And there are as many theories about why this is so as there are pundits. . . OK, more. I found this Frank Furedi article to be thoughtful. After dismissing several other explanations (economic, yada yada) he proposes his theory.

The most significant thing about recent events in France is not the behaviour of the rioters, but the reaction of the political class and official authority. The Bush regime's response to the flooding of New Orleans looks positively energetic when compared with the sense of paralysis and confusion that seems to have gripped French officialdom.

During the first week of the unrest, French politicians devoted their energies mainly to scoring points against one another. Nero fiddling away while Rome burned seemed to serve as a role model for the French Cabinet. For a whole week, President Jacques Chirac literally withdrew from the public domain and said nothing. . .

This reluctance publicly to address the issue at stake is not peculiar to the French politician. One of the clearest manifestations of today's sense of political exhaustion is our elites' desperate desire to avoid discussing uncomfortable problems. . .

The French elite lacks purpose and is politically exhausted. As I argue in greater detail in my new book Politics of Fear, for the first time in the modern era the European political elites lack a project. They no longer have a mission to perform, and do not possess a distinct outlook that can inform their policies and day-to-day actions.

In recent decades, these elites have embraced the EU and sought to cobble together a European identity that might render public life with some meaning. However, this elitist managerial project lacks the capacity to inspire the public. The rejection of the EU Constitution in France and Holland earlier this year clearly demonstrated this technocratic institution's lack of legitimacy. . .

What the events in France demonstrate is that power means very little without purpose. Power and authority gain definition through a sense of direction. Without meaning, even the power of the military and the police loses much of its force. And the more this powerlessness becomes exposed, the more it encourages those who are estranged from society to have a go. This is not simply a case of official incompetence, but rather points to an elite that no longer believes in the legitimacy of its own authority and way of life. The way in which this crisis of belief has been intensely amplified through the French media has been one of the main drivers of the recent unrest. But don't blame the media: their cynical criticism of French authority is quietly shared by those who wield power. By letting the cat out of the bag, the French media simply transmit the message that politics lacks meaning.

I'm reminded of the pathetic article by Michael Lind criticized in Ship Of Fools that lamented the lack of an American elite - mandarins to guide society like they have in, err, France. I'm often amazed at the utter detachment from reality demonstrated by those such as Lind. They seem to live in a complete fantasy world - a video game based on simplistic notions of social and economic dynamics, riddled with assumptions that have no connection with reality at all.

Furedi seems far more on target with his observation that the European elites have been at sea with no rudder for some time, and that empty bureaucratic exercises like the EU constitution fail to engage society. I might add that UN boosterism, the Kyoto protocol and similar extravaganzas of the political and media complex have also failed to provide some sort of coherent meaning. They are all politics for the sake of politics, an essentially content free discourse reflective of much of continental intellectual life. They aren't about anything. The collapse of communism, unionism and to a great extent class politics in general has undermined the left but provided no true boost to the right. The air just went out of the conflict. Politics has gone flat. Furedi notes some particularly French consequences.

The marginalisation of the labour movement is paralleled by the decline of coherence within the French elite. . . Since the end of the Cold War, it has become much less clear what France's global role might be. Its claim to act as the leader of Europe has been undermined by the expansion of the EU and the decline of the French-German axis. Indeed, the rejection of the EU Constitution by the French electorate this year indicated that Europe can no longer serve as a rallying call to the French. In the absence of the Gaullist mission, domestic politics has descended into farce. Party politics has lost its way. Chirac is no De Gaulle: he presides over a political system where cliques of individuals fight for office and privilege and little else. . .

The cumulative effect of the loss of meaning in France, and the undermining of the elite's authority, is the intensification of conflicts and divisions. The people that live in the immigrant suburbs of Paris not only lack access to resources - they are also profoundly estranged from the values and way of life associated with France. The youngsters torching cars and burning down their schools have no distinct political project or objective. They are not driven by social perspective or an Islamist ideology - at least not yet. They simply desire the kind of French prosperity that they see on the other side of the tracks, but without wanting to be associated with any idea of France.

To put it bluntly: there are no French values to share. In the absence of a common web of meaning, even small differences can turn into a major conflict. In such circumstances, there is every incentive to inflate suspicion and magnify difference. That is the politics of today, and probably of tomorrow.

