Special Interview 1
Interview with Dr. Sébastien Lechevalier, the Founder of the Fondation France-Japon de l’École desHautes Études en Science Sociales

French-Japanese Policy Research Dialogue
Leading to New Public Policies
By Japan SPOTLIGHT
During the pandemic we have been less and less in personal contact with each other and the Internet
has become the main avenue of communication among friends, colleagues and associates. In particular,
academics and researchers have been discussing their subjects online rather than in personal meetings.
Will this affect the speed and scale of innovation? Could academic research on policy issues discussed
mainly online lead to less policy innovation? In 2022, assuming that the pandemic will be somewhat
contained, will in-person meetings among policy researchers necessarily resume and, if so, what issues
will can we expect to emerge from such meetings?
Dr. Sébastien Lechevalier is the founder of a French think tank with a focus on France-Japan dialogue
among researchers on policy-oriented issues, who have been struggling to reach solutions to various
policy challenges faced by both nations. Japan SPOTLIGHT held the following interview with him.
(Interviewed on Oct. 18, 2021)

Introduction
JS: Would you please give us a brief

introduction to the Fondation
France-Japon de l’École des Hautes
Études en Sciences Sociales(EHESS) and the Cercle de la FFJ
project?

lives and ways of working. Will telework become
generalized, and with what consequences for job
satisfaction, productivity, all kinds of humanrelations? Fortunately, we have several
researchers from France, Japan, and othercountries who will participate. This meeting will
be an occasion for us to meet and discuss, andalso, maybe, to define a research agenda. We
want to develop collaborative research.

Lechevalier: In 2008-09 we launched the
Fondation France-Japon (FFJ) for the purpose ofDifference Between Meetings
welcoming Japanese researchers, economists,
Online & In-Personsociologists, historians, and also politicalscientists to France to engage in onsite debate
JS: International exchange of humanand research. The heart of our initial project was
resources is very important, in the
Dr. Sébastien Lechevalierbuilding a human, intellectual community
area of innovation in particular. How
between Japan and Europe. After 10 years, indo you view the difference between
2019, we created the Cercle de la FFJ, which is, to put it simply, an
online meetings and in-person meetings in terms ofalumni association and beyond. We invited about 100 professors andpromoting innovation?
researchers to Paris to conduct research, make presentations atconferences, and so on. We wanted to recognize this small
Lechevalier: I recognize the contribution of the possibilities ofcommunity, and give them the possibility to get to know each other. I
attending online meetings wherever they take place and at whateversay alumni association and beyond because this meeting was open
time. It’s a true innovation, and it did not start during the pandemic
to our former researchers, and also our partners – private companies
but has been generalized, and it’s wonderful. From my own
and public institutions.
experience, during the pandemic we were able to continue our
We have one annual meeting; the last one was about collaboration
research despite much fewer, or no, physical meetings. We were able
during the pandemic, and the next one on Nov. 17 was on the subject
to continue what we were engaged in. However, what has beenof AI and work, and our experiences from the past two years. Before
difficult is to start new projects, especially to start new projects withthe pandemic we were using all kinds of communication
people whom you do not know so well. And the purpose of ourtechnologies, but suddenly these became vital, and the next steps
foundation is really to create the conditions for discussion, debate,with AI and other technologies will make these technologies evenand joint collaboration with people who don’t know each othermore vital. We want to discuss what the impact will be on our daily
because of different nationalities, different disciplines, or different
38 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2022

https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/

sectors. We want to be a place for innovation; not technologicalinnovation but social and economic innovation. Our own experienceis that we need surprises, we need private talks. In order to produce
innovation between people who don’t have the same research
agenda, obviously there is a need for long-term, private discussion.
We can do many things online, but we felt that it is very difficult tostart new projects. Our own experience is that the pandemic did notaffect our ongoing projects, but did affect new projects. It was reallydifficult to disrupt what we were doing on a daily basis.
JS: In that sense, would you say disruptive

innovation in particular needs in-person meetings
among intellectuals?

Lechevalier: I’m fully convinced of this. Let me give you an image.
There were many innovations during the pandemic to make thesemeetings possible despite travel being impossible, but look at artistic
experience – the experience you have visiting the Louvre museum or
going to a hall to listen to music. I don’t think we can replace thatunique live, direct physical experience we have with an online
meeting.
JS: Can this be applied to education as well? Some

professors definitely seem to prefer online classes,
but others are very eager to promote in-personclasses.

