Putting the “problem” on the agenda

12The idea of a reform to give universities more autonomy emerged in France well before the 2007 campaign, based on negative assessments of how universities were functioning. Many actors, politicians, and academics were alarmed by their lack of resources, and by systems of governance and resource management that were often perceived as ineffective.  [16] Another major concern was the fact that the best graduates were passing over universities in favor of the elite grandes écoles, and that many students were leaving university without a degree or professional qualification.  [17] These problems were raised repeatedly by student organizations like UNEF, the Confédération étudiante (CE) (Student Confederation), or the Fédération des associations générales étudiantes (FAGE) (Federation of General Student Associations).  [18] They were also raised by higher education professionals, particularly through statements by their unions and the group “Sauvons la recherche” (Save Research), which was created in 2003, and by organizing the États généraux de la recherche (Estates General for Research) in Grenoble the following year.  [19]

13As we show, however, through the CPU,  [20] university presidents played a leading role in generating a perception of emergency and especially in promoting solutions involving greater university autonomy.  [21] This agenda-setting process took place during the 2000s, when higher education issues were highly visible—something linked to transnational developments like the Bologna process and to large-scale social movements in French universities, most emblematically the mobilization in spring of 2006 against the contrat de première embauche (CPE) (first job contract). More generally, there was increased international competition, with the emergence of comparison tools like the Shanghai ranking, whose criteria revealed the poor performance of the French academic system.  [22]

14But the perception of “problems” in French universities did not take place as a direct response to demands at the international level. Rather, it came about through the commitment to these ideas by strategically important actors.  [23] They did not agree about diagnoses of the problems or possible solutions. On the contrary: following Joseph Gusfield, we can observe that public problems are defined in a field of conflict in which various groups of actors compete to claim intellectual ownership of the problems and solutions and to determine the causalities at work.  [24] Among these actors, university presidents played a decisive role. Over the years, they produced many alarming diagnoses—in the form of op-eds, for example.  [25] But above all, they managed to put higher education on the agenda and promote their reform proposals by establishing themselves as the main source of expertise on higher education. This was shown by the many hearings of university presidents in parliament,  [26] and by their involvement in numerous reports commissioned by successive governments. For example, Bernard Belloc, former president of the University of Toulouse I and vice-president of the CPU (from 2000 to 2002), was commissioned by Luc Ferry in 2002-03 to consider reforming the status of lecturers,  [27] and consulted in 2005 by Christian Blanc, who was preparing a report on French competitiveness. In 2005, Patrick Hetzel, former university president and rector of the Academy of Limoges from 2005 to 2007, was appointed president of the commission set up by the government to consider ways of forming stronger links between universities and the professional world.  [28] These reports identify many dysfunctional aspects of French universities. Such assessments echoed past findings,  [29] and were reproduced in other reports by Parliament and the Cour des comptes.  [30] As insiders, university presidents played a central role in the criticism of their institutions, whose shortcomings gradually came to be recognized as a public problem.

The promotion of “autonomy” as a solution

15As we have seen, university presidents benefited from a particular context and worked in conjunction with other actors to help put higher education on the political agenda. They played a more distinctive role in promoting solutions that involved reforming university governance to increase autonomy.

16In various forms, the principle had been circulating in the debate for decades. In France, claims that universities possessed insufficient autonomy from the state go back to the nineteenth century.  [31] This was the principle behind the 1968 Faure Act and the 1984 Savary Act. In 1986, the Devaquet Act was supposed to place universities in competition with each other, and open the door to selective student admissions, the issuing of degrees at a local level, and variable student fees. Following massive student protests, their violent repression, and police brutality which led to the death of Malik Oussekine, the minister Alain Devaquet had to resign, and the bill was withdrawn. Its provisions were not abandoned, but repeated attempts over the following decades to put them back on the legislative agenda consistently encountered major protests.  [32] In his manifesto for the 2002 presidential election,  [33] Jacques Chirac promised to “increase university autonomy.” But Luc Ferry, the minister in charge of the reform, was soon ousted from the government. His replacement, Fillon, withdrew the bill in late 2004, having concluded that it was too controversial.

