Stanley Hoffmann: a political life:a political life

Stanley Hoffmann is one of the most eminent political scholars of our age—a renowned authority in the study of French, European, and world politics over half a century, an influential theorist of international relations, a critical analyst of US foreign policy, and a voice of moral conscience in many public debates of his time. Hoffmann has always asked big questions—and to those questions he brings an encyclopedic mind that crosses boundaries between politics, history, sociology, law, philosophy, ethics, and literature. This brief article highlights some aspects of his life and work, and introduces a symposium in his honor bringing together five leading scholars on France, Europe, international relations, and international law—each with an enduring debt to the teaching, writings and example of Stanley Hoffmann.

The pro-reform movement led by Avenir de la Francaise:a point of leverage in the French political process?

The study examines factors influencing language planning decisions in contemporary France. It focuses upon the period 1992-1994, which witnessed the introduction of two major language policy measures, the first an amendment to the French Constitution, in 1992, proclaiming the language of the Republic as French, the second, in 1994, legislation to extend the ambit of the loi Bas-Lauriol, governing the use of the French language in France. The thesis posits a significant role for the pro-reform movement led by the French language association Avenir de la Langue Francaise (ALF) in the introduction and formulation of the policy measures concerned. The movement is depicted as continuing the traditional pattern of intellectual involvement in language planning, whilst also marking the beginning of a highly proactive, and increasingly political approach. Detailed examination of the movement's activities reveals that contextual factors and strategic strength combined to facilitate access to the levers of power, and enabled those involved to exert an impact on policy initiation, formulation, and ultimately implementation. However, ALF's decision to pursue the legislative route led to the expansion of the network of actors involved in language policymaking, and the development of counter-pressure from sectoral groups. It is suggested that this more interventionist approach destabilised the traditionally consensual language policy community, and called into question the quasi-monopoly of the intelligentsia in respect of language policymaking. It raised broader questions relating to freedom of expression and the permissible limits of language regulation in a democracy such as France. It also exposed ongoing ambiguities and inconsistencies in the interpretation of the tenets of language planning.

Arlette Laguiller:does the mainstay of the French political far-left enjoy linguistic parity with her male counterparts?

While language use has been argued to reflect gender asymmetry, increasing parity has been evidenced in official settings (Holmes, 2000; Dister and Moreau, 2006). Our hypothesis is that the French national press has developed a norm of equal linguistic treatment of men and women. In a corpus of articles from Libération, Le Monde, and Le Figaro, we examine the treatment of Arlette Laguiller, the female leader of the French extreme-left 'Worker's Struggle' Party (Lutte Ouvrière), during the run-up to the 2007 presidential elections. How Laguiller is referred to and described in comparison with her male counterparts evidences no asymmetry. Breaches to parity are only found in the right-wing Figaro newspaper. The ideological distance between the newspaper and the candidate suggests that power struggles are a primary source of asymmetrical treatments. The discursive functions of such treatments can be understood through an investigation based on a portable corpus linguistics methodology for the measure of discrimination. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Political leadership in France:from Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy

Political Leadership in France analyzes changes which have taken place over the last 50 years in French politics. When Charles de Gaulle came to power in 1958 the drama surrounding the Fourth Republic's collapse and the focus on an exceptional individual meant that he was able to confer a very particular style of leadership on the new Fifth Republic. De Gaulle's 'performance' was such that he transformed the nature of leadership politics in France, increasing the scope for personal leadership and the emphasis upon the exalted leader. This had major implications for the republic's institutions and for the role of political parties. The five Presidents who came after him – Pompidou, Giscard, Mitterrand, Chirac, and Sarkozy, as well as contenders for the presidency such as Segolene Royal and François Hollande – have each capitalized upon their own political 'persona' and their relationship to the French people. Gaffney takes a new approach to the subject, looking at the mythological and cultural as well as institutional conditions of political performance. This paperback edition includes a new preface.

