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Focusing on two contemporary cases of French security intervention in Africa, Erforth explores the decision-making process for the policy rather than the policy itself and the consequences of military activity. Benedikt Erforth examines France's policy in Africa with attention to the motivations that drive French foreign and security policy. Erforth 'argues that the mere analysis of policy outcomes tells us little about the actual motivations that drive French foreign and security policy in Africa' (p. 6). [Extracted from the article]

European Union member states have been notoriously divided in their attitudes towards Russia. These national positions have, however, too often been essentialized, thereby obfuscating nuances and foregoing the possibility to discern or explain change. Considering its strong political and economic links with Russia, its past positions and the fact that Ukraine had never registered prominently on its foreign policy radar, France's reaction to the Ukraine crisis has been firmer and more active than most could have forecast. This article examines the content, determinants and evolutions of France's policies towards Russia before, during and beyond the crisis. Contrary to traditional explanations, which tend to emphasize historic, cultural, economic or domestic political factors, I argue that these policies have been mainly—and continuously—driven by France's broader milieu goals in international and European politics. These considerations help to account for the policy shift revealed during the Ukraine crisis. Following the emergence of Russia as a central actor in Syria and the correlated politicization of the Russia question in the 2017 French presidential election, the Macron administration has adopted a new diplomatic approach towards Moscow. Yet a different policy direction has not emerged, as the administration has not fundamentally put into question the previously established assessment of how Russia's current foreign policy collides with France's milieu goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the application of State aid law for the European Union member country France. It cites on the country's economic history which revolves around the creation of Les manufactures royales and the development a welfare State. The article also discusses the elements of guidance provided by the European Commission in the Notice on the notion of State aid.

Using data from a prediction market (crowd-based forecasts), we build a daily measure capturing the risk of Frexit related to the 2017 French presidential elections. We study how unexpected changes in this new measure of political uncertainty in France affect European sovereign spreads vis-à-vis Germany. We show that our uncertainty proxy drives not only the French sovereign spread but also the spreads of those EU countries deemed the most vulnerable to the risk of desegregation of the Euro Zone. These results suggest that specific political uncertainty affects short-term investor's expectations and may outweigh other economic determinants of sovereign spreads shortly prior to high stake elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transatlantic cooperation on security has a long history. In Africa, transatlantic cooperation on security is basically between France and the United States. This paper asks why the two former competitors in Africa started to cooperate and also why they are so willing to engage militarily. The central argument in this paper poses that France and the US cooperate because it is indispensable to both parties. To France, the cooperation is indispensable because the US is the only power with sufficient financial means and with sufficient air-lift capacity to transport French and African troops into conflict-ridden countries. To Washington, cooperation with Paris is indispensable because the French authorities have unique access to intelligence and knowledge about large parts of Africa. By applying a foreign policy analysis framework, the paper analyses how perceptions of decision-makers, the role of personality and leadership, the role of government institutions and political systems have impacted the relevant decisions. It is emphasised that the two different decision-making systems - the French “state dominated” and the American “society dominated” - produce the same result, namely collaboration. It suggests that the perception of a serious threat from terrorism and Islamist radicalisation overrules differences in decision-making systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January and again in November 2015 France was confronted with a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris. These 'events' shocked France (and the world) and were presented by actors and observers as turning points. Yet, as all significant events, they give rise to a plurality of interpretations.We argue that the strategy developed by the French government is a good example of how contemporary politics mobilises the symbolic, a dimension of public policy that is often neglected. Using interviews with key advisors of the President and the Prime Minister and analyses of official speeches and performances in the first weeks after the attacks, we show how the government endeavoured to impose its framing of the attacks through rhetoric, symbols and performance in order to coproduce the 'events' as moments in which it acted decisively to unite the Nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the roles of anxiety and anger in shaping people’s perceptions of politicians’ integrity. Drawing on recent work on the role of affect in shaping political judgement, the article develops a theoretical model of the anticipated role of anger and anxiety in structuring reactions to allegations of political misconduct. The model is tested on a unique data set that includes results of an experiment fielded as part of a survey carried out in January 2013 among a representative sample of the French adult population. The analysis finds that those in whom politically dubious actions generate anxiety are more sensitive to contextual details than other respondents, although the role of anger in modulating ethical judgements is less clear-cut, dampening attention to information about negatively assessed behaviour but enhancing attention to information about behaviour that is assessed more positively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to question the discourse on “the war on terror” developed by the French President in the wake of the two terrorist attacks that occurred in France in 2015. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, it explores the discursive legitimation strategies deployed by President Hollande to legitimate France’s securitarian response to the two attacks. It reveals how the defence of human rights served as an overall justificatory framework, through rationalisation, appeals to authority, and moralisation. It argues that Hollande implemented a discursive manipulation of reality to shield his actions from criticisms of illiberalism, all the while reframing the notion of human rights, undermining it and paving the way for an authoritarian-driven executive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2017 Presidential elections in France brought victory for President Emmanuel Macron, founder of a new party declaring itself above left and right, La République en Marche. The Parliamentary elections confirmed this success and brought an absolute majority of députés in support of the new president. Macron appointed a prime minister from the centre right, and ministers from both the centre left and centre right, alongside others who were non-aligned. But this attempt to go beyond traditional cleavages is not in fact the departure it has been described as by Macron and his allies, and it has much in common with the general orientation of many governments over the past few decades, of both left and right. In particular, it is highly neo-liberal, pro-business and at the same time socially liberal. Moreover, just as important as the governmental consequences of the elections are other aspects of the results, which may be of great long-term significance; these include the strong support for the Front national and Marine Le Pen, substantial support for alternative left Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise, record-high levels of spoiled ballots and abstentions, not to mention the historic defeat of the Parti socialiste and its consequent disarray. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2017 French presidential campaign was in many respects very different from all of its predecessors in the Fifth Republic. The same might also be said of the parliamentary contest that followed a few weeks later. Both elections were characterised by two complementary features – le dégagisme and le renouvellement – that together contributed to the sense that in 2017 French politics underwent a radical transformation, including a major shake-up of the party system and a significant renewal of the political class in both the executive and the legislature. In this vein the article analyses key features of both campaigns, selectively using comparator reference points from previous Fifth Republic elections where appropriate. In contrast, in the concluding section on the early weeks of the Emmanuel Macron presidency, the article highlights important elements of continuity with previous presidencies in terms of leadership style and policy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out to analyse the extent to which the presence of the Front National (FN) in the 2017 Presidential Election influenced the content of the other candidates' manifestos. In spite of a process of 'dédiabolisation' whereby Marine Le Pen attempted to put forward a more respectable and less racist, image of her party, the FN's programme is still characterised by its strong anti-immigrant, nativist proposals. This article analyses the manner in which the general theme of immigration, which can be considered the main identity marker of the party, has been approached by the four other main candidates (Fillon, Macron, Mélenchon and Hamon). This is done through a study of the words used both in the manifestos and in public speeches in order to assess the 'contagious' effect that a populist organisation has on the mainstream parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use quasi-experimental evidence to measure the impact of the 13 November 2015 attacks in Paris, France, on various channels through which terrorism can affect the economy. The evidence suggests the attacks reduced optimism and increased trust in the national government but did not affect current life satisfaction nor political orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on commemorations of the October Revolution in France in 2017. Topics discussed include the round table discussions organised the French Communist Party (PCF) as part of the celebration, publications released in time for the commemoration, and an art exhibition held marking the centenary. Also mentioned is the silence of the non-communist left about the event.