17A careful examination of the genesis of these successive reform proposals reveals that expert activity and mobilization by university presidents were an important factor in the persistence of the principle of increased autonomy in the policy stream. Our interviews show the centrality of university presidents in the production of higher education policies. In particular, we reconstructed a dense network of former university presidents employed in the Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche (MENESR) (ministry of schools, higher education and research). For example, in the early 1990s, Bernard Belloc was involved in several working groups formed by MENESR. Other influential (former) university presidents mentioned in interviews include Jean-Pierre Finance, who joined Jack Lang’s cabinet at the ministry of education, Josy Reiffers, Luc Ferry’s deputy chief of staff while Ferry was in charge of the same ministry, Bernard Dizambourg, an adviser to Claude Allègre at MENESR, and Jean-Marc Monteil, director-general of the Direction générale de l’Enseignement supérieur (DGES) (directorate-general for higher education) from 2002 to 2007. More recently, Éric Froment, a member of the Conference of European Rectors (1994-98), general-delegate of the CPU (1998-2001), and founding president of the Association of European Universities (2001-05), held positions at the DGES (from 2005 to August 2007). Bernard Carrière, president of the CPU’s research commission (2004-06), was heavily involved in defining policies on university sites and research centers before becoming an adviser to MENESR.

18These actors were the most visible figures in a reformist coalition in favor of a “modernization” of universities, involving increased autonomy and a “presidentialist” approach—which was clearly to their benefit. The place they occupied in a dense network at the intersection of universities, political parties, and administration allowed them to promote these principles. The sustained involvement by university presidents with a common vision in drafting higher education reports helps explain why their conclusions are so consistent. Whether the minister at the time came from the left or the right, university presidents worked together to advocate greater autonomy for higher education institutions. This was the case for the Attali Report (1998), the Belloc Report (2003), and the Hetzel Report (2006), cited above, as well as the Camdessus Report, commissioned in May 2004 by Sarkozy to consider ways of stimulating the economy.  [34]

19Even more directly, university presidents were closely involved in the development of reform projects. Josy Reiffers, in particular, was central to the 2003 bill led by Ferry. Jean-Marc Monteil also worked on several reforms, including the transition to the “undergraduate-masters-doctorate” system, the reform to doctoral programs, and the 2006 Research Agenda Act.

The mobilization of individual university presidents and the formation of an interest group capable of playing the role of political entrepreneur

20While individual university presidents had influenced previous bills, Sarkozy’s commitment to the measure in his manifesto and the development of the LRU Act became the focus of a more collective representation of interests by the CPU. This was made possible by an increase within the CPU of the number of university presidents seeking increased autonomy. From 2004 to 2006, its first vice-president, Yannick Vallée, worked actively to promote greater university autonomy. At the end of his term, in December 2006, Finance, Michel Lussault, and Thierry Coulhon were selected on the basis of a commitment to use the following year to promote their own conception of university autonomy.  [35] This program was paralleled inside the CPU, which organized a conference in March 2006 to clarify its position on autonomy, cooperation, and university funding.  [36] Although there was opposition from within the CPU, it was unable to form an organized front against such an amorphous conception of autonomy.  [37]

21The positions taken by the CPU had a determining effect because of the group’s increasing visibility, which came with the “Sauvons la recherche” movement, the student protests of 2006, and the Research Agenda Act. Gilles de Robien, minister for higher education and research, and his minister delegate François Goulard, had to bring discussion to a close by declaring that autonomy was not on the agenda.  [38] But they could not prevent a public debate from taking place in 2007, and increasingly came to see this issue as an inevitable theme in the election.  [39] The 2006 Research Agenda Act adopted most of the measures from the abandoned reform of 2003—using staff with reduced job security and including companies in the definition of university institutions—but did not address university governance questions.

