Research On The Causes And Coping Strategies Of The French "Yellow Vest" Movement

In recent years,the globalization keeps surging forward and internal conflicts of different countries have accumulated and came to an outbreak.In this context,in both developed countries and developing ones,all kinds of social movements take place frequently,among which several have even forced the government to step down or even created regional instability.How to better handle social movements and protect the social stability has become a common challenge for all countries.The Gilets Jaunes Movement that started in the late 2018 is one of the biggest social movements in France since 50 years,and it has once severely weakened the foundation of Macron’s presidency.The movement’s direct reason was the fuel tax reform,and the weekly protests became the platform for people to express their dissatisfaction about Macron’s government.However the deeper reasons are more complicated.There is the common frustration among French people about their life and the denunciation of the elitism,moreover,some deficits of the representative democracy system in France have been revealed through the movement.To avoid a generalization of the movement,Macron gave a television speech to correct the previous wrong attitude of the government facing the protests,he quickly adopted relevant laws in response to the violence witnessed in the protests,and organized a large-scale national debate to pacify public opinion.In addition,more preferential policies were taken to calm down the population.Thanks to such measures,Macron has successfully pushed the Gilets Jaunes Movement to its end and avoided the transformation of the movement into a real political force in the European Parliament votes.This paper,by reviewing the history of the Gilets Jaunes Movement,analyzing its reasons and Macron’s countermeasures,thinks that the new characters shown in the Gilets Jaunes Movement can be challenges to classical social movement theories,and the French social management logic highlighted in the outbreak and containment of the movement can be of great value to China who also faces the challenge of mass incidents.