From Sarkozy to Hollande: the New Normal?
From Sarkozy to Hollande: The New Normal? Alistair Cole (Cardiff University, UK), Sophie Meunier (Princeton University, US) and Vincent Tiberj (Sciences Po, Paris, France Paoper presented to the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association, Cardiff, 25-27 March 2013 1 The overall aim of the Developments in series, form which this paper is drawn, is to provide an integrated and systematic assessment of current trends, drawing on the latest research but with sufficient background to make the book accessible for readers without a detailed knowledge of French politics. Two central questions guide the present volume. First, is there still a “French exception”, a uniquely French path to identity and globalization - if there ever was? And second, did the presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande represent mostly rupture or continuity with French political and cultural traditions? To answer these questions, rather than identifying a single encompassing theme, the book sets out to capture the past decade or so of French politics across five main dimensions: the core political and institutional evolutions; processes of partisanship, citizenship, communication and mediation; political attitudes and elections; domestic policy reforms and the multi-level, regional and international contexts. Though there is no overarching conclusion to this volume, the key approach underpinning most chapters is one of France’s contingent governance --the country caught between converging economic, European and international pressures and the robust defence of a particular model of republican integration. The main purpose of the introductory chapter on which this paper is based is to provide a temporally specific overview that integrates the five dimensions mentioned above and contributes to our understanding of the evolution of the French polity.
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