22The CPU’s mobilization increased in the run-up to the presidential election. This activism developed in an informal way, through personal contact between members of the CPU and political actors who might be able to initiate a reform. For instance, describing the period 2004-06, Yannick Vallée says:

23

I may have been slightly involved in starting the debate. I remember being with Fillon in Sweden. I had the chance to take the small plane with him and so to discuss it on two occasions for two hours. Monteil was also on the plane. He was director general for higher education at the time... Fillon was fairly well disposed to what I had to say.  [40]

24These exchanges were accompanied by a veritable campaign by the CPU: there were public calls to “reestablish” higher education,  [41] the États généraux de la recherche was brought forward to February 2007 to allow candidates in the presidential election to adopt its proposals,  [42] and there were exchanges with each of the candidates. Sarkozy turned out to be the most receptive to their arguments, and frequent contact was maintained afterwards.  [43] Following Kingdon, who argues that the receptivity of political decision-makers depends less on the partisan nature of the proposal than on the coherence of the political entrepreneur,  [44] it seems likely that the CPU’s relative cohesion helped persuade Sarkozy to adopt their position. As a result, starting in 2005, when he publicly argued for increased university autonomy, he did so using the proposals specified and negotiated earlier with the CPU, and the multiple reports published over the previous decade, mentioned above. In interviews, his advisers explained his motivations for promising greater university autonomy by referring to the fundamental problems the CPU had been discussing for several decades.

An effective strategy for appropriating issues from the Socialist Party

27In the months leading up to the 2007 election, Sarkozy faced a double challenge: he had to win the support of his party, in competition with Michèle Alliot-Marie and Dominique de Villepin, and he then had to win a second round of voting, which was expected to be a contest with the Socialist candidate. In this context, he presented himself as the candidate of “renewal” within his own camp, distancing himself from Chirac and his circle, including de Villepin. Sarkozy had campaigned vigorously for university reform since 2005, and this issue offered him a place to distinguish himself by demonstrating substantial willpower.  [48] Beginning in the fall, he increased pressure on the government, calling for “modernization” and “genuine autonomy” for universities and proposing a pilot scheme in volunteer universities  [49]—demands echoed by some UMP deputies.  [50]

28The decision to place university autonomy on the agenda also made sense in the context of the UMP’s opposition to the Socialist Party. Historically, education and the university have been favorite issues of the left—a case of “issue ownership,” in the sense proposed by John Petrocik.  [51] Although the literature has long regarded partisan competition as a struggle to define the agenda, each striving to bring “their own” issues to the fore,  [52] we now know that it is not in any party actor’s interest to abandon an issue to a competitor, and that the ownership of issues is hotly contested.  [53] The appropriation of issues associated with the Socialist Party was central to Sarkozy’s campaign. Emmanuelle Mignon explains that he asked her to work “without taboos,” and that she tried to discuss matters as broadly as possible, including with experts close to the left like Allègre, a socialist, with whom she spoke about higher education.  [54] This strategy led them to “preempt” a series of issues associated with the left: social justice, discrimination, school education, and universities.

29The appropriation of university issues, and the framing of these in terms of autonomy, gives a very clear example of this approach. In his speech at the UMP policy conference on higher education in October 2006, Sarkozy called on the right to come out of its “torpor” on the subject. With a certain irony, he addressed university lecturers:

30

You may think that, in the past, the left was the way forward. Well, today, the way forward is with us! We support your values: work, meritocracy, progress.  [55]

31The newspaper L’Humanité commented:

32

For a long time, with the exception of General de Gaulle, the right has had very uneasy relations with academics. This is an electorate Nicolas Sarkozy now hopes to win over.  [56]

33This logic was also expressed during our exchange with Belloc:

34

Nicolas Sarkozy is at his best when he makes speeches where he’s not expected to... No one was expecting him to speak on higher education. His speech at the Mutualité hall in October 2006 was very interesting, especially coming from the world of the right... He was leading from the front. He said: “Those on the right, until now, have been lazy rulers, especially on this subject; the left had the monopoly over this sector and what did they produce? Hopeless universities.” And no one can deny it, when we compare our universities with many European and North American countries! He said, “Listen, I’m going to do it. It’s not the left, it’s not the right, I’ll make it a subject of national interest and it will be a priority in my manifesto.“  [57]

35According to William Riker, electorally, contesting the issue ownership of one’s opponents is particularly strategically important when there is consensus on the issue in one’s own camp, and when it divides the opposition  [58]: on this model, a “wedge issue” can split apart the opposition camp.  [59] The polysemy of the concept of autonomy allowed Sarkozy to create an “ambiguous consensus” in his own camp and to target voters beyond the right’s traditional electoral segments, while exposing divisions on the left.

