HOW PASSIVITY IS DETRIMENTAL TO PUBLIC ACTION FAVOURING SENIOR CITIZENS: THE APPROACH OF THE FRENCH STATE LOOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT SENIORS' WELL-BEING.

• Date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Faderne, Aurelien

INTRODUCTION

Deciding who is best suited to support senior citizens in need is a pressing question. For a long time, intergenerational solidarity was the norm. Families lived under one roof, as homes were owned by older members and then passed on to children. This pattern of cohabitation was still used by 15% of the French population in 1962. It has declined strongly since. (1)

For poor elderly people, hospices have disappeared, while generational solidarity has lost ground in a society that is increasingly based on individualism. The State (L 'Etat or France's central government) is commonly seen in France as the 'engine of social cohesion'. (2) It has naturally been called on to respond to this development and care for people entering their senior years who find themselves in a situation of need. The decline in family solidarity has happened at the same time as profound changes in French society, many of which have hampered public policy efforts intended to provide assistance to senior citizens. These include transformative demographic changes and rising public deficits (which need to be controlled). Reforms carried out for the purpose of meeting public expectations around new problems have had damaging impacts on the lives of senior citizens. Examples include the disappearance of human bonds in the use of public money, bonds which are often important for persons isolated socially; spending cuts required by national efforts to reduce deficits; aging infrastructure and overcrowding in institutions meeting the needs of seniors. In sum, although the French State continues to support seniors in many areas (including pensions, public care facilities, and policies to support those experiencing isolation), the broader objectives of the State in recent decades have often led to make choices with negative consequences for France's oldest citizens. For several reasons, but especially because of budgetary constraints, the State has often forced to disengage. These consequences are contra to the French tradition of the welfare state and obligation to protect and support citizens in vulnerable situations.

To the extent that elderly people are especially likely to experience vulnerability in ways that require regular support and assistance from Public Action, the French state has traditionally played a special role in the lives of elderly people. The Academie Frangaise dictionary defines the term 'vulnerability' as the one that can be injured or attacked. (3) Older persons are not inevitably more vulnerable than others, as described by Lydie Dutheil-Warolin:

Old age could then only be conceived as a cause of vulnerability if it creates a "special" dependence on others. Vulnerability could thus result from the fact that the elderly person is physically dependent on others for his or her travel, from being subject to a regime of protection in accordance with domestic law ... or from any other natural incapacity reducing his or her autonomy. (4) Vulnerability for older adults is also enhanced by dependence on public policies and the public sector in multiple ways: as public service positions are eliminated (and older adults lose an interlocutor); as declining public investments mean, for example, a loss of quality care facilities.

The first part of this paper will be devoted to the new forms of Public Action constrained by budgetary rationalisation, as the counter, the public employees and the public institution give way to IT procedures, and the impact of budgetary control on the State's social and fiscal policy. These transformations have had a significant financial and human impacts on elderly persons. In the second part, I argue that the greater dependence of older adults on the State creates a corresponding obligation to modify public policy in ways that are more responsive to senior citizens' needs thereby reducing vulnerability. This includes renovating reception facilities and providing support to economic and family actors, through incentives, to address problems associated with isolation.

I SENIOR CITIZENS AS 'COLLATERAL VICTIMS' OF PUBLIC POLICY ADAPTING TO MODERN SOCIETY

Significant public policy shifts in France, adapting to social changes on global and national levels, have obliged the State to make reforms affecting the lives of seniors on a human (subsection A) and economic level (sub-section B). These as discussed below.

1. The Breaking of Human Bonds with Seniors by the Rationalisationn of Public Services

1. The Dematerialisation and Dehumanisation of Social Bonds Enabled by Public Services

Decision-making in France has become de-centralised and diversified. The State is historically, and remains, the most important actor. Nevertheless, over time, policy and public action have decentralised state power. There has been a multiplication of levels of local government which has allowed elected officials to carry out policies closer to users. As a result, and as competencies have been transferred through the devolution of responsibilities (referred to a decentralisation in France), a tight mesh of public services has emerged at several levels of local government. This was a 'blissful' age when more than 36,000 local communes (the basic administrative unit throughout the country) each had a railway station, a post office and a school. (5)

Two phenomena, one endogenous, the other exogenous, gave rise to numerous forces which threatened this social network and the way of life it enabled for citizens generally, and senior citizens in particular. As the competencies of newly-created levels of local government expanded, spending rose, and France's layer-cake of local government became increasingly expensive as it thickened. (6) French and European requirements that public deficits and debts be stabilised led to reforms, including the rationalisation of territorial structures (cutting the layer cake). (7) Cuts in the territorial presence of public services followed those cuts in the layer-cake, to such an extent that it may now be asked whether the 'continuity of public services'--a constitutional requirement--is being threatened on the local level. (8) At the same time, technological innovations and progress in communication have meant that information technology (IT) has been substituted for humans in many areas of public service, allowing for reductions in wages payable by local governments (consistent with deficit reduction objectives and the cuts in the layer cake). For years now, public administrations have been pursuing practices of digitisation and 'dematerialisation' with the result that physical offices have been closed and physical contacts between public sector employees and citizens eliminated. Some procedures are now conducted entirely...