4 ms·

I don't know where you get the idea from that France had bad institutions, but I can not disagree more. They have a long track record of stellar institutions, m

I don't know where you get the idea from that France had bad institutions, but I can not disagree more. They have a long track record of stellar institutions, most of the continental law tradition was modelled after the French 'code civil' implemented at the beginning of the 19th century. The grand Ecoles produced excellent scholars and administrators as is also evident from the scientific output in the 19th century, only rivalled (surpasses) by England and Germany. It was well understood also that any European bureaucracy would be dominated by Frenchmen, because they simply were the best.

cdavid 7y ago
The topic is complex, but France was (and still is) a very centralized country, compared to the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, or what would become Germany. And you had fewer, bigger land owners. It is often argued that it is only through competition with all those neighbors that it managed to modernize. That's what Rodrik alluded to in the talk I mentioned earlier. And still today, agriculture is more important to our French psyché than it tends to be in other countries in the north and the west.