The construction of an “ambiguous consensus” in Sarkozy’s camp and a “wedge” among the Socialists

36Sarkozy’s campaign team was marked by several deep divisions: the most economically liberal among them, including Mignon and Fillon, were opposed to those who belonged to the social Gaullist tradition, like Henri Guaino, Sarkozy’s speechwriter. The team was also divided on some social issues and on internationalization, both in terms of globalization and European integration. Some of its members were uncomfortable with the importance given to the theme of national identity from March 2007. These divergences were reflected in the shifting positions adopted by the campaign, which changed according to the context and the timing, and in the voters Sarkozy targeted.  [60] In this context, the apparent consensus on university autonomy seemed remarkable:

37

There were loads of points of agreement, people generally felt the same way. I remember very well, for example, that when we had prepared the UMP convention on higher education... even people like Axel Kahn, who leans to the left, totally agreed with the principle of autonomy.  [61]

38It was the polysemy—even the ambiguity—of the concept of autonomy that allowed this consensus to emerge: given the situation, autonomy was sought in terms of pedagogy, resource management, recruitment, so-called “innovative” research funding, and strategic decisions like the reorganization of institutions into large research centers.  [62] Some actors thought that the state of public finances meant revisiting the question of free higher education. Others wanted to strengthen relations with the private sector through grants for doctoral programs, joint research teams, and work on topics of interest to the private sector.

39The idea of autonomy took on very different dimensions depending on the context, the field, and the actor. This polysemy created an ambiguity, in the sense in which public policy analysis (particularly MSF) defines the term: “a situation in which a phenomenon can be understood in different ways.”  [63] Unlike the concept of uncertainty, which refers to the inability to accurately predict the outcome of a process, ambiguity is closer to ambivalence.  [64] It is a key element in the execution of reforms: its presence makes it possible to discuss multiple solutions to a problem, and so rally a large number of actors around the reform. Bruno Palier has demonstrated this phenomenon in welfare reform (using the concept of an “ambiguous consensus”)  [65]; Nicolas Jabko has done the same for the EU single market,  [66] and Nikolaos Zahariadis for the liberalization of British transport policy.  [67] A decision-making process under conditions of organized anarchy  [68] allows for a selective presentation of preferences, defusing political conflicts by promoting the discussion of solutions that make sense for different audiences.  [69]

40The ambiguous concept of autonomy played an important role in the development of the position of Sarkozy and his party on higher education. This general principle made it possible to put on the agenda a set of reforms about university finances and internal governance, human resource management, and their relations with society and business. These did not necessarily go hand in hand; taken individually, they would not have attracted such a broad coalition. This flexible operationalization of the concept had already made it possible to bring together a majority of university presidents within the CPU itself, and it now allowed Sarkozy’s camp to converge on a shared position.

41

As always, there was a lot left unsaid, ambiguities. François Fillon had a very fundamentalist conception of what needed to be done. Nicolas Sarkozy probably already had the idea that we would only take the reform halfway. But it was an idea that was quite unifying. Everyone was behind it.  [70]

42More broadly still, the very open wording of the promise, combined with the commitment to elevate French universities to the rank of the world’s best, enabled the candidate to draw support from voters beyond the traditional electorate of the right. During the campaign and the negotiation process, the various provisions associated with the principle of autonomy were put forward selectively, depending on the public that was being addressed. Sarkozy used autonomy to develop arguments associated with the left (promising to guarantee universal access to university) or the right (excellence in training and research, the use of private-sector financial resources to finance the university). In advance of the election, for example, he secured the support of Julie Coudry, one of the leaders of the movement against the CPE and president of the EC from 2003 to 2008, by promising to include in the legislation an additional project for universities to undertake: facilitating the integration of students in the workforce, one of the EC’s central demands.  [71] David Martinon testifies to the campaign team’s belief in the success of this strategy, describing the distinctive effect of the proposals:

43

We weren’t used to hearing a candidate say that! I was even surprised: “what’s he saying here?” Because when we look at some of the universities, we can say that they are very, very, very, very far from being the best in the world! But precisely, saying that, like that (he taps on the table), with aplomb and gusto, I thought it was likely to create a climate of enthusiasm.  [72]

