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The reaction to the law legalising same-sex marriage in France shocked the nation and the world in 2013. Opposition to the law seemed to join forces with a plethora of new right-wing activist groups, leading to mass demonstrations, violence in the streets of Paris and even to a death in the cathedral of Notre Dame. The social unrest can be explained in part by the increasing pressures of economic recession and the emergence of the far right as a mainstream but divisive political force; still, the level of passion that the law unleashed seems puzzling. A more profound explanation of that passion is that the law opened a deep faultline that has divided France throughout its modern history - the concept of its national identity. Contemporary France is troubled by frequent comparisons to the political ferment and disastrous turmoil of the 1930s. Diametrically opposed moral visions of national identity seem to recall, above all, the anneés noires, the 'dark years' of German Occupation when the Vichy regime attempted to regenerate France though its National Revolution while also pursuing a policy of collaboration. Social reform in France, particularly any reform relating to perceptions of national identity, is still today overshadowed by the legacy of Vichy's moral vision and its attempt to create a New Man for a New Order. This paper will explore that legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the notion of ideology, bringing together Laclau's theorisation of the specificity of the ideological, and Rancière's notion of aesthetic regimes. Ideology, I argue, works through what it makes available to the senses and what it makes to make sense. It is in this sense that it is an aesthetic affair. This argument is illustrated with an account of the so-called 'securitarian ideology' in France that characterises the repressive policies of the recent governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a translation of key texts by the contemporary Mouvement des Indigènes de la République (MIR) and its key intellectuals: Sadri Khiari and Houria Bouteldja. Following Khiari, post-colonial situations are best understood as recompositions: territorially mediated re-articulations of colonial pasts with other social relations. To respond to the complexities of this post-colonial recomposition, MIR propose an ambitious politics of 'autonomy' and 'mixity'. 'Autonomy' (externally in relationship to the state and organized politics and internally for feminist groups) is seen as an indispensable precondition for a socio-politically mixed, and potentially universalizing, political formation politics. More counter-colonial than post-colonial in orientation (Hallward), MIR attempt to give direction to three decades of revolt emanating from France's racialized popular neighbourhoods, including the uprising of 2005. I argue that MIR's interventions take up themes from the analyses by Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi and Suzanne and Aimé Césaire to make countercolonial critique 'live' in France today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1988 to 1997, all French prime ministers launched administrative reform programs with numerous concerns for increasing efficiency, strengthening responsiveness, or redesigning political and administrative roles within the state. However, these initiatives have never led to radical and disruptive changes. The institutional legacy seems to have strongly constrained the politics of administration. What, then, is the meaning of launching administrative reforms within the French political power configuration, and how does it "fit" with the way leaders try to establish their political authority? This article provides two empirical studies of different prime ministers (Michel Rocard under the Mitterrand presidency and Alain Juppé under the Chirac presidency) that can explain the nature of the French governments' commitments to these issues. It argues that understanding administrative reforms requires a mixture of institutional and actor-centered explanations, because these policies are really leadership challenges to the preexisting institutional order. As such, they are reflexively shaped or constrained by what they try to control and define. This paper shows that for a French prime minister to define the administration as a problem while building his own leadership can jeopardize the resources he will get from that same bureaucratic administrative system. This "power-reform dilemma" may explain why administrative reforms have proven more politically effective as an instrument of order-affirming impulses rather than as a disruptive strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]