'The prime minister said...': voices in translated political texts

A variety of texts are translated to fulfil functions for political communication across languages, cultures, and ideologies. For example, newspapers regularly provide quotes of statements by foreign politicians, without explicitly indicating that these politicians were actually speaking in their own languages. Politicians react to statements by other politicians as they were presented to them in translation. Political scientists and other experts often debate the potential political consequences of (the translation of) a statement. This chapter addresses the (in)visibility of translation in political communication and the link between textual profiles of translations and the socio-political contexts in which they are produced. The analyses are conducted from the perspective of Translation Studies. The focus is on institutionalised forms of political discourse, i.e. texts that originate in political or media institutions. The link between translation profiles and the social, institutional, ideological conditions of text production is illustrated with reference to authentic political texts (interviews, speeches by politicians, press conferences), mainly involving English, French and German as source and target languages.

The French overseas territories today

From French colonies (or protectorates) to French Overseas Territories or Overseas Départements in 1946, these French overseas entities have progressively evolved, by different speeds and degrees. If the initial changes suggested by the United Nations (UN) were mostly justified on political and ideological grounds (the right to independence, self-determination and sovereignty), the current changes, encouraged by France this time, appear mainly as an attempt to alleviate economic dependency. This paper considers what is really at stake in the current statutory evolution of the French Overseas territories.

Charlemagne’s crusaders: French collaboration in arms, 1941–1945

Military collaboration is one of the least acknowledged aspects of France under the Occupation. Yet from summer 1941 France raised a number of fighting units for Hitler’s armies, each with its distinctive mission and each drawing the Vichy regime deeper into collaboration with Nazi Germany. This article discusses that process and its diverse implications. It shows how the Paris collaborationists used military engagement to pressure the Vichy government into more activist collaboration and explores the divergent perspectives in which this was viewed from Berlin, Paris and Vichy; it considers the mobilising myths, motivations and misapprehensions behind military collaboration; and it identifies some of the anomalies of that collaboration, with its reconceptualising of France and Other, friend and foe, belonging and alienation. Those French ‘patriots’ who fought in German uniform would become effective exiles from a homeland they departed to ‘defend’ only to see it ‘liberated’ by their ‘enemies’. Exposing the divisions and the delusions underlying military collaboration, the article sheds light on conflicting political calculations and shifting allegiances in occupied France.

Political representation in France: a crisis of democracy?

The past two decades have witnessed growing political disaffection and a widening mass/elite disjuncture in France, reflected in opinion polls, rising abstentionism, electoral volatility and fragmentation, with sustained voting against incumbent governments. Though the electoral system has preserved the duopoly of the mainstream coalitions, they have suffered loss of public confidence and swings in electoral support. Stable parliamentary majorities conceal a political landscape of assorted anti-system parties and growing support for far right and far left. The picture is paradoxical: the French express alienation from political parties yet relate positively to their political institutions; they berate national politicians but retain strong bonds with those elected locally; they appear increasingly disengaged from politics yet forms of ‘direct democracy’ are finding new vigour. While the electoral, attitudinal and systemic factors reviewed here may not signal a crisis of democracy, they point to serious problems of political representation in contemporary France.

The French Communist Party and the Algerian war : an ideological turning point?

The subject-matter of this thesis is the interaction between the Parti Communiste Français and the National Liberation struggle in Algeria , and the debate that ensued within the Party itself.For a detailed study of the Party ' s line on the war, PCF publications were contrasted with the texts produced by the opposition.Three main axes were identified crystallising discussion within the Party during the Algerian war: The relationship between France and Algeria and the Party ' s attitude to the French nation; The nature of the Algerian nation and its genesis; France's military engagement in Algeria.The dichotomy between the Party's national and internationalist responsibilities is shown to have resolved itself by the fundamental integration of the PCF into the political structure and value system of the French Republic. This study demonstrates the birth of a substantial internal opposition to the PCF during the Algerian war.

