Abstract The French welfare system is characteristic of those ‘immovable objects’ (Pierson 1998) often found in Continental Europe. As in the German and other Continental European cases, French social policies are usually considered to be not only the most in need of reform, but also the most difficult to change (Esping-Andersen 1996; Scharpf, Schmidt 2000; Pierson 2001). The resistance to change demonstrated by welfare programs is commonly analyzed as a consequence of path dependence phenomena (Pierson 1998, 2000). Most of what has happened in French social policy since the 1980s can be related to the field of path dependence (blockages, strikes and demonstrations, limited and difficult cutbacks; Palier 2000). One can argue that it is the institutional design of the French welfare system that explains why it is so difficult to change (Bonoli and Palier 2000). However, the data on welfare state development in France also show that a series of deep, even transformative changes have occurred, emerging first in the late 1980s and manifesting their full impact and significance during recent years (Palier 2000, 2001a, 2002).
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