44The policy was particularly interesting because the issue of university autonomy divided the officials, activists, and voters of the Socialist Party. This was manifested in differences between candidates for the Socialist primaries, which were commented on extensively in the press.  [73] Strauss-Kahn, and some of his supporters such as Allègre, were very supportive of greater university autonomy and advocated competition between universities,  [74] while Laurent Fabius opposed it; Ségolène Royal carefully avoided the subject in favor of other issues, like student living conditions. Her circle consistently referred to the Socialist Party manifesto, which advocated “the autonomous management of institutions, within the framework of a national budget.” But, as the union representative Jean Fabbri observed, she did not give any further details about this during the campaign  [75]:

45

Royal’s proposals, which we had encountered in the context of the FSU with the general secretaries of the main FSU unions, were more targeted at primary and secondary education than higher education. In a sense, she produced very general terms for her collaborators, like “autonomy” and “excellence.“  [76]

46Although Royal eventually joined Strauss-Kahn in supporting a diversification of university resources, notably through closer relations with private companies, she remained evasive on the subjects of selective admissions and student fees, admitting that she had “some doubts” about these solutions but did not wish to “close the door.” This lack of precision was criticized by the UNEF.  [77]

47This context of political competition, combined with the visibility of higher education issues in the months preceding the campaign, opened a window of opportunity for promoters of university autonomy.  [78] Sarkozy not only took up these actors’ demands, but actively helped put this reform on the agenda,  [79] and raised the stakes during the period when manifestos were being fleshed out by promising repeatedly that he would introduce legislation in summer 2007.  [80] Theories of issue competition can complement MSF in reconstructing the logic at work in the “politics stream,” and help us understand the very high priority Sarkozy gave this issue—and therefore his determination to fulfill a commitment his predecessor had not kept.

A rapid reform to defuse opposition

50Potential resistance to the LRU Act took the form of opposition from much of the academic community, manifested both in large-scale protests and confrontational negotiations conducted by unions. Actors involved in the reform had expected both forms of trouble. Students had recently demonstrated their capacity to mobilize against the CPE. And everyone we interviewed described the demonstrations in 1986 against the Devaquet Act as a traumatic event:

51

You’re still worried, especially on the right, that when you carry out a reform concerning education, that you’ll suddenly have 300,000 high school pupils, 200,000 university students on the street. And then you’re entering a danger zone... The LRU Act, given what I told you... This worry about student demonstrations... There’s also a long term in political life, that of memory. So, the events of 1986 and the death of Malik Oussekine, or the 1994 demonstrations against the “young people’s minimum wage” remain very present in the collective memory. That can rein in the spirit of reform.  [85]

52This event was obviously on everyone’s mind, and was our respondents’ main argument to explain successive failures to put the issue on the agenda in the past. Several agreed that Chirac, “paralyzed by the memory of the Devaquet affair,”  [86] wanted nothing to do with university governance reform.  [87]

53In addition to student protests, Sarkozy and his circle expected confrontational negotiations with several unions, especially the SNESUP, which several advisers described as “opposing, like traditional leftist unions, anything to do with decentralizing power,”  [88] and as “never supporting reform, on principle.”  [89] Representatives of the FSU had met with Sarkozy several times during the campaign to express their “opposition to an approach which set institutions in competition with each other, the fixation on the Shanghai ranking, the evaluation of researchers, and the presidentialization of institutions.”  [90] Implementing the commitment to increase university autonomy was likely to be a sensitive matter. After Sarkozy’s election, some commentators considered the issue politically risky, or even “explosive,” “incendiary.”  [91]

54In this context, the capacity to complete the legislative process as quickly as possible seemed like a necessary condition for adopting the reform. After the election, Sarkozy immediately confirmed his goal of holding a vote in the summer. This timetable allowed the executive to introduce the legislation during the “honeymoon period” all presidents experience immediately after their election  [92]—and during the summer vacation, which would minimize the scope of protests in universities.

