w).
(4) Knowledge of the reservation wage, w R , has implications for the rate of unemployment, given by:

u = δ δ + λ [1 -F(w R )]
.

An augmented setup

In this section we augment the standard search environment to include commuting time (distance).

A job is assumed to be a package (w d , d) where d is a commute distance. The disutility cost of commuting is not a perfect substitute for hours of work and therefore we assume C(h, d) with

∂C/∂ d > 0 and ∂ 2 C/∂ d 2 > 0.
We then have:

rU = b + λ Max(0, E(w ′ , d ′ ) -U)dF(w, d) rE(w, d) = w -C(h, d) + δ (U -E)
Since ∂ E/∂ w is positive, and ∂ E/∂ d < 0, we have the following reservation strategies. There exists a function w R (d) which defines the reservation wage for any distance, and we have w R′ (d) > 0; alternatively, there exists a reservation distance d R (w) such that d R′ (w) is positive. Note also

that d R (w) -1 = w R (d). Finally, since E(w, d) -U = w -w R (d) r + δ (5)
we have, for all d, the indifference condition E(w R (d), d) = U which defines a curve in (w, d)

space. The job acceptance frontier is given as,

w R (d) = b +C(h, d) + λ r + δ +∞ 0 +∞ w R (d) (w ′ -w R (d ′ ))dF d (w)dG(d), (6)
where F d is the conditional distribution function (c.d.f.) of wage offers given distance and G is the c.d.f. of commute distances.

From this formula, one can derive the slope of the wage/distance relationship along the acceptance curve; differentiating with respect to d:

w R′ (d) = ∂C(h, d) ∂ d - λ r + δ +∞ 0 +∞ w R (d) w R′ (d ′ )dF d (w)dG(d) (7)
Figure 1 shows the job acceptance curve and the productivity of a match.

Accepted job offers

Rejected job offers

Productivity as a function of distance

In the special case where C is increasing and linear in d, w R′ has a constant slope:

w R′ = ∂C(h, d) ∂ d 1 1 -λ r+δ a
where 0 < a < 1 is the average acceptance rate.

Extension: bargaining and commuting

Extending the framework to deal with bargaining is straightforward. Assume that workers draw a productivity-distance pair, (y, d), where y is productivity. The surplus of the firm is given by

J(y, d) = y -w(y, d) r + δ . (8)
The Bellman equations for unemployed and employed workers are as follows:

rU = b + λ Max(0, E(y ′ , d ′ ) -U)dF(y, d) (9) rE(y, d) = w(y, d) -C(h, d) + δ (U -E). (10)
From Eq. (10) we have

E(y, d) -U = w(y, d) -C(h, d) -rU r + δ (11)
We also assume, consistent with search-matching theory, that firms and workers bargain over wages as long as there is positive surplus. The bargaining equation solves

β J(y, d) = (1 -β )(E -U), (12)
leading to

w(y, d) = (1 -β )rU + (1 -β )C(h, d) + β y. ( 13
)
Partial differentiation of the wage equation implies the following results:

∂ w ∂ y = β and ∂ w ∂ d = (1 -β ) ∂C ∂ d (14)
As in the previous section, there exists a well defined reservation strategy. Noting that

∂ E ∂ y = β r + δ (15) ∂ J ∂ y = 1 -β r + δ , (16)
and given the monotonicity of asset values, there exists a reservation productivity y R (d). Given the constant slopes calculated above, we have that

E(y, d) -U = β y -y R (d) r + δ (17) J(y, d) = (1 -β ) y -y R (d) r + δ . (18)
Finally, y R (d) can be recovered from the fact that workers are indifferent between working and not working when productivity is equal to the reservation value, that is:

rE(y R (d), d) = rU, (19)
Therefore, rU is given as:

rU = b + λ Max(0, E(y ′ , d ′ ) -U)dF(y, d) = rE(y R (d), d) = w(y, d) -C(h, d) + δ (U -E),
or, after reorganizing terms:

y R (d) = b +C(h, d) + β λ r + λ +∞ 0 +∞ y R (d) (y ′ -y R (d ′ ))dF d (w)dG(d)]. (20)
which is similar to (6).

Proposition 1. Commute distance affects wages:

∂ w ∂ d = (1 -β ) ∂C ∂ d .
The proposition states that workers receive higher compensation for commute costs if their bargaining power is lower. Note that commute costs appear in the wage equation with weight

(1 -β ). This is due to the fact that the commute costs are on the "reservation-wage side". The term rU +C(h, d) is the opportunity cost of working. The bargained wage is a weighted average of opportunity cost and the productivity of the match, y. Therefore, the higher the bargaining power, the closer the wage to the productivity of the match and the further away from the opportunity cost:

the effect of commute costs vanishes when β goes to 1.

Wage equations with commute distance

The central idea of our approach is that because wages and commutes are only observed for those accepting a job, not accounting for selection will give biased estimates. Therefore, we will provide a generalization of Heckman selection methods to examine the effect of commuting distance on wages. We also estimate the reservation strategy of agents, using a stochastic frontier method.

Conditional Mixed Process Estimates: method

We use a simultaneous equations approach to estimate the observed (accepted) wages, the observed (accepted) commuting time and a selection equation, to control for the fact that wages and commuting time are oberved only for people that are employed, ie. that received a job offer and accepted it. Therefore, we estimate a conditional (recursive) mixed process model. That is, a simultaneous equation system where the different equations can have different kinds of dependent variables. To be more precise, recall that jobs are characterized in terms of the wage they offer and the implied commuting distance and that the probability of receiving a job offer is λ . Therefore, the reservation wage will also be a function of commuting distance. In particular, reservation wages are increasing in commuting distance under sticky housing markets. In this paper we do not have access to reservation wage information. Therefore, we use data on accepted wages, w, with the implied commuting distance, d, conditional on employment, to estimate the relation between commuting distance, wages and the employment probability.2

Formally, the employment probability, θ , can be written as the product of the probabilities of receiving a job offer and accepting it:

θ = λ [1 -F(w R (d))], (21)
where F() is the conditional distribution of wages. Thus, commuting distance enters the structural probability Eq. ( 21) because of its effect on the reservation wage, which, in turn, affects the acceptance probability.

We assume that the wage offer distribution and the distribution of distance offers are a function of individual and match specific characteristics, is lognormal and specified as:

w i = g(d i ) + β ′ X i + γ ′ Z i + ε i , ε i ∼ N(0, σ 2 ε ) (22)
where X i is a vector containing individual characteristics and Z i a vector of match characteristics. We test whether the functional form of g should be specified as a quadratic to allow for non-linearities. The error term ε i may represent approximation error, measurement error and ran- domness in preferences.

To allow for possible correlation of commuting distance with the error of other equations, an equation for commuting distance is specified as:

d i = µ ′ q i + v i , v i ∼ N(0, σ 2 v ), (23)
where q includes individual characteristics.

Accepted wages, with the implied commuting distance, are only observed for employed individuals, thus we condition on employment by simultaneoulsy specifying an equation for the employment probability -which is equivalent to the job acceptance probability. The underlying equation for employment is:

θ * i = m ′ k i + e i e i ∼ N(0, τ 2 ), (24)
where k it are individual characteristics and

θ i = 1 if θ * i > 0; θ i = 0, otherwise.
We assume joint normality of the error terms of the employment equation, the equation for wages and the equation for commuting distance. We define ρ ew as the correlation coefficient be- tween the errors of the employment equation e it from Eq. ( 24) and the errors ε it of the wage equa- tion Eq. ( 22); ρ ed as the correlation coefficient between the errors of the employment equation and the errors of the equation for commuting distance v i,t-1 from Eq. ( 23), and ρ dw as the correlation between wages and commuting distance.

