This book offers a new interpretation of the transformation of French economic policymaking and state-society relations over the past twenty-five years. France has long been characterized as a statist or "dirigiste" political economy, with state "strength" predicated on autonomy from a weak and divided civil society. Jonah Levy shows that this disdain for societal and local institutions has come back to haunt French officials. Levy argues that just as the French state has been weakened by an absence of societal and local partners, French civil society has been weakened by the absence of a supportive state.