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These days the secret ballot is taken for granted and it is often seen as the natural complement of universal, democratic suffrage. Its emergence, however, was just as contested and varied as the franchise and raised similar issues concerning the nature and practice of citizenship. This article focuses on the emergence of the secret ballot in Britain and France, two countries with a long history of parliamentary and local elections. In Britain, the secret ballot was introduced in 1872, while in France, which introduced universal male suffrage in 1848, it was as late as 1913 before envelope and polling booth rendered the vote completely secure. This study documents the varied polling practices employed in both countries prior to the onset of the secret ballot. It also highlights the contentious nature of polling reform. For some, the secret ballot was regarded as a means of safeguarding electoral independence and eliminating corruption. Others, including radicals, argued quite the opposite: that secret voting was an affront to honourable, public-spirited citizenship. In the end, full secrecy was achieved as part of the broader process of domesticating and disciplining the exercise of a mass franchise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper assesses economic, political and national institutional explanations for continued resistance to the multidivisional form in France, Germany and the United Kingdom during the 1980s and 1990s. It finds that the economics of different diversification strategies play a significant but changing role in the structural choices of large corporations. The political interests of personal, banking and government owners are exercised variably. There remain strong national influences on structural choices, with resistance to the multidivisional form particularly pronounced in Germany. Overall, our results call for an increased contextual sensitivity in management research while acknowledging the possibility of convergent processes in business organization, represented here by the slow progress of the multidivisional firm. [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]

The article offers a comparison of parliamentary voting on European issues in Great Britain and France. In this paper, the recent roll-call votes in the French National Assembly and the British House of Commons were examined to see whether European integration issues continue to dichotomize both left and right internally, and to identify whether these divisions break up the far left from the moderate left and the far right from the moderate right. It is posed that findings confirm that European issues split up both left and right internally in both legislative setting.

French mercantilism is generally associated with absolutist policy-making subject to capture by rent-seeking interests. This article investigates how the Bureau du Commerce, a small state agency in charge of commerce and the supply side, handed out rents and privileges to private entrepreneurs. We coded how the Bureau investigated and decided all 267 voluntary submissions received between 1724 and 1744. It is shown that the Bureau's formal, rule-based decision-making process could actually differentiate between alternate policy aims and target them consistently over time, with more or less powerful sets of rents. From this, a hierarchy of revealed policy preferences is derived. First comes technical innovation and diffusion, then local economic development; import substitution is only in the third position, followed by consumers' welfare. Lastly, and in contrast to a long line of authors, it is shown that the production of luxury goods was not a significant or valued objective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenge Norway and France face in coordinating specialized government activities after 10 years of comprehensive reforms. The focus is on the tension between territorial and sectoral specialization and between vertical and horizontal specialization. We describe both sector-specific administrative reforms and more overarching general reforms, looking at similarities and differences in the reorganization choices made by the two countries and also at what drives change. We argue that a combination of factors is required to explain outcomes. These factors include not only home-grown reforms but also sectoral challenges, diffusion and learning from abroad, adaptation to the financial crisis and budget deficit, and choices made by powerful political executives. Sometimes these factors work together and reinforce each other, producing radical reforms; at other times they have a mutually constraining influence, resulting in only minor changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ethnic minorities integration policies as implemented in France and the Netherlands. This study will be based on an institutionalist approach relying on North's analytical framework in order to explain the recent changes in these policies. I emphasize the existence of four patterns of social integration: reciprocity, redistribution, exchange, and coercion. I will also be insisting on the importance of ideology and the way it has evolved over time. This theoretical framework is then used to 'tell the story' of the two countries. While France's historical and ideological backgrounds have forced it to adopt a universalist view and fight against communautarisme, the Dutch position was quite different as it does not deny the ethnic minorities cultural and religious freedom. Nevertheless, there is a hardening of the dominant ideology taking place in France. As to the Netherlands, there is a noticeable shift in the government's attitude toward ethnic minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Riots that occurred in October and November 2005 in France, as a result of a police chase resulting in the death of two young boys from a deprived area of the Parisian outskirts, force us to shed new light on the political dimension of breakdowns labelled as ‘riots’. To achieve this aim, we examine the accuracy of the notion of ‘race riots’ often used, in England and in the United States, to characterise such violent outbursts. And, with the help of actual political data, we examine how far the riots have led to changes in the politics of France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of mandatory gender quotas in party lists is a reform that many countries have recently adopted or have been considering. The electoral system affects the incumbents' incentives to make such reforms, their details, and their effectiveness. We show that male incumbents can actually expect an increased incumbency advantage when gender quotas are introduced, if they are elected through single-member district majority rule. On the other hand, no expectation of male advantage can reduce the incumbents' fear of being replaced if they are elected through closed-list proportional representation. As France has both electoral systems, we validate the above argument using a formal model of constitutional design as well as an empirical analysis of the legislative elections in France, displaying the existence of male bias in the last three elections. We also show that parity may have Assembly composition effects and policy effects that vary with the electoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information in Frances political condition for two periods in 2007. It reports that in the first part of the year, the French Government faced several issues in crime and violence, immigration, and unemployment. It mentions that for the second part of the year, the issues were the same, but were carried out less by the government than by the potential runners for the presidency. It also discusses the 2007 presidential elections and presents an overview of the candidates political, social, and economic platforms.