Under the assumption of joint normality, the employment probability, conditional on the commuting distance and the wage, can be written as:

Φ m ′ k it ψ e|ε,v σ e|ε,v (25)
where Φ(.) is the standard normal distribution function and use has been made of the normality of the distribution of the errors of the employment equation, conditional on commuting distance and wages. ψ(e it |ε it , v i,t-1 ) is the conditional mean of the error term of the employment equation (conditional on the errors of commuting time and wages) ; σ e|ε,v is the conditional variance of the error term of the employment equation (conditional on the errors of commuting time and wages).

For each individual, the likelihood contribution is obtained by multiplying the employment probability by the joint density of commuting and wages.

Data description

The data for the analysis are drawn from the 1998-99 French time-use survey (Enquête Emploi du temps), carried out by the National Statistical Office (INSEE). This is a cross-sectional dataset, providing us with information on individual employment, wages and commuting time. The survey covers about 8,000 representative households, and includes over 20,000 individuals of all ages, from 0 to 103 years. Three questionnaires were collected: a household questionnaire, an individual questionnaire and the time diary. The diary was collected for all individuals in the household, and was filled in for one day, chosen by the interviewer, and could be either a weekday or a weekend day.

The individual questionaire also contains a recall question on usual commuting time. Therefore, an advantage of this dataset is that we can compare commuting time reported from the recall question with commuting time from the daily diary. It is well-known that recall information is bound to be less precise. On the other hand, people are likely to know extremely well how much time on average they spend commuting every day, so that recall bias is unlikely to be very important for commuting information. Instead, the diary information on commuting is more likely to be affected by random variation in commuting, such as, for example, traffic jams. Besides, the day the diary is collected could fall on a a day when people do not work for part-timers or if the diary is collected on a weekend day. There is also information on their main place of work, which allows us to determine if an individual's main job is in their home, in which case their commuting time is set to zero.

Another advantage of the survey is that it collects earnings information in addition to contractual hours of work. Total household income is asked, though in brackets. 3 The data also contains detailed information on individual educational attainment, age, and sex, which we also use in our model.

Other variables in the data set allow us to control for factors that might affect mobility, such as 3 We tried two different specifications for wages: monthly earnings and the hourly wage; however, we generally report only the specifications with monthly earnings as the results are more or less equivalent since we have selected a sample of full-time workers. We select a sample of individuals according to the following criteria:

• single people living on their own or people living as a couple, either married or cohabiting;

• employed; unemployed; housewives/househusbands (We dropped only retirees, those in fulltime education, military personnel and the disabled).

• aged less than sixty years.

Information on monthly gross earnings in the year of the survey was collected both as a continuous variable and in intervals for respondents who did not provide continuous earnings information. For them, as noted above, we do not compute hourly wages. To construct the hourly wage rate, we consider only observations providing information on continous wages and usual hours of work (roughly half of those who reported earnings). Total household income was set equal to the mid point of each interval; and to the threshold level for individuals in the top income interval.

Non-labour income was constructed by subtracting own earnings from the total household income variable. Therefore, non-labour income includes earnings of the spouse, if any. All earnings and income information in the survey was collected in French Francs (equal to 1/6.55957 Euros). Thus, hourly wages are measured in French Francs; but we transform them to Euros, to make the results more readable.

We have included dummy variables for education, with the omitted category being individuals with less than elementary schooling. We also use a series of variables to control for occupation types, sector and size of firm.

We also control for the size of the area where people reside with a series of dummies as follows:

Paris; suburbs (outskirts) of Paris (banlieue, in French); cities of of over 50,000 inhabitants ; cities of 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants; small cities of less than of 20,000 inhabitants; rural neighborhoods.

Regional dummies are also included.

Home ownership is a dichomotomous variable equal to one for individuals that own their place of residence. We also have information in the data on duration of occupancy of the place where people reside, in years. We have constructed two variables by interacting the duration of occupancy of the residence with the house ownership dummy: Duration of occupancy of the place where people reside, in years, for people that rent their residence place; duration of occupancy of the place where people reside, in years, for people that own their residence place. It may be that people that live longer in a place to be less willing to move and this effect is likely to be stronger for individuals that own their place of residence.

The marital status dummy is equal to one for married people and to zero for cohabiting or single people. We consider cohabiting couples as such for several reasons. First, they are subject to the same income taxation scheme as single people, while married people are taxed jointly.

Second, cohabiting women have participation rates very close to those of single women and much higher than those of married women. We constructed a dummy variable for the presence of young children aged less than three in the household. This is the interesting threshold to look at as 99% of children aged three and above go to school in France. Maternelle (pre-school) school for children aged three to five is free of charge and open from early morning to six in the afternoon. The number of children aged less than eighteen is also entered among the explanatory variables.

As noted above, the diary day was chosen by the interviewer. Activities were recorded every ten minutes over a 24-hour period. Both main and secondary activities were coded. These latter are activities carried out simultaneously, such as cooking and watching the children, with the respondent deciding which activity was primary and which secondary. There were approximately 140 main activity categories and 100 secondary activity categories were defined by the survey designers. Interestingly, all commuting time to work was reported as main activity. Commuting time to work is coded in minutes.

Descriptive statistics for the full sample are provided in Table 3. Over 50% of the sample is composed of people that own their residence. The average duration of occupancy of their residence is about ten years, whether people own it or not. This is slightly larger for women than for men.

Women in full-time employment are, on average, slightly less educated than men. On the other hand, more women than men have completed secondary education. Average years of schooling of men and women are the same and equal to just over ten years. The average monthly earnings of women are almost three hundred Euros less than those of men; and the hourly wage is 2 Euros smaller.

Commuting time is on average about 45 minutes per day, irrespective of gender. The diary information records shorter commuting time: forty minutes instead of fifty, according to the recall question; and slightly less for women than for men. About 24% of the respondents in the sample reported to be tired from commuting at the end of the day.

Table 4 provides the distribution of monthly earnings and commuting time for the recall ques- The lower-educated people tend to commute a little less than the higher-educated. Married women in full-time employment commute less time at all percentiles of the distribution of commuting time than the sample worker.

Table 5 shows the mode of transportation of full-time workers in the sample. Over 70% of people travel to work by car. This proportion is slightly larger for men, 74%, than for women, 72%. Instead, travelling to work by bus is more common for women, over 9%, than for men, 6%.

Interestingly, almost twice as many women than men go to work on foot (9.2% against 5.6%); while ten times more men than women use their bycicle or the motorbycicle (almost 3% against 0.6%, for either bycicle or motorbycicle). The differences by gender are smaller for the train (over 1% for either gender) and the metro (3% for men and 4% for women).

Identification

The identification is as follows: we expect non-labour income -set equal to total household income minus own earnings-to affect the employment decision but not the wages or the commuting time equation. Next, we assume that the size of the area of residence affects the transportation landscape and therefore the distance equation; but not the employment or wage equations. Instead, regional dummies enter all equations as they assumed to measure not only job availability -and thus the selection into employment-but also different wage premia and transport infrastructure.

We also use the duration of occupation of the place of residence to identify the commuting equation and the employment equation. Indeed, individuals that live longer in a given place may be less willing to move, as the costs of moving are likely higher for them. This can affect both the job acceptance probability -and therefore the selection into employment-and the distance travelled to work. In particular, we use two separate variables, one for the duration of occupation of the place of residence for renters; and the other for houseowners, both measured in years. We also assume that the number of children and the presence of small children affect accepted commuting time and employment, but not wages. Instead, gender and marital status enter all three equations, in the form of a dummy for being a woman and an interaction variable of being a woman and being married, to capture differences across all women and married women, in addition to gender effects.

