Paul Krugman, as he calls it, “vacationing with the enemy,” during a walking trip in France, undisclosed location, 2003.

This post covers Paul Krugman’s views on France between 1990 and 2010 as expressed in his public, non-academic writings. Knowing the champion of American liberalism’s past views helps place his current criticism of the euro crisis in context and highlights similarities and differences with European progressives.

These views can be summarized:

• Criticism of the French project of abandoning the franc in favor of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU, which created the euro).
• Despair at the excessively symbolic, factually-challenged nature of French economic debate, in particular willful denial on the causes of high unemployment (in his view, overregulated labor markets and the dysfunctions of EMU).
• A strong belief in the power of the French State to act meaningfully in a globalized world.
• Praise for specific regulatory achievements of the French State in areas such as Internet access and healthcare.
• Praise for the “French way of life” as a more balanced, secure and healthy form of economic life.

There is a clear shift in Krugman’s writings. In the 1990s, his writing features his trademark biting analysis and humor, but he is more dispassionate. He sees mainly irrationality: The French are going against their interests in creating the euro, are doing nothing to tackle unemployment, and are in denial as to their own State’s ability (without “Europe”) to manage challenges in a “globalized” world. In the 2000s, with Bush in the White House, his writing is more polemical. Krugman the American liberal can can only look longingly across the Atlantic: France embodies the rational State, managing capitalism in the public interest, while his own country is ruined by an incoherent federal government beholden to business oligopolies and a corrupted pseudo-free market ideology.

I have used the Unofficial Paul Kruman Archive, Krugman’s retro 1990s website, and his New York Times op-ed archive to write this post.

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