The Political Economy of Discontent, the “Gilets Jaunes” Movement in France

Julio Lopez shows us in this article that the genesis of the movement of "yellow vests" in France owes a lot to the discontent of the middle classes. These middle classes were largely the victims of an economic globalization, which undermined the French welfare state so widely developed during the “thirty glorious years”. Contrary to the myth of a France that never reforms, the liberal counter-revolution initiated in the mid-1980s profoundly changed the French economic system, particularly in peripheral France.