Suchergebnisse

This book focuses on the tension between the modernising thrust that places France on a trajectory of convergence with comparable liberal democracies and the defence of a national specificity that can act as a brake, complicating France's relationship with its neighbours, its present and its past. This ambivalence in French political and social life stems from the conscious attempt to rebuild the nation after the trauma of Occupation during World War II and the new beginning provided by the Liberation. The government of the Fourth Republic embraced the pursuit of a modernisation that would enable it to regain its place among the world's leading democratic states. However, this modernising ambition co-exists with the belief in a specific destiny and a unique sense of mission that are intrinsic to the emergence of a sense of nationhood after the revolution of 1789. Raymond defines a critical perspective that draws together historical, economic, social, and political issues into a coherent understanding of what makes France the way it is today. Written with both academic rigour and a highly accessible clarity of style, this volume is a valuable resource for students, educators, and researchers in French and European Studies.

Starting with the assault on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, the French Republic has endured a series of terrorist attacks culminating with the massacre of civilians on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, in an outrage deliberately and symbolically timed to coincide with the Bastille Day celebration of 14 July 2016. During this period, the governing and other elites in France have attempted to foster a sense of national unity around key republican values as the most effective response to the threat posed by terrorism. After examining the inconsistent postures struck by the French socialist government in the months following the outrages of 2015 and 2016, this article will analyse the contradictions of the previous administration in order to illustrate the argument that the problematic relationship between race, identity and secularism cuts across the traditional ideological cleavages of left and right. The failure of leading mainstream political figures to articulate an effective and unifying discourse in the face of the terrorist threat to France is not, however, purely a failure of communication. The article will address the adequacy of a blueprint for social cohesion shaped by the Third Republic and exemplified by the formal separation of church and state in 1905, and consider whether the traditional understanding of what it means to belong to the 'one and indivisible' republic has problematised the sense of national self-esteem and perpetuates the current tension in France.

The end of the left-right divide is something which has been pronounced with growing regularity over the last 30 years or so. Emmanuel Macron's victory in the presidential election and the majority obtained by his party, La République en Marche, in the parliamentary election, would seem to confirm that development. This article analyses, in the first instance, the failure of traditional parties of left and right to adapt to the transformation of their respective electorates and, consequently, the declining appeal of what was on offer politically. It will then examine what the implications are when party vehicles for traditional ideologies disappear and the possible risks this entails. Finally, the article considers whether this ideological vacuum has now been filled by a politics of spectacle and media management, and whether France has become a liberal democracy just like any other.

There is a familiar analysis of the 1970s in Britain, of a country locked in decline, paralysed by recurring confrontations due to the ideological fault-lines between capital and labour, and reliant on a political system undermined by an unspoken consensus shared by the ruling elite that the most that could await a post-war and post-imperial Britain was a 'soft landing'. In this analysis, the failures of the post-war right and left in Britain provide a platform for a political outsider, Margaret Thatcher, to over-turn the political apple-cart and usher in a new ideological revolution founded on reinvigorated concepts of economic agency and individual choice. This article will argue that the Thatcherite revolution was not so much a crisis for the traditional ideologies of left and right, as an indication of the way politics had moved beyond ideology. Drawing parallels with the apparent rebirth of socialism in France that ran concurrently with the Thatcherite revolution, this article will suggest that the success of Thatcher owes much to the divorce between image and reality and the symbolic power this allows leaders to deploy subsequently. Ultimately, we will argue, Thatcher was willing to steer the transformation of British society in ways that ran contrary to the principles of those assumed to be her intellectual mentors, in order to satisfy her desire for control.

The Resistance myth in France was consciously crafted by Charles de Gaulle and his supporters, during World War II and afterwards, to create a coherent narrative of national unity to help carry the country through the period of conflict and the reconstruction that followed. The consensus underpinning the viability of the myth began to fracture from the 1970s onwards and has reached the point of becoming, according to some historians, 'balkanised'. This article will evoke the genesis of the Resistance myth and address the present-day paradox of a myth that has never been both more contested and more ubiquitous, and the reasons why, in spite of his initial disinclination to do so, Nicolas Sarkozy found himself increasingly obliged to resort to that myth in the attempt to bolster the credibility of his leadership.

Sarkozy came to power promising radical political and social change while simultaneously developing a presidential persona that melded the public and the personal under the glare of media attention, unparalleled in the French Fifth Republic. This volume provides a detailed analysis of the fit between his ambitions and the outcomes of his presidency