We identify wages using information on the number of years of work experience. Finally, we enter a quadratic term in linear commuting time in the wage equation. Schooling years affect selection and wages but do not impact on commuting distance (we tested for their inclusion in the distance equation but in line with our expectations, the coefficient was not statistically significant).

In order to avoid having to estimate a singular system, we present a wage equation which does depend on commute distance, but a commute distance equation which only depends on individual and firm's characteristics.

Findings

The results are given in Table 6. Observed wages increase with commuting time, though at a decreasing rate. The correlation coefficients of the three equations are statistically significant, with a large negative value between the residuals of the employment and the distance equation which is equal to -0.70. This is rather intuitive: when worker receive a high distance offer, they are much less likely to accept the package (wage, distance) and therefore more likely to reject the offer. This tends to suggest that ignoring the selection due to commute distance biases the estimates of the effect of distance on wages (see below).

Women earn less by 11.1% but their marital status does not affect hourly wages. This might be due to the fact that all women suffer the same wage penalty as if they were married; that is, employers may anticipate that single women will marry. We find that wages and employment increase with education years (schooling years, each additional raising wage by 5.86%). Under this specification, wages and employment increase with age at a decreasing rate; while the reverse age pattern applies to commuting time -commuting time falls with age at an increasing rate.

Interestingly, both the number of children and the presence of small children negatively affect the employment selection, as expected -at least for women, but they impact positively on commuting time. This may indicate that people with small children are prepared to commute further away and are less willing to move closer to their job.

Finally, the main effect of commute on wages is quite large. We find that the linear coefficient of hours of commute is almost a third (+0.327), with a quadratic term equal to -4.18%. This means that an hour of commute is compensated by a 28.5% increase in wages.

In columns 4 to 5, we report the traditional Heckman selection model where we add commute hours but do not have a commute time equation. In that case, as well as in column 6 where we report a simple OLS of wages, the effect of commute time on wages is much smaller, between 8.4 and 9.0 percent. This suggests that, due to the strong correlation between the residuals of the commute time equation and the other equations, ignoring the selectivity in commute time bias the estimate of the Mincerian wage equation quite seriously.

The estimates of the recursive system equations (columns 1-3) have a few differences with traditional Heckman (col 4-5) and OLS (col 6) in terms of the effects of other variables. For instance, the effect of education on wages is half of a percentage point lower (5.86% instead of 6.38%), the effect of age is one percentage point above for the first years (3.38% instead of 2.27%), the wage discount of women is two percentage points lower (-11%.instead of 9.02%).

We also estimate the recursive system for various sub-samples, but only present the coefficients of commute distance and the effect of one hour of commute on wages in Table 7.

Implications

An interesting implication of the model in Section 3.3 and in particular Proposition 1 is that the cost impact of commuting on wages is related to the bargaining power of workers. Indeed, a marginal increase in commuting cost for the worker (in terms of disutility) implies an increase in log wages that is proportional to (1 -β ), that is the complement of workers's bargaining power to 1. However, we do not know the disutility cost of say, one hour commute for workers. We however know that most of the urban literature typically imputes this disutility to be half of the hourly wage, an estimate that is also exactly that given by the structural model of [START_REF] Van Ommeren | Estimating the Marginal Willingness to Pay for Commuting[END_REF].

Commuting and fatigue

The data set also allows us to examine how commuting might affect fatigue, defined as a binary variable taking value 1 if the respondent reports fatugue from commuting and zero otherwise. It is also indirectly a mesure of productivity if the worker's efficiency at work depends on how tired she/he is from commuting. Table 8 shows these results. First, Column 1 shows that commute distance has a strong and positive effect on fatigue, but the effect is not concave, but convex: longer commutes have a lower marginal effect on the fatigue probability. This may be due to the fact that longer commutes can be organized in a more convenient way, or due to endogenous shifting of commute modes, but the concavity can be found even controlling for modes or for a given commuting mode. In Column 1, we report the regression for the sample with both parttimers and full-time workers. Column 2 restricts the sample to full-time workers. Column 3 adds up a linear and quadratic term in hours worked that turn out not to be significant. The same is true in Column 4 with only a linear term. Column 5 and subsequent columns investigate the effect of commute modes. In Column 5, we can see that, compared to the reference (walk), all modes are associated with more fatigue, even conditioning on commute distance. Based on the most frequent commuting modes (car, metro and bus) we observe concavity in the effect of commute time on fatigue (see Columns 6 to 8).

Conclusion

This paper examines the effect commute distance has on labor markets. Reservation strategies in distance and in wages are basically the reciprocal of each other since there exists a reservation wage for each commute distance and a reservation distance for each offered wage. The estimate of Mincerian wage equations can usefully exploit information on commute distance in order to improve the quality of selection equations. We show that these estimates imply a lower positive impact of age (+1 p.p. for the linear coefficient on age), a stronger wage penalty of women in wages (-2 p.p.), as well as an increase in the returns to schooling (+0.5 p.p.). The wage impact of

Figure

  Figure 1: Job Acceptance

  tion and the diary. The distribution of commuting time looks quite skewed. The lowest decile of the distribution of commuting time of full-time workers, spend less than ten minutes travelling to their workplace and back. The median full-time worker in the sample commutes forty minutes per day, while people in the third quartile commute one hour; and those in the top decile, over two hours.

Table 1 :

 1 Reasons for Rejecting Offers

	%	% excl. last 3	% excl. last 3 & hrs	% compared to wage rate

Commute distance matters and will be shownn int.....

Column 1 of Table

1

shows that roughly 40% of individuals have not decided or don't report a good reason (reasons 8 and 9). Column 2 excludes those individuals and those who are not immediately available, thus revealing that 14.7% of job offers were turned down due to commute distance; 16.7% if one further excludes the jobs rejected due to the offered number of hours.

Table 2 :

 2 Sample Selection Criteria

	Criterion applied	Observations
	Single people living on their own or in a couple	13473
	Employed, unemployed or housewives	9251
	Age less than 60 years	8665
	home ownership, duration of occupation of the residence -which we interact with home ownership-
	marital status and presence and age of children.

Table 3 :

 3 Summary Statistics-Full Sample

	Variable	Estimation sample Men		Women
		N =8665	N =4220	N =4645
		Mean Std Dev	Mean Std Dev	Mean Std Dev
	Age	41.14	9.52	41.48	9.26	40.83	9.74
	Elementary schooling CEP	0.10	0.30	0.08	0.27	0.11	0.32
	Lower Secondary tech. bepc	0.08	0.27	0.06	0.24	0.09	0.29
	Lower Secondary cap-bep	0.30	0.46	0.35	0.48	0.26	0.44
	Upper Secondary tech bactech	0.06	0.23	0.06	0.24	0.05	0.22
	Upper Secondary bac	0.08	0.27	0.06	0.23	0.09	0.29
	Short Univ degree bac+2	0.12	0.32	0.11	0.31	0.13	0.34
	Univ degree >bac+2	0.12	0.32	0.14	0.34	0.10	0.30
	School years	10.15	4.34	10.30	4.43	10.02	4.44
	Married	0.68	0.47	0.69	0.46	0.69	0.47
	Cohabiting	0.17	0.37	0.18	0.38	0.16	0.37
	No. of children	1.30	1.22	1.30	1.23	1.29	1.21
	Children, age < 3	0.13	0.34	0.14	0.34	0.13	0.34
	Ile de France	0.19	0.39	0.19	0.39	0.19	0.39
	Cities >=20,000 inhabitants
	Small city <20,000 inhabitants	0.17	0.37	0.17	0.37	0.17	0.37
	Rural neighborhood	0.26	0.44	0.26	0.44	0.25	0.43
	Paris	0.03	0.17	0.03	0.17	0.03	0.18
	Outskirts of Paris	0.13	0.33	0.13	0.34	0.13	0.34
	French nationality	0.94	0.24	0.94	0.24	0.94	0.23
	Working mainly at home	0.13	0.34	0.12	0.33	0.14	0.35
	House ownership	0.57	0.49	0.57	0.49	0.57	0.49
	Dur. occup. residence, years	9.78	9.13	9.48	9.04	10.05	9.20
	Monthly Salary, Euros	1338.60	746.45 1557.02	806.69 1111.16	598.83
	Non labour income, monthly, Euros 2070.75 1335.44 2109.36 1359.83 2036.03 1312.32
	Hourly wage, Euros	9.08	5.61	9.79	5.85	8.32	5.24
	Contractual weekly hours	35.75	7.76	37.93	5.57	33.12	8.98
	Commuting time minutes, recall	44.79	45.21	46.44	46.51	42.94	43.63
	Commuting time minutes, diary	27.22	42.93	34.49	48.07	20.80	36.64
	Tired fom commuting, yes ==1	0.16	0.37	0.17	0.37	0.16	0.36

