During the French Revolution, revolutionary leaders attempted to remake society by changing something people encountered every day: the calendar.
In a recent International Organization article, Ford School professor Megan Stewart examines this historical experiment to show how "symbolic programs" can produce lasting and sometimes unintended effects. Her research finds that French departments where local officials enforced the Republican calendar more intensely were more likely to experience labor conflict decades after the calendar was abandoned.
Ties that connect people and institutions are called social orders, and can carry strategic and ideological importance for state-builders and revolutionaries. State-builders and revolutionaries have often sought to remake social orders through violence, new institutions, public education and literacy campaigns, and co-opting existing religious, traditional, or political elites to build legitimacy.
Stewart identifies another mechanism for changing social orders: symbolic programs.
"Symbolic programs refer to policies that introduce representations of new state-builder principles and priorities, which serve as focal points for social engagement," she wrote. "They intertwine state-builder priorities with daily life, often manifesting as new rituals, ceremonies, art, festivals, holidays, new social clubs or organizations (like women's or workers' organizations), or calendars."
Stewart studied the relationship between enforcement of the Republican calendar—which briefly replaced the Gregorian calendar during the French Revolution—and the onset of labor conflicts. Although it was a national policy, local officials had wide latitude in enforcing it, producing substantial variation across French departments. Stewart measured enforcement intensity by examining how quickly officials began using Republican dates in birth and death registers.
The Gregorian calendar organized social life around Sundays, feast days, and other Catholic observances, framing labor and rest as sacred duties regulated by the church. The Republican calendar instead created a 10-day week, new rest days, civic festivals, and revised market schedules. In doing so, it framed time, labor, and rest as political and economic matters regulated by the state.
Where officials enforced the calendar more intensely, synchronized workdays, markets, rest days, and festivals created new opportunities for social interaction and the formation of new bonds. The calendar also encouraged people to understand time, labor, and rest not as sacred duties regulated by the Church, but as political and economic matters regulated by the state. Stewart argues that these shared ideas helped people articulate grievances, while stronger social ties reduced the costs of organizing collective action.
Although France abandoned the calendar in 1806, departments that had enforced it more intensely were subsequently more likely to experience labor conflict. Stewart's estimates suggest that after it was abandoned, the annual probability of labor conflict onset was up to three times as high in departments with intense enforcement. Additional analyses of strikes through the early 20th century produced consistent results.
"The social order that emerges from the intense enforcement of symbolic programs can be sticky and endure over time," Stewart wrote.
The implications extend beyond Revolutionary France. Stewart places the calendar within a wider history of political movements using organizations, public rituals, art, holidays, and other symbols to reorder social life. Her paper discusses examples including the Chinese Communist Party's "speaking bitterness" campaign, women's organizations established by East Timor's Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, and calendar reforms in Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy. Even beyond symbolic programs, the politicization of time is fundamentally connected to contemporary policies, such as the length and number of workdays, hourly wages, and maternity-leave policy questions.
The study does not suggest that every ritual or symbol will transform society. Stewart argues that symbolic programs are most likely to have an effect when they bring people together in person, seek to unify groups, operate under conditions in which people can safely interact, and are enforced consistently.
The French revolutionaries did not intend for the calendar to cause labor strikes. But by turning time, labor, and rest into political questions, they also made those issues open to contestation among groups with competing interests.
"While revolutionaries used the Republican calendar to socialize people into the principle that time, labor, and rest were political and economic constructs and that the state should regulate them, to strip the church of its power, and to coordinate society, they did not intend to cause more labor conflicts," Stewart wrote. "By politicizing these constructs, however, they generated contestation based on individuals' interests, leading to divergent preferences among social groups. Although state-builders' programs first-order goals may succeed, they may later produce unforeseen consequences."