Lechevalier: We have different experiences, depending on thediscipline and the people you have in front of you. It might be
comfortable to teach from home. However, some disciplines require
experimentation, and I feel that is very difficult. Moreover, thetradition at my school, EHESS, is based on interactive seminars. The
core pedagogical tool is a two-hour meeting with a small group of
students, equivalent to a zemi in Japan. The professor speaks for 30
minutes, and then we have a debate. As a teacher, it is a pleasure tohave this experience. There have been some disasters with online
meetings, and in my personal experience I do not think that online
can replace this personal experience of sitting around a table sharing
different opinions and arguments. But I understand that others may
have other experiences.

Topical Policy Issues in Need of Innovationin France & Japan
JS: What kind of policy innovation in France andJapan could be encouraged by discussion in the
pandemic era? There are lots of issues to be
discussed for policy innovation, like digitaltransformation, the global environment, and income
inequality. If you were to prioritize the issues, what
do you think would be the most important?

Lechevalier: This is a very important and very difficult question. As apreliminary remark, I think that in a pandemic, governments should

really look around. Of course, this is not the first pandemic in humanhistory. I think all governments and policy-makers forgot this. When
you talk about policy innovation, we will not start from scratch. We
may learn from history, and it’s also very important to look at what
other countries are doing. This time of high uncertainty is really thetime to learn from other experiences. I’m not saying that Japan
should learn from Germany and France should learn from Japan; theinstitutional, historical, and political contexts are different. But I
cannot believe that from early 2020 we lost all the usual references.
That is why we need policy innovation. Then I think that what is
important in terms of policy innovation is in part the continuity.
During the pandemic we saw that we have to make some choices,
some tradeoffs that should be considered by each government, andthere are no simple answers. When you look at France, clearly
President Emmanuel Macron is a pro-business leader, and he didvery much promote economic activity, French business andindustries. I think he did a good job, from this perspective. I thinkthat from last year he discovered that this pro-business policy
cannot be carried out without the fundamentals in terms of health,social relations, and so on. My call for policy innovation is really tokeep pursuing different goals that might be contradictory, but in fact
the combination of these goals will lead to higher growth and higher
well-being.
JS: How do you assess France’s and Japan’s

economic policies during the pandemic? What doyou see as the most important lessons in terms of
the exchange of opinions between Japan andFrance?

Lechevalier: First of all, the good news is that both economies did
not collapse. You may call it simple Keynesian policies, but withsome differences, both governments did not let the economy
collapse. There was massive intervention to support businesses thatwere forced to stop operating. This may be a lesson we learned fromthe 2008-2009 crises, even though the crises were completely
different in terms of cause and dynamics, but we understood that if
we let the banking system collapse, everything will stop. This time it
was more generalized, of course, and it was not only the banking
sector, but I think the proactivity of both governments has been goodand should be assessed positively. Here, I am speaking just in termsof economic policies.
I would like to add two points. I might be wrong, but myunderstanding is that the Japanese government did help manybusinesses that were forced to stop operating or saw their activity
reduced, but has been less proactive, less active in general, about
supporting business than the French government. Surprisingly,
especially here in Marunouchi where we are having this interview,the country seems to be alright. I am afraid, however, that after somemonths or years maybe some SMEs, some activities that werealready a bit fragile before the pandemic, will suffer a lot. I would liketo study this. My feeling is that in France we have been much moreproactive. The government has spent a lot of money to support theeconomy. I believe it had good reason to do so, but of course it’s not
Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2022