This research tested the potential for self-affirmation on left- and right-wing political values to increase behavioral intentions to provide help and assistance to refugees. We present a pilot study defining left- and right-wing values, and a main study in which participants completed either a self-affirmation task, a group-affirmation task, or participated in a control condition on values that were either congruent or incongruent with their own political views. Results show that left-wing oriented participants showed more supportive intentions in the self-affirmation condition compared to the group-affirmation and control conditions, independent of values congruency. In contrast, right-wing participants showed more supportive intentions in the self-affirmation condition, but only when they affirmed on values that were congruent with their own political views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article presents world news briefs regarding alcohol and drugs as of May 2017. The report "The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research" was published by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Dutch legislators voted in favor of a new law, the Closed Coffeeshop Chain Act, that would create a regulated cannabis supply chain. France introduced new measures to control tobacco use that affects industry taxes and product packaging.

This article focuses on the dynamics at stake under the gap between the government official involvement against all forms of trafficking and the few numbers of detected and convicted cases in the domestic work sector, and underlines the uncertainty around the definition of this type of trafficking and its status as a legitimate public issue. The analysis shows the intertwined dynamics, at the level of civil servants involved in the implementation of the policy, at the legal and administrative level, and finally at the political level, which tends to restrict the identification of THB cases in this sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses how the French left could succeed in the 2017 election over the right under Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front. He states that the French left needs to embrace the nation's rising state workforce through aggressive policies aimed at tackling inequality, and paved way for job creation programs. He also says that the nation needs a movement, one that combines elements from La France Insoumise, the left wing of the Socialist Party, and unaffiliated populists.