Table 4 :

 4 Distribution of commuting time for the estimation sample

	Percentiles	hourly wage commuting recall commuting diary
	Full sample, obs.	3693	4311	4178
	1%	2.91	0	0
	5%	4.51	0	0
	10%	4.87	0	0
	25%	5.86	10	0
	50%	7.49	30	20
	75%	10.42	60	60
	90%	14.66	105	90
	95%	19.54	120	120
	99%	31.08	180	200
	Up to elementary school, obs.		879	834
	1%	2.06	0	0
	5%	3.61	0	0
	10%	4.40	0	0
	25%	5.04	10	0
	50%	6.05	30	20
	75%	7.22	60	60
	90%	9.52	90	90
	95%	11.28	120	120
	99%	20.10	210	200
	University degree and above, obs.		1150	1119
	1%	4.22	0	0
	5%	5.59	0	0
	10%	6.54	5	0
	25%	8.57	20	0
	50%	11.30	40	20
	75%	16.24	70	60
	90%	23.45	120	100
	95%	28.87	140	120
	99%	41.50	210	200
	Married Women, obs.		1286	1247
	1%	2.08	0	0
	5%	4.04	0	0
	10%	4.64	0	0
	25%	5.41	10	10
	50%	7.04	30	30
	75%	9.67	60	60
	90%	13.62	90	90
	95%	19.02	120	120
	99%	20.90	180	180
	Hourly wages are measured in Euros. Commuting time in minutes.
	Diary commuting is shown for individuals that also provided recall
	commuting information and that were employed.

Table 5 :

 5 Mode of Transportation to Work, %

		Sample	Men Women
	On foot	7.25	5.59	9.22
	Bycicle	1.81	2.10	1.47
	Motorbike	1.81	2.82	0.61
	Car	73.34 74.41	72.06
	Train	1.64	1.79	1.47
	Metro	3.92	3.49	4.44
	Bus	7.81	6.02	9.44
	Other	2.41	3.78	0.79
	Sample size	6398 3470	2928

Table 6 :

 6 Results of estimation

		Recursive system equations	Heckman model	OLS
	VARIABLES	selection	log w	log commute	selection	log w	log w
	Children	-0.149***		0.0191	-0.151***
		(0.02)		(0.01)	(0.02)
	Any child < 3	-0.269***		0.214***	-0.223***
		(0.05)		(0.04)	(0.05)
	Married*wom.	-0.475***	0.00840	0.0696	-0.476***	0.0281	-0.0210
		(0.05)	(0.02)	(0.04)	(0.05)	(0.02)	(0.02)
	Woman	-0.581***	-0.111***	0.113***	-0.603***	-0.0902***	-0.133***
		(0.05)	(0.02)	(0.04)	(0.05)	(0.02)	(0.02)
	Small area			0.0107
				(0.04)
	Rural area			0.0724**
				(0.04)
	Outskirts Paris			0.159***
				(0.06)
	Age	0.169***	0.0338***	-0.0483***	0.172***	0.0227***	0.0371***
		(0.02)	(0.01)	(0.01)	(0.02)	(0.01)	(0.01)
	Age squared	-0.00220*** -0.000337*** 0.000649*** -0.00223*** -0.000203** -0.000399***
		(0.00)	(0.00)	(0.00)	(0.00)	(0.00)	(0.00)
	French	0.304***	0.0435	-0.254***	0.312***	-0.0100	0.0457
		(0.07)	(0.04)	(0.07)	(0.07)	(0.04)	(0.04)
	School years	0.0326***	0.0586***		0.038***	0.0584***	0.0638***
		(0.00)	(0.00)		(0.00)	(0.00)	(0.00)
	Non lab. income	0.000587***			0.000628***
		(0.00)			(0.00)
	Non lab. inc. sq.	-6.88e-08***			-7.41e-08***
		(0.00)			(0.00)
	Dur occ. renter	0.0110***		0.00251	0.0134***
		(0.00)		(0.00)	(0.00)
	Dur occ. owner	0.000850		-0.00742**	-0.000299
		(0.00)		(0.00)	(0.00)
	Work experience		0.0104***			0.0107***	0.0129***
			(0.00)			(0.00)	(0.00)
	Commute hours		0.327***			0.0962***	0.103***
			(0.04)			(0.03)	(0.03)
	Commute sq.		-0.0418***			-0.0121	-0.0133*
			(0.01)			(0.01)	(0.01)
	Region dummies	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
	rho sw	-0.246***			-.652***
		(0.07)			(.042)
	rho sd	-0.70***
		(0.04)
	rho wd	-0.234***
		(0.05)
	Observations	8665			8665		2298
	*** p<0.01,

** p<0.05, * p<0.1. Standard errors in brackets. Coefficients for region, occupation, industry, firme size dummies not shown.

Table 8 :

 8 Probability of Being Tired by Commuting: Different Samples and Specifications

		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
	VARIABLES	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom	tiredcom
	Sample	All (incl. PT)	FT	FT	FT	FT	FT & car FT & metro FT & bus
	commute	3.520***	3.650***	3.526***	3.540***	5.246***	5.422***	10.07**	3.112*
		(0.181)	(0.466)	(0.470)	(0.469)	(0.597)	(0.720)	(4.712)	(1.626)
	commutesq	-0.527***	-0.579*** -0.529*** -0.535***	-1.171***	-1.171***	-2.628*	-0.575
		(0.0503)	(0.195)	(0.197)	(0.197)	(0.236)	(0.296)	(1.567)	(0.612)
	woman	0.0614	0.189	0.212*	0.206*	0.228*	0.189	0.724*	0.158
		(0.0982)	(0.120)	(0.122)	(0.122)	(0.126)	(0.154)	(0.424)	(0.315)
	commute: bicycle					2.126
						(1.320)
	commute: motorbike					2.295**
						(1.138)
	commute: car					2.279**
						(1.028)
	commute: train					2.512**
						(1.070)
	commute: metro					2.354**
						(1.046)
	commute: bus					2.198**
						(1.040)
	commute: others					2.419**
						(1.142)
	hours of work			0.0969	0.00542
				(0.0674)	(0.0116)
	hours of work square			-0.00136
				(0.00102)
	Constant	-4.370***	-4.385*** -6.002*** -4.529***	-7.613***	-5.512***	-9.195***	-3.704***
		(0.151)	(0.259)	(1.163)	(0.515)	(1.073)	(0.412)	(3.387)	(0.997)
	Observations	4311	2641	2569	2569	2469	1812	126	224
	R 2	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
				Standard errors in parentheses
				*** p< 0.01, ** p< 0.05, * p< 0.1
						NB: REF=feet

Those having no job and are looking for one or are currently working less than 15 hours and looking for an additional one or a different one.