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magic money, and frankly speaking I don’t know how governments
can live after the pandemic with these huge amounts of public debt
that have been accumulated during it. Maybe the Japanese
government was smarter, given that public debt was already very
important; maybe there was no other solution. It was about
economic policies, but we should also not forget that it’s not simply
economic policy; it’s also health policy or health system policy. For
good reasons, maybe (or maybe not) the French government forseveral years and decades has cut the health budget. We have
reduced the number of beds in hospitals, we have tried to increase
the economic efficiency of hospitals, and we were hit so hard by the
pandemic partly because of this previous policy. Of course, when
everything is fine, we do not see the consequences, but this time wesaw the impact of cost reductions and, let’s call it, increasing
efficiency.
Japan was not hit as hard as most European countries, or theUnited States or Latin America. But there is something that for me isalso a part of economic policy that I do not understand, which is how
it is possible that the central government and also local governments
are not able to mobilize hospitals and private clinics to open more
beds for Covid patients. With a small number of cases, Japan wasincredibly close to a block-out in terms of hospital beds. It’s healthpolicy, but to me it’s also socioeconomic policy. Of course, I do notwish anything like this to happen, but imagine that tomorrow there isa war or dramatic accident. How will the Japanese government beable to mobilize beds at private clinics? I think this should beincorporated in economic policies, and that this should be a lesson
from this pandemic.

Income Inequality as a Core Issue in Policy
Discussion
JS: Another issue is income inequality. I’m curious

about the differences between France and Japan interms of income redistribution policies.

Lechevalier: Yes, the dynamics of inequality in Japan are not thesame as in France and the US, and the factors behind increasing
inequality are different. I fully agree with you in that inequality does
exist in Japan and has relatively expanded during the past 30 years,
but not in the same way or with the same mechanisms as in the USor some European countries. I don’t necessarily believe, however,that social policy is the only solution. I would never say that social
policy is unnecessary, but it’s a kind of ex-post correction. I think it’svery important to do something before people lose their job. In the
study I did with Professor Ryo Kambayashi at Hitotsubashi
University (“Why do Redistributive Policies Differ across Countries?
Analyzing the Multiple Dimensions of Preferences for
Redistribution”, The Review of Income and Wealth, Sept. 17, 2021),
we were studying public opinion rather than the structure ofinequality, and what surprised us was that, depending on thequestion you ask, you get different answers in Japan, France, and the
US. As you know, in France we are very much pro-redistribution andvery anti-inequality, so even conservative people are somewhat
40 Japan SPOTLIGHT • January / February 2022

disturbed by increasing inequality. In the US there are people whoare against inequality, but basically it’s much more acceptable. In
Japan, the situation is not just between the US and France; it seems
that yes, Japanese people are egalitarian, the social norm is still
relatively egalitarian, but for some reason that I do not understand,
Japanese people are at the same time egalitarian and very
conservative. This may be because they think that poor people do
not work hard enough. It is kind of a mix between the French senseof egalitarianism and some type of US vision that sees a
responsibility for poor people to work harder to increase theirposition.

Issue of the Aging Society
JS: That is very interesting. Next, I’d like to move onto the problem of aging. This is another common
issue between France and Japan. This is also
related to the question of AI and robots. Labor
shortages in Japan due to depopulation because of
aging pose a very serious question. Before thepandemic, we thought that liberalized immigration
would be a good solution, but even for a while after
the pandemic, immigration may not be a goodsource of labor. In that case, can AI and robots makeup for this labor shortage?

Lechevalier: Certainly, technology can help to solve some problems
in some sectors for some activities, and we’ve seen some of this. AI
and robotics can be powerful tools as substitutes for partly solving
the problem of aging and a declining workforce. Frankly speaking,however, I do not believe this can be the only solution for thesituation in Japan. For example, some colleagues promote the ideaof Society 5.0, and it’s quite impressive, quite interesting. At thesame time, we see the limitations of the use of technology when it’s
about people or about care. Japan is very advanced in AI, robotics,
and some technologies, and this will certainly be a solution, but it’s
not the whole story. At some point, for some jobs, you will needmigrant workers – maybe not now but in a few years. People may
also need to work later into life, if they are ready to do so and ingood health. Technology might be part of the solution, but it won’t be
the whole solution, especially for services and areas related to care.
JS: And that technology might exacerbate income

inequality.

Lechevalier: Of course. It has been well studied and we know that
already.