That's bleak. There's truth in it but I don't think things are as hopeless as Furedi does. His error is in not understanding the diversity issue. He says:

The current state of political exhaustion shows that public life lacks a sense of purpose, perspective and meaning. Most government policies try to get around this problem by avoiding it. The celebration of diversity is probably the clearest example of such an evasive strategy. Celebrating the many is a meaningless act that simply recognises the reality that we are not all the same. It is as vacuous as the worship of one or a few. Diversity is a statement of fact - and to turn a fact into an ideal is to avoid having real ideals altogether.

Diversity is a fact, one that was papered over with the false unity of class conflict during the cold war era. "Celebrating" diversity isn't just cheerful chatter and bad public art, it is a refocusing of the social mind on itself and a challenge to alter institutions to better meet the needs of that reality. It explicitly refutes what Furedi seems to long for - meaning, values, unity and political projects. It exposes the truth that politics is stupid, an empty exercise in power arbitrage that only benefits the elites. Non-elites would be far better off directing their energy and passion to exercises with more meaning, such as football and Sumo wresting.

As the world comes to fully grasp the fact of diversity and its implications for governance it will have to kick the politics habit since it is an impediment to governance. There are few programs and policies that can be implemented on a large scale that are not unacceptably injurious to some groups in a large and diverse polity. There are few bold programs on any scale that do not cause great harm to some. The whole idea of collateral damage - the need to break eggs to make omelettes - is a childish vestige of a simple minded past that failed to grasp the fact of diversity. As we at long last face the implications of having filled the earth with our diverse selves, and that far from yearning for unity we take far greater pleasure in local differentiation, something that we actively promote and seek to enlarge at every opportunity, ideas based in fully implemented subsidiarity will come to be far more important. The focus of each locality will be on preventing any remote power from dominating.

There is danger in this if not understood and accepted. This may well be the last task for the elites, for public intellectuals and the mandarin class. If the need for freedom and diversity is not accepted with grace a war of all against all is possible. This means that all of our institutions, all of our steam age instincts, need reform. The mass-consciousness ideals of uniformity and global governance are the cherished illusions of youth, and we are far too old for such childish diversions. The elites and intellectuals can in part redeem themselves for decades of counter-productive wanking that in the end had no purpose other than the preservation of the perquisites of intimate tyrannies in their own narrow institutions by helping the world to understand and accept more mature views. The empty gyrations of French politics that Furedi laments - "a political system where cliques of individuals fight for office and privilege and little else" - isn't merely French. It is the decadent phase of nearly every institution since they have all lost meaning. The French are just an extreme case of a general collapse of old fashioned ways.

When we consider some of the surrounding issues to these recent riots in Europe - Iraq, Islam, unemployment, youth demographics, class conflict etc. - and illuminate them with the concept of the end of politics quite a few popular notions dissolve. The idea that the collapse of communism - and thus class war, unionism and unity of nearly every sort - and the triumph of liberal democracy seems off the mark. Liberal democracy didn't triumph, it just hasn't fallen yet. It held on a bit longer because it does offer more liberty, accomodates more diversity, but it is reaching its breaking point too.

The liberal part will survive, but we need a sharp rethink of what democracy means, a full retreat from the error of equating democracy with majoritarianism and seeking to continually enlarge the scope and scale of political entities ruled by majorities. All that does is continually enlarge the number of people in the minority and disenfranchised to an increasing extent. The callous rejoinder that they are free to try to become the majority, free to persuade others to their point of view, completely fails to grasp the central defect of majoritarianism: No matter who wins huge numbers lose. The cumulative resentment and cynicism of majoritarian ideas is one of the fuels that is lighting up Paris now.

No one benefits from this system except politicians and bureaucrats - the mandarins and eunuchs who hold power and status. As the speed and scope of communications grows in a networked world all of the disenfranchised minorities will become aware of one another's plights. There may be hell to pay if it dawns on them all that even when they struggle and persuade and come to dominate that they didn't reduce the number of disenfranchised. Only the particulars changed. This is a dumb way to run a world. There really isn't any reason to have large and powerful political groupings. They exist because they exist. The purpose of each is only to counter the presence of the other, each inflamed with the old ideas of unity, conquest and enlarged domain. We have grown too old and the world has become too small for such callow systems.