Reservation wages are rarely observed in the data, exceptions are, for example,[START_REF] Bloemen | Individual Wealth, Reservation Wages, and Transitions into Employment[END_REF], that used subjective reservation wages in an extended search model.

If we use this as a benchmark value and plug it into the wage equation, we can see that the wage effect of one hour of commute should be (1 -β )/2. Indeed, we have that the wage increase due to ∆d = 1h of commute compared to no commute is given from that proposition by

Stating that ∆C = w/2 when ∆d = 1, we have therefore that

which we can therefore identify from the estimated wage equation. It follows that, from the wage impact of one hour of commute, call it λ , we obtain an estimate of the bargaining power of workers given by

We can apply this formula to the results of Table 7 and additional estimates in different sub-samples which we do not fully report for the sake of brevity (we only report the relevant coefficients).

The findings indicate that the effect of distance on wages is heterogenously distributed among demographic groups, and much larger for women than for men. The bargaining power of the total sample population is 0.43, however, for men it is 0.739 while for women it is 0.157. Married women have lower bargaining power, 0.091. The lowest bargaining power is for women with young children present (less than age 3), 0.016.

one hour of commute is estimated to be 29%, while conventional estimates underestimate it by a factor 3.


The Demise of Statism? Associations and the Transformation of Interest Intermediation in France

France has long been considered as the ideal type of statist interest intermediation, despite some elements of weak neo-corporatism. With a strong central government and a highly technocratic tradition, interest groups had but a marginal role to play in the policy-making process. Mistrustful of intermediary bodies that were considered to distort the expression of the public interest, France tellingly outlawed associations at the end of the 18 th century and only re-established associational freedom in 1901. In tradition with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's beliefs in the nuisance of private groups to public life and with the negative experience of war corporatism under the Vichy Regime, the Fifth Republic was built around a strong executive removed from parliamentary pressures and with little interest in the consultation of nongovernmental stakeholders. Many authors have labelled this particular type of state-society relations "statism".

Yet state-led and centralized policy-making came under pressure in the 1970s and 1980s. Dirigist economic policy-making broke down after François Mitterrand's failed Keynesian experiment in 1983. The concurrent drive towards decentralization that the new left government had undertaken in 1982-4 underlined the necessity to include local actors in the governance networks at the regional level. The late 1980s and 1990s were a period

marked by attempts by the French government to empower a divers set of social groups as political actors in their own right. The simultaneous explosion of interest intermediation at the European level that followed the Single European Act in 1986 and the Single Market project in 1992 provided a further venue for interest groups eager to circumvent the tutelage of the French state. In particular regional and economic actors have been able to benefit tremendously from these new opportunities and to exert pressure on their home government by passing through the European Union [START_REF] Ladrech | Europeanization of Domestic Politics and Institutions: the case of France[END_REF]Schmidt 1996b; [START_REF] Grossman | Challenging French Interest Groups: The State, Europe and the International Political System[END_REF][START_REF] Weisbein | La vie associative and the State: unequal partners in the French debate on Europe[END_REF]. In line with developments elsewhere, "civil society" has become the mot d'ordre for politicians and bureaucratic decision-makers in France (see [START_REF] Smismans | Civil Society and Legitimate European Governance[END_REF]. [START_REF] Grossman | Les groupes d'intérêt au secours de la démocratie?[END_REF] speak of the "participatory turn" to highlight how central the concept of "participatory democracy" has become in the discourse and initiatives of public decision-makers.

Over one hundred years after the law of 1901 and at the fiftieth anniversary of the Fifth Republic, we are at a good moment to evaluate these changes. What are the consequences of the re-shuffling of the state-society relations? Has the French government abandoned its statist relations with social actors and established more open and participatory policy regimes? Is statism still a pertinent category to speak of interest intermediation in France? In particular, one may ask if civil society groups have been able to rise up to the challenge and seize the new opportunities offered. While Vivien Schmidt (1996a) has demonstrated how economic actors and in particular entrepreneurs contributed to redefining the political economy of France, others remain more pessimistic. Jonah [START_REF] Levy | Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France[END_REF] study of regional economic policy-making shows that governmental actors tried to implement what he calls "associational liberalism" but largely failed. Indeed, compared to their European counterparts, even economic actors, such as the national employer association, the Mouvements des enterprises de France (Medef), remain relatively weak policy-actors, despite intense public relations campaigns in recent years [START_REF] Culpepper | Creating Cooperation: How States Develop Human Capital in Europe[END_REF][START_REF] Woll | National Business Associations under Stress: Lessons from the French Case[END_REF].

But this is precisely the paradox of the recent transformation of interest intermediation in France. While traditional groups such as trade unions and employers' organizations struggle to adapt to the new modes of representation and partially fail to do to, a multitude of new associations flourish and actively take part in policy deliberation and local administration [START_REF] Saurugger | Les groupes d'intérêt en France : transformation des rôles et enjeux politiques[END_REF]. 1 million groups are estimated to be active in France today, twice as much as in the mid-1980s [START_REF] Decool | Des associations, en général... vers une éthique sociétale[END_REF]. Opposition to established parties and new social values such as environmentalism, feminism, or personal liberties are fought for and defended by associations, which play a crucial role in organizing protests and shaping the atmosphere of electoral campaigns. In 2004, the French government assigned the first ever ministerial title for associational life to Jean-François Lamour and organized a National Conference for Associational Life in 2006 to decide on ways and means to support the participation of groups in policy-making. On a great number of issues and especially in regional governance, associational networks have become essential, but only if and when the government has invited them to take part in the policy process.

In the following, I argue that interest intermediation in France has transformed profoundly, but statism still remains a pertinent category to understand the range of these changes. Interest group consultation only supplements bureaucratic decision-making and the central government has considerable room for manoeuvre to escape pressures put on specific policy proposals. However, civil society groups do take part in the implementation of policy projects and contribute to the atmosphere in which the objectives become defined. Indeed, associations increasingly take over functions that were previously the domain of political parties [START_REF] Manin | Post-Script to the German Edition[END_REF]. They are the pillars of policy communities and create allegiances that allow for issue-specific identity politics. As such, the semi-institutionalized forms of associational participation are part of the particular equilibrium that is slowly establishing in response to the representational crisis that has affected the Fifth Republic [START_REF] Grossman | Les groupes d'intérêt au secours de la démocratie?[END_REF][START_REF] Berger | Representation in Trouble[END_REF]) .

The chapter divides in two parts. A first section opposes the elements that earned France a reputation for being statist with the growth and vivacity of associational life. A second section then asks if these changes are only superficial. Despite the difficulties of the traditional social partners to drive socio-economic reform in France, I argue that groups have become an important part of the French system of representation, especially as forums for deliberation and the implementation of policy projects and institutionalized feedback mechanisms for governmental initiatives.

The rise of associations in statist France

French statism

Political thinkers from James [START_REF] Madison | Federalist Paper No. 10[END_REF][START_REF] Madison | Federalist Paper No. 10[END_REF]) to Alexis de [START_REF] De Tocqueville | Democracy in America. 1st Perennial classics[END_REF]Tocqueville ( [1835Tocqueville ( /1840]]) recognized that associations promised the liberty of expression for individual citizens but also posed a threat to political stability, as they could turn into hotbeds or "violent factions". Yet, for Jean-Jacques [START_REF] Rousseau | The Social Contract[END_REF][START_REF] Rousseau | The Social Contract[END_REF]), associations were undesirable even if they did not turn to violence. As "societies within society", they affected the interests of their members and therefore prohibited the free expression of the general will. The state could not represent the public interest of all citizens, if several organized in groups and influenced public decisions. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, this philosophy was put into law through the Décret d'Allarde of 2 March 1791, which abolished corporations, the Le Chapelier law of 14 June 1791, which outlawed professional associations, and a decree on 18

August 1792 against religious groups. These restrictions were continuously debated in the later half of the 19 th century, but it was not until 1884 that professional groups were allowed and until 1 July 1901 that associational freedom was fully re-established (Barthélemy 2000: 38-57;Belorgey 2000: 15-26). However, the authorisation of associations was not simply a liberal act meant to empower civic groups, but also a ways of controlling those that have been properly registered and setting them apart from others, in particular religious groups (Belorgey 2000: 19). 1

After a period of war-time corporatism under the Vichy regime, the Fifth Republic maintained associational freedom, but preserved a great degree of mistrust towards all forms of organized groups. Yet over time French law became increasingly supportive of associations. In 1971, the associational freedom granted in 1901 became a constitutional clause. Additional legislation followed, either to facilitate voluntary work or to help specific groups, such as associations of the elderly in 1977 or athletic school clubs in 1986.