Political radicalism in France:perspectives on a protean concept

This introductory article reflects on the new momentum that political radicalism has taken on in France. The ebb and flow of radical aspiration featured regularly in French politics under the Fourth and early Fifth Republics, before the failure of the "Socialist experiment" in the early 1980s brought about a paradigm shift. In the wake of this failure and with the "end of ideology" supposedly in sight, political leaders and parties tempered their appeals to radical solutions and conspired, not least through recurrent power-sharing, to vacate mainstream political discourse of much of its former radicalism. Since the presidential election of 2007, however, there has been a marked return to promises of radical change as the common currency of political discourse across the full left-right spectrum in France. This article introduces a special issue of French Politics, Culture & Society that brings together scholars from France, Britain, and Canada to discuss some of the meanings, expressions, and prospects of political radicalism in France today.

Tactics, traditions, and opportunities:British and French crop-trashing actions in comparative perspective

This article compares the tactic of trashing genetically modified crops in activist campaigns in Britain and France. In Britain, most crop trashing was carried out covertly, while in France most activists undertook open, public actions. In seeking an explanation for this, the article shows that the analysis of political opportunities, dominant in comparative studies of social movements, can only take us so far. While it helps explain the occurrence of direct action, it is much less useful in explaining the tactical differences between each country. It is argued that a fuller explanation requires an understanding of how action was shaped by different activist traditions. In France, action was staged as a demonstration of serious, responsible, collective Republican citizenship; in the United Kingdom, activists combined a sceptical view of legality developing from anarchist individualism with an explicitly non-threatening, playful, ethos. The article concludes that a focus on activist traditions can provide an effective bridge between structural and cultural approaches to understanding the determinants of social movement action.

The Presidents in the French Fifth Republic

This volume brings together French and British scholars of France to analyse one of French politics' most intellectually compelling phenomena, the presidency of the republic. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of that leadership as well as the way that executive power has been established in the Fifth Republic; how presidential power and the subsequent full scale development of 'personality politics' developed within an essentially party-driven, democratic and, most importantly, republican system. Hence the authors in this volume examine the phenomenon of a strong presidency in the French republican framework. The individual chapters focus on the presidency and upon the individual presidents and the way in which they have addressed their own relation to the presidencies they presided over on top of a range of other factors informing their terms of office. A conclusion sums up and appraises the contemporary role of the French presidency within the party system and the republic. The project has generated a great deal of interest in the French political studies community.

Leadership and style in the French Fifth Republic:Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency in historical and cultural perspective

This article contributes to the body of the developing theoretical research in leadership and presidential studies by adding analysis of what I have termed ‘comportmental style’ as a factor in leader/follower relations. Within institutionalism and the wider structure/agency debate in political science, one of the challenges as regards the study of leadership is to identify factors that offer scope to or else militate against leaders’ performance. The comportmental style of Nicolas Sarkozy (President of the French Republic 2007–2012), deployed in the context of the – changing – institution of the presidency, was a major factor in his extreme unpopularity, and contributed to his defeat in 2012. What this tells us about the nature of the changing French presidency and the role of style will be discussed in the conclusion.

Highly emotional States:French-US Relations and the Iraq war

Understanding the true nature of the relations between France and the United States is central to an understanding of the diplomatic crisis that broke out between them in 2003 over the War in Iraq. An analysis of the political cultures of France and the US offers considerable explanatory power to this dramatic diplomatic dispute. The inordinately emotional aspects of the Franco-US arguments of 2003 mask the fact that the two countries understand each other little. In the French case, its self-view and related diplomatic comportment in the twentieth century was informed by its relationship to Germany; and from it a range of cultural characteristics emerged, among them: vulnerability, self-regard, a romanticized view of itself, and the personalization of national identity. At the moment France’s response to its cultural heritage was beginning to shift to a different (post-Gaullist) paradigm, the dispute with the US erupted.