55

The idea was, above all, that they didn’t want students going out on the street, and the timetable worked well [for the executive] in that respect: it was the end of the academic year, so there was little risk of student demonstrations. We held demonstrations in May, in June, a national appeal and major initiatives at the headquarters of SNESUP between July 14 and the vote on the Act, and they contacted Socialist and Communist deputies to warn them about the law—it’s true, the timetable was against us.  [93]

56This speed also made it possible to minimize the window available for expressing opposition to the bill. The multiplicity of options concealed underneath the unifying concept of “autonomy” was sustained as long as possible, and controversial points about unions and student organizations were not addressed immediately. To defuse increasing student opposition in some Parisian universities and resistance among union representatives, the higher education minister, Valérie Pécresse, used a series of negotiating strategies: providing guarantees on sensitive subjects (selective student admissions, student fees, the national degree framework), making concessions,  [94] and maintaining ambiguity on the most contentious points.

57Criticism could only fully crystallize on 19 June, when she laid out the whole reform project. These attacks came in particular from the SNESUP, the FERG-CGT, and the UNEF,  [95] which were especially concerned about the drastic reduction in the number of seats on universities’ administrative boards, and the number of these which would go to external figures. There was also criticism from the CPU, which challenged the voluntary nature of autonomy and warned against creating a two-tier university system.  [96] On 22 June, the Conseil national de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche (CNESER) (National Council for Higher Education and Research), convened by Pécresse, delivered a motion declaring the text “unacceptable in its current state.”  [97] At this point, the conflict was defused by rapid action: Pécresse had only three weeks to finalize the text—a timetable which was sharply criticized by the CPU, the FSU, the Student Confederation, the FAGE, and the UNEF, whose president, Bruno Julliard, complained that the legislation was being “forced through.”  [98]

58In fact, Pécresse presented the first version of the bill even before the working groups she had formed had made their conclusions. She had tried in vain to water down certain provisions in order to defuse opposition by students and lecturers, but had been prevented by inflexibility on the part of Fillon and the general secretary of the Élysée, Guéant.  [99] Following multiple expressions of opposition in the CNESER and the public sphere—especially petitions and opinion pieces by lecturers—Sarkozy made a show of his determination on the issue, and personally took charge of the negotiations.  [100] After meeting with CPU representatives, staff, lecturers, and student organizations, he decided to make concessions on the most contentious points in order to unblock the legislative process as quickly as possible. The adjustments related to the scope of universities’ autonomy, the number of seats on administrative boards, and selection in admissions to Masters programs:

59

Nicolas Sarkozy was really afraid to get as far as the start of the new academic year without the law being passed, which would have made things much worse. The goal was to get it through during the summer. So he asked me to find two or three points where we could make concessions. I remember a discussion with Jean-Paul Faugère, Fillon’s chief of staff, who was not too keen on having only twenty seats on the administrative boards. The advice ranged between twenty and thirty, so there was some leeway. The text at this point had also abandoned a point that the student unions had made into a real casus belli: selective admissions for the first year of a Masters. Personally, I think that on this point, we could have held out, because it was the honeymoon period, less than three months after the presidential elections. A lot of people supported it, including some unions, and the CPU was for it... These are three weaknesses that were introduced in what later became the LRU Act. But we made concessions on these points: it was a mixture of the CPU, Sarkozy’s fear of uproar, of never seeing the end of it, of not getting the law passed before the start of the academic year. And also a little bit of fear on the part of the prime minister of pushing too hard, too far.  [101]

60These developments were favorably received by the CPU, the student organizations, and several unions: during the Assises nationales de l’enseignement et de la recherche (National Conference on Education and Research) at the beginning of July, the steering committee (the FSU, CGT, UNED, FAGE, CPU, and UNSA) failed to agree that they would demand the withdrawal of the law.  [102] As had been anticipated, the timeframe of events over the summer limited the emerging protests in universities in Paris and Toulouse.  [103]

61Having been examined as a matter of urgency by the Council of State, the bill was passed by the Council of Ministers on 4 July, presented to the Senate on 12 July, and then to the National Assembly on 23 July, where it primarily received minor amendments to the wording. Despite increasingly intense protests outside parliament,  [104] the opposition did not attempt to obstruct the bill, and the debate lasted only three days. The slightly amended bill was passed by the National Assembly, with votes only from the majority UMP-NC group; the left-wing opposition eventually voted against it, criticizing the lack of resources allocated to the reform. After the Joint Committee meeting of 31 July,  [105] the LRU Act was passed on 1 August and enacted on 10 August. The implementing decrees were carried out in October. Universities now had five years to become autonomous in human resource management and budgeting.