Associations of foreigners, the last remaining ones to be restricted under the Fifth Republic, became legal in 1981.

However, the deep-seated defiance against intermediary bodies in political life is not only manifest in legal arrangements concerning these groups directly; it also plays out in the organization of government. Frank [START_REF] Wilson | Interest-Group Politics in France[END_REF] argues that at several institutional arrangements contribute to the exclusion of intermediary groups in policy-making in the Fifth Republic. First, the strong role for the political executive allows the French president to control the legislative calendar together with the prime minister. Moreover, through the use of package votes (which do not allow for amendments) and votes of confidence (which require a motion of censure to block a government bill), the government can limit parliamentary control over its proposals and thus restrict the influence of lobbyists who seek to affect the wording of a bill.

Second, party cohesion in the legislative tends to insulate individual representatives from constituency pressure. Representatives often vote the party line, even if regional differences should lead them to disagree on policy content. Frank provided by interest groups. The main policy orientation in the government bureaucracies springs from the educational backgrounds of individual administrators, their corps, and not their contacts with outside stakeholders. And yet, stable consultation procedures and institutions jointly managed by the government and the social partners exist within the French bureaucracy, especially in social policy areas or agriculture, which has led some authors to speak of corporatism "à la française" [START_REF] Jobert | L'Etat en action : politiques publiques et corporatismes[END_REF].

Finally, the centralization of the French political system is a fourth element weakening the role of political groups. As everywhere else, regional and departmental governments are generally more accessible for local stakeholder groups, but they have traditionally lacked power relative to the national government. The moves towards decentralization since the 1970s have therefore contributed to empowering local groups and led to a "more pluralist, competitive and negotiated polity" [START_REF] Galès | The Ongoing March of Decentralisation within the Post-Jacobin State[END_REF].

This review of the traditional model of state-society relations in France highlights that many of the central elements of statism have evolved over time. Despite the deep-seated mistrust of the potential nuisance of groups, French law and the political institutions in France moved towards acceptance and incorporation of intermediary bodies into policy-making processes.

The associational explosion

Decision-makers increasingly acknowledged the social benefits of associational life and started encouraging and promoting them. [START_REF] Febvre | Une personne sur deux est membre d'une association en 2002[END_REF]. To be sure, these distinctions are somewhat artificial, as the defence of interests presupposes the existence of a group of like-minded people. Most prominently, Mancur [START_REF] Olson | The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups[END_REF] has pointed out, that lobbying is often a side-effect of groups constituted for an entirely different purpose. With its 38 million members, the American Association of Retired People (AARP), for example, has often been called one of Washington's most powerful lobbying groups [START_REF] Morris | The AARP: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations[END_REF]. One should therefore be careful not to dismiss the associational explosion as a phenomenon that might improve only the French social tissue but which has little political consequences. Since political activity is quite hard to separate from other associational activities, we will deal with associational life as explicitly or implicitly political, even if a majority of groups engage primarily in leisure activities [START_REF] Lelieveledt | The Political Role of Associations[END_REF].

The political aspects of associational life become evident when one considers the new political discourse on democratic policy-making. Politicians today appeal explicitly to associations as the legitimate setting of deliberation, arguing that they give a voice to different sectors of French society. The centennial anniversary of the law of 1901 was an occasion to publicly praise the benefits of associational freedom. 4 that France has adopted a pluralist model of state-society relations. In fact, not all groups have been able to benefit from the new political opportunities. As Saurugger and Grossman highlight, the "participatory turn" in France comes with a paradox: while many new

associations find an open political opportunity structure, traditional groups such as employer organizations or trade unions have not be able to expand their role in policy-making [START_REF] Saurugger | Les groupes d'intérêt en France : transformation des rôles et enjeux politiques[END_REF].

Tocqueville's revenge?

For Jonah Levy, the passiveness of the social partners in shaping regional policy responses was due to the burden of history: after decades of excluding intermediary groups for policy-making, decision-makers were unable to mobilize their relevant partners in the last part of the 20 th century. He called this phenomenon "Tocqueville's revenge". Although Tocqueville advocated the benefits of groups, it was the Rousseauian rejection of groups that was implemented in French history. According to Levy, this now comes to haunt French politicians who would like to rely on strong social intermediaries to coordinate and implement policies.

The analysis proposed in this chapter is more nuanced. Associations have spread and play an important role in French politics, but not all of them and not everywhere. Levy is therefore right to insist on the legacies of statism, which help in particular to understand the weak role of the social partners that are so central to the neo-corporatist arrangements of other European countries. The rise of associational liberalism in France nonetheless transformed policy-making and opened up new political opportunity structures for previously marginalized groups of French society.

Weak social partners

Assessing the role of employer associations and trade unions in France has always been difficult in international comparisons, particularly those that sought to rank countries on a scale from pluralism, where many groups compete for influence, to neo-corporatism, where the social partners enjoyed privileged ties to the government and played a central role in the coordination of socio-economic institutions. Depending on the measures used, France appeared as moderately to weakly corporatist and sometimes fell off the scale altogether [START_REF] Siaroff | Corporatism in 24 industrial democracies: Meaning and Measurement[END_REF]. The contradictory picture led many authors to put France in a category of its own: even though the social partners are able to determine wage levels and other aspects of labour issues since the 1950 law on collective bargaining, the French state maintains a strong role in the coordination of socio-economic issues. What characterized industrial relations in the first half of the Fifth Republic was, first, the predominance of protest politics: labour relations were represented and experienced a class conflict in mass actions organized by trade unions. Second, the high institutionalization of the social partners in consultative committees and joint management councils (paritarisme) that govern important aspects of social policy such as unemployment, retirement or social security. Despite the lack of consensual policymaking at the national level, individual policy sectors therefore display a very high degree of corporatist management. A third feature of the French model is the firm-level management of job stability and career advancement (see [START_REF] Van Ruysseveldt | Contestation and state intervention forever? Industrial relations in France[END_REF][START_REF] Lallement | New Patterns of Industrial Relations and Political action since the 1980s[END_REF].

With heavy government intervention in socio-economic areas, associations of employers and workers concentrated on labor law and protest movements rather than collective negotiation capacity.

Starting in the 1980s, this post-war order was challenged by political and market pressures for greater flexibility. French firms lobbied individually for new policy solutions at the European and the national level and partially circumvented both the bureaucratic state and the encompassing employer organizations (Schmidt 1996b). French trade unions, which had always been ideologically divided into several competing organizations, were unable to respond to these changes collectively. and Labbé 2006b: 290). The privatization of public companies during the 1980s was therefore a further blow that contributed to the fall of trade union influence [START_REF] Culpepper | Capitalism, Coordination, and Economic Change: The French Political Economy since 1985[END_REF]. Figure 3 shows that strikes in the private sector have fallen sharply since the 1970s. Although strikes remain a feature of French politics, they now affect mainly the public sector. 9 The diversification on the employer side is comparable, even though the Medef can claim to represent about 60% of French firms (see [START_REF] Woll | National Business Associations under Stress: Lessons from the French Case[END_REF].