Industrial Policy as a Key to Enhancing
WelfareJS: Industrial policy is very important today as a wayof encouraging a nation’s competitiveness or
growth potential. A number of years ago it wasconsidered protectionism, but now it can be seen as
another growth strategy along with fiscal andmonetary policy. In particular, economic security isa very important issue to be discussed in thecontext of industrial policy. Would you agree with
this?
Lechevalier: Yes, I would definitely agree. There was an economic
consensus built in the 1980s saying that, first, there were some
important mistakes made in terms of the industrial policies of Japan,
France, and the United Kingdom. Then, there was a liberal discourse
saying let the market be, and the market will always do better. But
I’m afraid that in countries like Japan and also in France, wesometimes throw away the baby with the bath water. I think thatnations have to make some decisions about putting the government
here and putting industries here, and having a dialogue. There is alsoa place for giving a voice to consumers and workers.
I don’t know about Japan, but in France during the pandemic we
discovered that a part of our pharmaceutical industry and a part ofour health industry had “disappeared” from our country. They werein India, in China, and other countries, and when we wanted to
produce masks and drugs we did not have the capacity at home. I
think it’s a matter of balance, and this is a role of government – notto decide everything for everybody, but to set some boundaries,
some principles, and to share a vision with industries. It’s very
important that METI not only learns from past failures, but also frompast successes, and there were important successes from theviewpoint of industrial policy in Japan several decades ago. I thinkit’s important to keep this in mind.
JS: I see. Does that mean that we may notnecessarily have to reach common rules forindustrial policy, but the exchange of information,exchange of experiences, and hopefully a sort ofpeer review pressure that could be created by those
discussions would be the desirable outcome?

Lechevalier: I fully agree. And when we look to the future, even alarge, successful company like Toyota cannot do everything on its
own to build infrastructure for new types of cars like self-drivingcars. There is a need for collaboration between different companies
and the government to find a balance for investment ininfrastructure, investment for new technology. I’m fully convincedthat it’s in the interest of everybody, and it cannot be theresponsibility of the private sector only.

Need to Restore Political Economics
JS: Today, geopolitical questions are taking on

increasing weight in policy debates, such as the
emergence of China, and China-US friction.
Compared with when President Bill Clinton said “It’sthe economy, stupid”, today everything seems to beabout politics. In domestic politics, for example, weare seeing a rise in populism and anti-globalization.
What do you see as the relevant role of economists
in policymaking in this kind of situation?
Lechevalier: I don’t have an answer for government, but I do havean answer for researchers. In both France and Japan, as well as in
the US, I think at some point we divided economics and politics. A
century ago, especially in France, we had a discipline called political
economy. This was a science related to economics, to understandhow to create wealth and production, but at that time it incorporated
some political consideration. Mainstream economists today do nothave the intellectual tools to combine economics and politics. What I
expect from my next generation of students is really to reinvent andrebuild political economy, a discipline that combines the notion of
economic efficiency, general equilibrium, and so on, but that also
includes questions that are related to politics. Redistribution is aquestion of politics; geopolitics – the question of differences ofpower between countries – is a matter of politics. This is my answer
from an academic perspective, that we need to rebuild the idea ofpolitical economy that has disappeared from our intellectual
tradition.

Future Projects of Fondation France-Japon
JS: Finally, would you like to say a few words about

your future projects?

Lechevalier: Thank you. I will briefly mention two of them. The firstone is related to what we’ve experienced during the past two years;
it’s about health, technology, and the economy. Basically, we aredeveloping a project regarding the impact of new technologies on
well-being, and job satisfaction, including the impact of telework on
job satisfaction and on efficiency. In the same spirit, we aredeveloping a sister project on technology and well-being in the caseof elderly care: how to connect technological and social dynamics inorder to produce “real” innovation that increases the satisfaction ofpeople? We are calling this “Care-Led Innovation”: we are trying todefine a protocol of innovation that puts well-being at the center ofinnovation. This is a non-Schumpeterian perspective on innovationand is basically an application and an extension of a book wepublished in 2019 called Innovation Beyond Technology.
With the second project, we are trying to learn lessons from thesuccesses of the Tokyo Olympics. I know there were a lot ofcontroversies about holding the Olympics during a pandemic, but I
think there are good lessons to be learned. The way we want to lookat it is less in terms of geopolitics and sports, but more in the way anevent like the Olympics can transform our cities, and how we canexperiment with things like new types of mobility and transportation.
We want to create a bridge from Tokyo to Paris 2024 from theperspective of urban studies, urban economics, and urban
geography.
Written with the cooperation of David S. Spengler, who is a translator andconsultant specializing in corporate communications.

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