62The act was passed by means of a very short legislative process. Its content was kept ambiguous for as long as possible, and then specified over just a few weeks at the time of the year when universities were deserted, leaving opponents with few opportunities to organize a counter-mobilization. The case of the LRU Act shows that the temporality of a reform process is a factor in the capacity to reform, and that the way a political entrepreneur (the CPU in this case) behaves in a network can help make solutions operational (as they have been prepared over a long period), and therefore strengthen the capacity to keep a promise.

A technically operational bill

63The capacity to legislate quickly was particularly great as the LRU Act was the result of earlier discussions within the CPU and in the reports and bills already mentioned. Advisers to Sarkozy and Fillon were able to drawn on all of these. Pauline Ravinet claims that “the LRU Act fully delivered the CPU’s proposals for university governance.”  [106] The expertise developed by the university presidents not only increased the incentives for Sarkozy and his government to reform higher education in response to multiple “problems,” but also strengthened their capacity to do so.

64The fundamental work of reviewing these earlier discussions in order to design a reform was based on debates that took place prior to 2007, as we showed in the first part of this article. It was partly carried out by Sarkozy’s team, led by Mignon. This brought together figures from higher education like Cédric Goubet and Matthieu Louvot, both senior officials and members of the “prospective group” that developed part of the program at the interior ministry; less regularly, the team also included Belloc and Jean-François Dhainaut, a former university president, who participated in the organization of the UMP conference on universities.  [107] Jean-Marc Monteil explained to us that Fillon created a working group to examine possible university governance reform options, and that this group capitalized on the discussions from several years previously, when he was director-general:

65

We had made files about it, the “Monteil Files,” which we had worked on collectively with the trade unions, with “Sauvons la recherche,” and that’s where the PRES, the ANR, and the AERES came from, and then later the LRU Act... The LRU Act itself was almost ready when the government was formed... Nicolas Sarkozy knew what was in the law on universities, but the work had been done upstream.  [108]

66University presidents had contributed a great deal to the available proposals and gray literature, and these provided advisers with a significant foundation that allowed them to draft the bill in just a few weeks. The first version, which we obtained, was ready in May. This phenomenon can also be seen with regard to other promises made by Sarkozy, such as his commitments regarding family reunification, which were largely inspired by the policies he had initiated as interior minister.  [109] Commonly, the fact that a public policy has already been put on the agenda leads to the formulation of electoral promises, rather than the other way round.

The porosity of political and administrative networks

67The likelihood of seeing an electoral promise fulfilled also increases with the density of the administrative network that prepares and oversees the idea. This factor is likely to vary from one political administration to another, depending on the overlap between the networks involved in producing a manifesto and producing public policies. It also depends on the sector, which determines which actors are involved at each stage.

68In the case of Sarkozy’s term of office, the reform was helped by the fact that it was mostly the same actors—senior officials and former university presidents strongly involved in the CPU, who represented a relatively homogeneous position—who drafted the presidential manifesto and who, both within ministerial cabinets and at the Elysée, helped to define the public policies adopted during the presidency. (This is not always true, as shown by the articles in this special issue on privatization under Lionel Jospin and François Hollande’s promise to close the Fessenheim nuclear power station.) Mignon is only the best known of these actors. Goubet, who was particularly involved in developing proposals for higher education, became the president’s chief of staff and one of the key players in the preparation of the LRU Act. Louvot became technical adviser to the president, having acted as rapporteur for Blanc’s report on French competitiveness, advised Sarkozy at the interior ministry, and helped draft his manifesto. Several former university presidents were also central to developing and implementing the project: after the election, many joined the cabinets of Sarkozy and Fillon, including Belloc, Hetzel, and Monteil.