However, while internal fragmentation and de-unionization has undermined the collective bargaining capacities of the social partners, it has not kept them from contributing to public debates and challenging government initiative. The most noted initiative of Medef, the "social refoundation" launched in 1999 and the successful large-scale protests orchestrated by trade unions against a new employment contract (the contrat première embauche) in the fall of 2006 even led Mark [START_REF] Vail | The Evolution of Bargaining under Austerity: Political Change in Contemporary French and German Labor-Market Reform[END_REF] to speak of "competitive interventionism" in France, where the state competes with the social partners for control over the direction of socio-economic reform. Whether the social partners compete indeed on equal footing with the state is doubtful, but it is true that the French government focuses on structured dialogue with societal stakeholders in recent years and delegates parts of its programs to societal groups for implementation. It is now more and more likely that governmental projects will be submitted for discussion with the social partners to assure some sort of consensus, but many observers highlight that "discussion" does not imply "negotiation" (e.g. Andolfatto and Labbé 2006b: 285). By controlling policy initiatives and shifting its actions from direct intervention to enabling policies, the government remains central in shaping socio-economic institutions in France. The social partners have largely failed to become institutionalized pillars of some form of neo-corporatist governance at the national level. However, as forums for dialogue and deliberations, the traditional trade unions and employer associations, just like their new competitors, have become part of the policy networks that influence the evolution of individual issues. To see how this is possible, we have to turn to the new role of associations in French politics more generally.

The functions of associational representation

In his survey of the evolution of industrial relations in France, Michel Lallement (2006: 50) highlights that recent changes are based on a trend towards the "contractualization of society". By this he means that the French government no longer prescribes policy solutions, but oversees the negotiations between stakeholders over the rules, practices and relationships that define social life. With the aim of a consensual outcome, these procedures encourage stakeholders to be constructive and autonomous, but nonetheless bind them by contractual solidarity. This trend towards consensus-oriented negotiations applies not just to industrial relations, but to state-society relations in France in general. To avoid extensive protest and ensure effective governance, the French government increasingly privileges stakeholder groups as partners in the elaboration and implementation of policy initiatives. In this framework, associations play an important role as forums for deliberation, as identity communities and as implementation networks. Let us consider each of these in turn.

Numerous scholars have pointed out the rising importance of deliberation as an element of democratic decision-making. 12 By emphasizing inclusion, compromise and transparency, deliberative decision-making implies greater openness to groups that can define themselves as stakeholders. In doing so, the consultation with associations increases the legitimacy of the policy process and appears to provide a partial remedy to the 'crisis of representation' noted by many observers of the French political system (e.g. [START_REF] Berger | Representation in Trouble[END_REF]).

However, deliberation does not mean that outcomes are necessarily consensual. [START_REF] Grossman | Les groupes d'intérêt au secours de la démocratie?[END_REF] distinguish between competitive and cooperative deliberation to clarify this point. Under competitive deliberation, associations express their often conflicting opinions on a policy issue in a public debate and use media or mass communication strategies to sway public opinion. Ultimately, citizens or their elected representatives act as judges in determining the public interest. The new strategy of the employer association Medef epitomizes this trend. Breaking with its rather secretive and informal public intervention of the CNPF, Medef has concentrated on extensive media campaigns and outreach programs aimed to affect public opinion. 13 Other social actors actively contest the propositions made by Medef on socio-economic issues in equally public campaigns. The objective of these campaigns is not to reach a compromise, but to make one's opinion heard and to determine the terms of a debate, with the ultimately goal of swaying legislators by means of public opinion pressures (see [START_REF] Manin | Déliberation et discussion[END_REF].

Cooperative deliberation describes procedures that aim to define a policy strategy which all actors can agree on. Grossman and Saurugger (2006: 311) note that cooperative deliberation was the objective of two series of legislation in France in the 1990s. Consultation with and information of local stakeholders became central to urban and regional policy in the early 1990s. In 1995, the Barnier law makes consultation obligatory and creates the National Commission for Public Debate (Commission nationale du débat public -CNDP). In the late 1990s, several government bills open up policy processes to interest groups, in particular regional and sustainable development and urban policy. Associations become thus an increasingly institutionalized part of public deliberation procedures, even in areas that were not marked by sector-specific corporatism.

A second function of associations in political life in France comes with the first. Since associations now participate in politics on behalf of very diverse sets of groups in French society, they act as identity communities that allow for a heterogeneous representation of French citizens. Political parties no longer contribute to the mass integration of well defined social groups. As they have turned into parliamentary and campaign organizations that are largely candidate-centred, identification with political parties and party loyalty are declining (Manin 1997: 193-235). In this context, associations seem to provide an alternative to what some criticize as outdated ideological cleavages. Participation in sector and issue-specific groups is seen as an instrument to "modernize politics", to bring it closer to citizens and their preoccupations (Barthélemy 2000: 92). Put differently, associations allow for a representation of what is experienced as the new structure of French society. According to Alain Touraine (1991), the vertical organization of society around the capital/labor conflict is being replaced by a horizontal organization of society around a centre of insiders that are integrated into the labour market, surrounded by a periphery of excluded outsiders. Unlike the traditional social partners and political parties that are still marked by the vertical cleavages of society, associational representation promises to give a voice to those that would otherwise be left out of the system of representation. The associations of "withouts", those without citizenship rights (les sans papiers), employment or housing, are an example of this trend. Just like economic exclusion, political exclusion is one of the primary reasons for political engagement: in many cases, associations form to politicize issues that its members consider to be insufficiently treated in the established political process, such as gender relations, racial discrimination, homosexual rights, child protection or ecological issues.

However, while associations serving as identity communities perform an important function, one should be careful not to overestimate their capacity to create trust and civic engagement more generally (see [START_REF] Mayer | Democracy in France: Do Associations Matter?[END_REF], a hypothesis often put forward by the social capital literature. Where political representation is experienced as a failure, associational participation does little to remedy political conflict, as one might argue in light of the recurrent outbreaks of violence in the French suburbs.

A final function of associations is their role as local networks to which the French government delegates important implementation and surveillance tasks. As Grossman and Saurugger (2004: 211) note, the new state-society equilibrium results in "increased autoregulation of a number of public policies." Depending on the sector and the issue, it is not uncommon to see private actors govern different elements of public policy without any or with only limited intervention from the state or the traditional social partners. In the context of decentralization, Le Galès (2006: 203) highlights that associations act as quasi-services for local government by running festive or social services, and that private-public partnership are common in the provision of environment, transport or housing services. This echoes Lallement's insistence on the contractualization of French society: where they appear to represent legitimate stakeholders in a policy process, associations may be called upon to assure new forms of regulation for the issues that concern them.

Conclusion

The rise of associations clearly responds to changes in the French state-society relations. Many of the central elements of statist policy-making are transforming and have moved towards greater inclusion of non-governmental actors. While [START_REF] Levy | Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France[END_REF] rightly noticed the partial incapacity of the traditional social partners to rise up to these new opportunities, it is difficult to argue that the statist tradition has stifled associational participation in all aspects of French political life. On the contrary, associational life is striving and non-governmental groups participate actively in both the elaboration and the implementation of new policy initiatives.

