The Legion of Honor? Thomas Piketty Refuses

Sometimes an award means more to the giver than the recipient. That is probably the case with the French government’s decision to give the Legion of Honor to Thomas Piketty, the economist and author of the critically acclaimed book about inequality, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” who says he doesn’t want the award.

While he is not the first person to refuse the honor, his decision is notable because it comes at a time when the government of President François Hollande has been struggling to revive the slow-growing French economy. Mr. Piketty says it is not “the government’s role to decide who is honorable.” He went on to add insult to injury by saying the award givers “would do better to concentrate on reviving growth in France and Europe.”

The Legion of Honor, which was created by Napoleon Bonaparte, has a history of controversy. Several notable French citizens, including Claude Monet, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, have rejected it for various reasons, including not wanting to be linked to the government of the day. Mr. Sartre also refused the Nobel Prize for Literature. And there is a tradition of Britons like the singer David Bowie rejecting royal honors.

It is not hard to see why the French government would want to honor Mr. Piketty. His nearly 700-page book, first published in France in 2013, became a sensation in the world of economics and politics. Leading economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have heaped praise on the book, which spent 22 weeks on The Times’s hardcover best-seller list. It documented how countries around the world have increasingly become unequal, with wealth concentrated among a tiny elite at the top. In the book, Mr. Piketty also proposes a global wealth tax to address inequality.

While Mr. Piketty has basked in acclaim, Mr. Hollande’s economic policies have made him deeply unpopular. In the third quarter of 2014, the French economy grew just 0.3 percent compared to the previous quarter. And recent polls have found that Mr. Hollande would get fewer votes in a contest against the right-wing politician Marine Le Pen and his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

As much as political leaders might think that official awards are about honoring achievement, they’re also about sharing in reflected glory. In this case, Mr. Piketty doesn’t seem to want to share.