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This essay examines the administrative reform process in France since the late 1980s. The key reforms undertaken during this period have sought to delegate greater managerial autonomy to the ministerial field-service level. We undertook semistructured interviews with officials in the field services of three French ministries (Education, Agriculture, and Infrastructure) in the Champagne-Ardennes region, as well as with members of the wider policy communities. The capacity of the field services to adopt a proactive approach to management reform depended on five key variables: internal organizational dynamics; the attitude of the central services to mesolevel autonomy; the degree of institutional receptivity to change; the type of service delivery, and the extent of penetration in local networks. The Infrastructure Ministry was more receptive to management change than either Education or (especially) Agriculture, a receptivity that reflects the institutional diversity of the French administrative system, and that supports new institutionalist arguments. The essay rejects straightforward convergence to the New Policy Management norm. Changes in public management norms require either endogenous discursive shifts or else need to be interpreted in terms of domestic registers that are acceptable or understandable to those charged with implementing reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the normative, political, and instrumental importance of privatizing state-owned enterprises worldwide, practitioners and researchers know little empirically about how different types of citizens feel about these efforts, how they arrive at these judgments, and how enduring these attitudes are likely to be. Using citizen attitudes toward privatization culled from the 1995 French National Election Study, this article offers practitioners and researchers an analytical framework for assessing these attitudes, for anticipating and dealing strategically with the perceived consequences of denationalization efforts, and for refining their understanding of the calculus of consent for market reforms in future survey research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information about the presidential and parliamentary elections in France. Emphasis of country's elections on the continuing struggle for leadership within the Left and the Right coalitions between their component parts; Importance of elections in the country; Prominence of leadership in the presidential campaign.

The article focuses on the contribution of Francois Mitterand in French politics. He has emerged as the unquestioned leader of his own party and the standard bearer of the entire Left. He has grown in stature and prestige, and since May 1974, when he came within a breath of winning the French presidency, he has established for himself in the history of French socialism. The performance of his party, founded only in June 1971 at the Epinay Congress, has confounded its critics and agreeably surprised even its most enthusiastic supporters. Its electoral support has considerably increased and its prospects in that domain are remarkably promising. The party has also improved the quality of its leadership, has rejuvenated previously moribund departmental federations, has put down roots in the factories, and has created a dynamic, growing and enthusiastic membership.

This article examines the French environmental movement as a product of two main structures of French political life: the centralized French technocratic state and the major parties as they exist in the current phase of French politics. The expansion of the state into new areas of life, and the failure of the political parties to act as intermediaries between national governments and citizenry, to serve as channels for organized conflict resolution, has stimulated the proliferation of citizens' groups which, deliberately bypass the parties and the state to articulate demands for better environmental quality. It is this failure of traditional political institutions that has generated what the author argues to be in the eyes of French analysts a particularly American solution, and in the eyes of American political analysts a very French solution. It is American in that it seeks to avoid questions of class, class-consciousness and collective versus private ownership of the means of production, and in that it is avowedly antistatist. It is French in that it has very quickly gone beyond a focus on site preservation, on reducing pollution, nuisance, disamenity, and other negative externalities to focus on restructuring French society in fundamental ways and that the route towards that social restructuring is political.

During recent years the state of the economy has been a very salient issue for the mass publics of the industrial democracies, and the French electorate is no exception. In this article the influence of inflation, unemployment and real income growth performance on popular 'satisfaction' with Presidents Pompidou and Giscard d'Estaing is analysed. The empirical analyses are based on a model of qualitative political responses. The most important. features of the model are that people evaluate a President's economic performance relatively rather than absolutely, and that the weights placed upon current and past performance in the formation of contemporaneous political judgments decline geometrically. The empirical results indicate clearly that a President's standing with the mass public depends primarily on the performance of the real economy (in particular, the real income growth rate), rather than on nominal economic conditions (the inflation rate). This suggests that deflationary macroeconomic policies sacrificing employment and real output and income growth in order to achieve price deceleration are not likely to enhance a President's support in the French electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

L'École Nationale d'Administration was established by ordonnance on October 9, 1945. Michel Debrk, the architect of the ordonnance, wanted to change the previous system of recruitment and training of higher civil servants in France in two major ways. The first was a political change implying an increase in democracy and equality both for society at large and for the French civil service in particular. The second change was of a more technical nature and provided for a standardization of qualifications for all higher civil servants, a standardization however, at a qualitatively high level. The political aims of the 1945 reform proved difficult to achieve; despite subsequent tinkering, the degree of democratization and standardization of the higher civil service remains doubtful. As far as the technical aspects of the reform are concerned, however, ENA reached, indeed surpassed, the target initially set. Few people doubt the quality of the civil servants ENA turns out. And yet the upshot of ENA's insistence on a high level of factual knowledge coupled with intensive training has been the creation of an elite more likely to collaborate directly with ministers than to provide an efficiently functioning administration. Whether the ENA can therefore be termed a civil service college rather than a training ground for the exercise of power remains a debatable question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the reaction of France to the transfer of the assembly's legislative powers to European Community institutions. Main reasons behind the indifference of the French Assembly to the power transfer; Constitutional provisions that circumscribe the role of the French Parliament in the political order.

Analyzes the referendum on the enlargement of the European Economic Community called by France. Objectives behind French President Alain Pompidou's decision to call for the referendum; Implication of the referendum's results on French politics.