Announcing the advent of pluralism and a retreat of the state would nonetheless fail to capture the current French model of state-society relations. By organizing and monitoring the contractualization of society, the French state remains in control over socio-economic reforms and paces both the agenda-setting and the schedules of reform. This applies to associational participation as well as the relationship with the traditional social partners. A recent reform proposal of French labour contracts was given to the social partners for discussion, but 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

FIGURE 3

 3 FIGURE 3 ABOUT HERE

AnnexFigure

  Figure 1: Associations in France, 1975-2005

  (2007) and Decool Rapport (2005) for estimation of total number of associations

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Total of association creations by sector of activity, 1975-2005

Figure

  Figure 3: Strikes in France in the private sector

  Whether they are politically active as interest groups or not, associations have become a visible feature of French society in the second half of the Fifth Republic. To begin with, the steep rise in the number of associations in France is striking. One million are estimated to exist in France today, which is twice as much as in the mid-eighties. Figures are most precise for the creation of associations, which are recorded to As table 1 indicates, only 5% of all French aged 15 or older are members of a trade union or a professional association, while 19% belong to a sports club.

	TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE
	Grouping associations according to the motivation of the participants, the National
	Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) distinguishes between groups formed in
	the pursuit of specific activities (sport and culture), social interaction between like-minded
	groups (elderly, church, local, alumni, veterans and retired people) and the defence of
	interests (unions and professional associations, humanitarian, parents-teacher or housing). In
	2002, sport and cultural associations accounted for 37% of all membership, principally from
	the young parts of the population, associations aiming for social interaction accounted for
	27% of memberships and interest representation amounted to 36% of all membership

average around 60 000 annually in recent years, up from around 25 000 creations per year in the mid-1970s (see figure

1

). 3 21,6 million French aged 15 or older -over 45% of the population of France -held at least one associational membership in 2002. Due to multiple memberships, associations throughout France were able to count 35,6 million members

[START_REF] Febvre | La vie associative en 2002: 12 millions de bénévoles[END_REF]

.

FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

A break-down by sector of activity of associations created each year indicates that a large part of these associations are not primarily political groups but cover issues such as education and training (e.g. parent-teacher associations or specialized education), local social activities (e.g. family, health or old age), housing (e.g. neighbourhood associations), athletic activities or leisure activities (see figure

2

).

FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE

One may suspect that creations per year do not give a complete picture of the associational landscape, because these figures cannot indicate differences in longevity according to sector. Professional groups, for example, might have a longer life span than neighbourhood associations or sport and music clubs. But even when one looks at the membership percentages in French society, associations promoting leisure activities remain at the top.

  In 2004, the Ministry for Youth and Athletics became the Ministry for Youth, Athletics and Associational Life, giving France for the first time in history a minister charged with the development of associations, Jean-François Lamour.5 In a speech to the Economic and Social Council, Lamour interprets this decision as a desire by the President and the Prime Minister to acknowledge publicly that intermediary groups have become "essential to the exercise of democracy and the development of social ties." His mission is thus to "make participatory democracy In opposition to traditional French thought, he stresses that "the state does not have the monopoly of the public interest." 7 This is a remarkable break with the past, where French politicians insisted that groups are a threat to democracy and the expression of public interest. Indeed, public administration under the Fifth Republic has put an increasing emphasis on group consultation. Consultation happens not only in the Economic and Social Council, which Appleton (2005: 57) calls the "lynchpin of the Gaullist vision of a political process of concertation," but also in an impressive number of councils, commissions and committees open to participation from representatives of different stake-holder groups. In 1971, the number of consultative organs was estimated at 500 councils, 1200 commissions and 3000 committees, whereas a recent government estimate that Appleton cites put the total number at 20 000, including 645 national councils. In line with this new vision, French politicians set out to clarify and institutionalize the role of associational participation in politics. In January 2003, the French government organized the first ever National Conference of Associational Life, which aimed at recognizing the role of associations in the civil dialogue, institutionalizing relations with public actors and facilitating voluntary service within associations.

meaningful, by going beyond strictly administrative debates in order to create a true civil dialogue in the public interest." 6 These declarations epitomize a turn-around in French attitudes towards associations that began over two decades ago. Already in 1983, the National Council for Associative Life (Conseil national de la vie associative -CNVA) was created as a consultative body under the auspices of the Prime Minister to survey and facilitate the work of associations in France. In a speech at the CNVA in 2004, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin had expressed his belief that decentralization needed to be accompanied by the social cohesion that association can provide. According to him, "the legitimacy of civil society" is crucial for a "representative and participatory democracy." This implies "not only to consult, but also to share the public interest." 8

The associational explosion and the new discourse on participatory democracy indicate that France has indeed undergone a "participatory turn", much comparable to other European democracies (see

Maloney and Roßteutscher 2007)

. However, this does not mean

Table 1 : Membership by association, 2005

 1

	Associations

Source : INSEE, permanent survey on life conditions, 2005. Note : Metropolitan France, age 15 or older. Percentages do not add up due to double membership.

Working days lost to public sector strikes have now overtaken private sector strikes, with much noticed peaks in1989, 1995, 2000 and 2007. Starting in 1996, transport sector strikes are excluded from the private sector statistics and grouped with public sector transport strikes. For further discussion, seeLallement (2006: 63).

« Patronat et organisations syndicales: un système à bout de souffle », Le Monde Economie, Dossier Spécial, 30 octobre 2007, p. i-viii.

All of the new unions are not recognized as representative organizations, even though each of them represents more members than some of the smaller recognized ones. SeeAndolfatto and Labbé (2006a).

For discussion and a French perspective, see[START_REF] Blondiaux | L'impératif délibératif[END_REF]

The election of Laurence Parisot, CEO of a French public opinion research institute, as president of Medef in 2005 confirms the importance of this strategy.

Remi Barroux, « Contrat de travail unique : la négociation ou la loi », Le Monde, 7 septembre 2007.

Nicolas Sarkozy tellingly announced that the French government will take over the policy initiative if the negotiating parties failed to develop an agreement by the end of 2007. 14 Furthermore, by decentralizing negotiations and multiplying the forums for deliberation, the French government has actually increased its autonomy from societal groups.

If negotiations advance at different speeds in separate forums, it becomes much harder to organize nation-wide resistance, even on issues which apply in a similar manner to a diverse set of stakeholders. By orchestrating protest into competitive or cooperative deliberation and by including associations as stakeholders that it can partially delegate policy tasks to if it so chooses, the French state firmly remain in the driving seat of socio-economic governance.

In comparison, the developments in France illustrate two more general trends that have been observed in a number of countries. First, governments now orient their policies to encourage associations in order to foster social capital. Despite the traditional mistrust in France towards all forms of civil groups, the French government now supports associational life and increasingly consults with stakeholders and interest groups. This participatory turn leads to an extensive and lively association tissue and presents a move towards pluralist policy-making. Second, neo-corporatist institutions are increasingly under pressure, even in a country which was always a mixed case with a special emphasis on jointly management sectoral governance. The paradox of the participatory turn comes from these two simultaneous movements. The social partners are least able to benefit from the changes in French state-society relations, because they have to straddle an old system that many argue should be reformed and new opportunities, which they will only be able to seize if they can reinvent themselves. 3 Since no information is supplied when associations cease to operate, the total of existing associations in France relies on various estimation procedures. See Decool (2005: 9-12). 4 Summaries of events organized at the National Assembly, the Senate, the Economic and Social Council, the Constitutional Court, the European Parliament or at regional institutions in 2001 can be found in Conseil national de la vie associative (2003: 11-38). 5 This arrangement only lasted until May 2007. Following the merging of several responsibilities, the Ministry is now in charge of health, youth and athletics.

6 Jean François Lamour's speech of 8 July 2004 is reproduced in Conseil national de la vie associative (2007).

7 Jean-Pierre Raffarin's speech of 10 March 2004 is reproduced in Conseil national de la vie associative (2007). 8 The measures adopted or initiated at this conference include an increased reliance on consultation and information, increased financial aid to associations, as well as recognitions and rewards for voluntary service. A complete list can be found in Conseil national de la vie associative (2007: 65).