The Global Concert: France and the International Order, 1974-1983 35 views

This dissertation examines the global economic and political crisis of the 1970s from the point of view of France and its policymakers. After almost three decades of postwar prosperity, democratic capitalism was in crisis: the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates among capitalist economies in 1971, and the substantial oil shock after the 1973 Yom Kippur War led to widespread inflation, unemployment and deficits. Consequently, the 1970s became a fluid moment in which different actors tried to shape the disintegration of the postwar international order. What did the French response to what many called the “crisis of capitalism” look like, and what were its longer-term consequences for France, Europe, and the world? This dissertation argues that Paris responded to this crisis with an attempt to implement something that I label as the “global concert.” It was a technocratic approach to global affairs that centered concertation and drew a direct line between international diplomacy, global economy, and domestic stabilization. Policymakers in Paris wanted humans and their longer-term interest in stability, rather than markets or vague notions of social justice, to control the global economy. Eventually, French technocrats believed that the stability stemming from concertation in the international economy would reaffirm the credibility of democratic capitalism in France and across the West. Unlike much of the current scholarship that is focused on American and Third World responses to the crisis of the 1970s, this dissertation highlights Paris’s role in organizing the international politics of the decade. It illuminates how French leaders sought to employ monetary politics, their country’s role as an intermediary in North-South affairs, and European integration to implement its conception of the international order. Paris managed to organize international affairs in some capacity in the mid-1970s but eventually had to abandon its global ambition late in the decade. The vestiges of French technocrats’ vision, though, remained present in the organization of European politics and its use on the world stage.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

France; Cold War; European History; International History; Economic History; Diplomacy

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-04-29