69This community of actors reduced potential conflicts over how to implement the promise, accelerating the process. It also made it easier to define common ground and to negotiate the law with representatives of the CPU. Monteil acknowledged that “there was obviously a network. I knew all the university presidents. Of course, I had been a university president and had run the Directorate-General for Higher Education a few years before. I have close relations there, so obviously there was a common culture.”  [110] Belloc believes he could have been more forceful with the CPU’s request to impose autonomy on all universities, “but it was hard to be forceful against my friends in the CPU. I was very close to the first vice-president of the CPU, who had been my delegate general during my tenure as head of the CPU in the early 2000s.”  [111]

70The facilitating role of the reforming coalition built from the networks of the CPU was multiplied by the trans-partisan character of this “modernizing” coalition. The careers of several former CPU leaders who have held positions in both left-wing and right-wing ministries testify to this.  [112] While Belloc affirms his position on the right, he also claims that he worked happily with Blanc, “who comes from the left-wing tradition of Michel Rocard” and joined Sarkozy’s team in 2007; that he read the “very interesting” blog kept by Jean-Baptiste François Mela, once an adviser to Allègre and a former university president; and that during negotiations over the LRU Act he enjoyed the support of the three CPU vice-presidents, all closely associated with the left.  [113] For Thiébaut Weber, they “played a key role in this atmosphere of national unity, because they also had very good contacts on the left and with the Socialist Party,” a role confirmed by Fabbri, who mentions that there was “a fairly compatible ideological tone between Sarkozy’s camp and that of the former Socialist ministers of the time.”  [114]

71Our interviews and media analysis suggest that this modernizing coalition  [115] managed to convince a large number of stakeholders, including some union representatives, that there was widespread agreement over the law. Weber claims that “there was this context of national unity—no one called it that at the time, but the subject wasn’t particularly divisive or controversial. The two main candidates, Sarkozy and Royal, had both included university autonomy in their platforms. The LRU Act was seen as a campaign promise that was ultimately implemented without anyone really opposing it.” In fact, those like the SNESUP and FSU representatives—who dispute the claim that there was consensus on the LRU Act—say that their efforts to politicize it by alerting political representatives ran up against lack of interest and passivity:

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At the time of the adoption of the law it took a lot of energy to bring the PS round—I met François Hollande at the time—to not supporting the LRU Act... But it was extremely difficult. I met a dozen Socialist parliamentarians and was still negotiating the day before the vote in the Assembly.  [116]

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74By using a conceptual tool from public policy analysis, Kingdon’s analytic framework, to study the fulfillment of Sarkozy’s promise to increase university autonomy, and by combining this with the concept of political capacity, we can highlight a factor that has so far been neglected in research into electoral commitments: the presence of a policy entrepreneur, acting within networks, who can strengthen incentives to promise and realize a measure, and who can facilitate this realization. We have shown that, in a context exacerbated by issue competition, Sarkozy endorsed a project that had matured in sectoral administrative and political networks where the CPU occupies a central position. This policy entrepreneur intervened in both the creation of the manifesto and the development of the promised reform, and played a role in both Sarkozy’s incentives and his capacity to respect his commitment. In line with existing work on agenda setting, our case study suggests that the likelihood of a promise being kept increases considerably when a political entrepreneur is present who can identify a problem, present themselves as a legitimate interlocutor, propose a solution (perhaps by capitalizing on its ambiguity) which has long been prepared within the “problem stream,” and facilitate its realization.

75The importance of a political entrepreneur depends on two main types of resources, which can affect both the executive’s intention and its capacity to keep its word. The first is the long-term production of expertise, which helps put both the problem and its solution on the agenda, and speeds up the development of an operational decision. The second is a dense network of actors located at the border between the sector involved, politics, and administration—manifested at the individual level in career paths and personal friendships. Our case study shows the value of analyzing the networks involved in the creation of electoral manifestos, which may develop according to very different methods depending on the period and the political parties involved. The existence of such a network facilitated the implementation of Sarkozy’s commitment to reform university governance, but also explains why the Socialist Party, in power since 2012, failed to “reform the LRU Act,”  [117] in spite of Hollande’s pledge to do so, or to review the ANR or the AERES—all established by right-wing governments. Depending on the case, policy entrepreneurs and their trans-partisan networks, such as the one we have identified in the field of university policy, can act as either catalysts or inhibitors in the fulfillment of electoral promises. They therefore constitute an essential dimension of the credibility of these promises.  [118]