The article focuses on problems faced by the government of French prime minister François Hollande in 2015. It comments on terrorist attacks in France including attacks on the offices of the periodical "Charlie Hebdo" and a kosher supermarket which resulted in 17 dead and then massacres in the Bataclan and the Stade de France in Paris which killed another 130, and economic concerns in Greece. It talks about the rise of the Front national party and concerns about the Eurozone and humanitarianism.

The article assesses the chances of François Hollande of retaining the French presidency and analyzes the crisis pervading his socialist political party, Parti Socialiste (PS). Topics discussed include the factors that contributed to the difficulties faced by the Hollande administration in successfully implementing its anti-austerity economic program and the impact of the Hollande administration's decision to pursue a supply side-focused economic reform on the political status of PS.

Decided by the executive, redistrictings in France have been claimed to have substantial partisan bias in favor of the right. We examine the evidence for this claim in terms of France's left bloc versus right bloc politics, combining information from both the first and the second round of France's two round electoral system. We also examine data at the constituency level to look at factors, such as malapportionment, that can affect bias. As France is characterized by a pattern of a limited number of redistrictings, population inequalities have grown in legislative constituencies between plans. Although the procedures used to draw constituency boundaries for the French Assembly are rather opaque, and under the control of political authorities, partisan bias appears as minuscule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The March 2014 municipal elections in France confirmed the electoral effectiveness of the Front national's (FN) strategic reorientation under Marine Le Pen by validating the party's organizational gambit to wrest local political control from the mainstream parties. This article analyzes the FN's performance in these elections from the standpoint of political demand and supply. First, it elaborates the social, economic, and partisan conditions of political demand that have enhanced the party's electoral traction among a growing segment of French voters. In turn, it focuses on the factors of political supply--notably the discursive and organizational aggiornamento undergone by the FN under Marine Le Pen's leadership--by which the party has been able to expand its local appeal. The article then assesses what the electoral results bode for the FN's positioning and status within the French party system, arguing that they herald its transformation from serving as a protest party to occupying a direct policymaking role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When social actors find themselves at an impasse, perceiving their futures as threatened, how can they respond? If their futures can get broken or interrupted, can they subsequently be reconnected or repaired? If yes, how? Here, I consider an ethnographic case of reconnected futurity drawn from French protest politics: the 2009-2010 Ronde Infinie des Obstine's, or "Infinite Rounds of the Stubborn." Opposing Sarkozy-era neoliberal university reforms, the Ronde sought to instrumentalize its temporal and political impasse, shifting its relation to the future out from the register of subjectivity and into the register of ritual motion. By situating the Ronde within the fabric of Parisian political space, I show how it synthesized the politics of occupation with the politics of marching, hopelessness with stubborn endurance, the negation of state temporality with the prefiguration of an alternative future. I conclude by reflecting on the place of temporal repair in relation to recent forms of prefigurative radicalism. [futures; political protest; higher education; ritualization; subjectivity; France] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012 the French Socialist Party imported the "Obama method" to organize the widest canvassing experiment of the country, leading to the victory of François Hollande. The direct transfer, as well as the wide similarity of practices on the ground, make these two campaigns a very good lens for comparing French and American civic culture. This article explores these two campaigns from a micro-sociological perspective, based on ethnographic studies carried out in Northern France and California in 2012. While door-to-door practices appear similar on the two sides of the Atlantic, they differ in terms of the room left for politics. While in France, party members politicized the interactions at the door and spoke politics all the time, American volunteers actively avoided it. This difference is linked to the underlying civic norms prevailing in both countries, but also to the party structures in which they take place. While the Obama campaign was carried out by paid organizers and "plug-in" volunteers, in France it was led by long-time party members. In the two cases, despite the intensive grassroots activities of the campaigns, participation has not empowered the participants, engagement appearing too superficial in the US or touching only highly politicized activists in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have long emphasised the consensual nature of the intergovernmental negotiations in the Council of the European Union. Unlike other international organisations, where surface consensus has been found to be merely a cover for the dominance of powerful states, the EU literature describes a norm of generosity that works as a real constraining factor. In contrast, this article warns against descriptions of the EU as different in kind. Based on interviews with 231 EU Member State representatives involved in day-to-day negotiations in the Council, it finds a strong bias in generosity on behalf of the three dominant powers: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The 'Big 3' are strikingly unwilling to make generous concessions, compared to other states. Furthermore, from a rational perspective, there are good reasons for expecting this pattern. The study also shows that extensive pooling of power in the form of qualified majority rule and hard law commitment is associated with less generosity, while there seems to be no socialising effect towards generosity from exposure to the 'Brussels community'. These findings cast a new light on the common narrative of the EU as a 'soft-bargaining' anomaly among international organisations, where national interests are upgraded into common interests by a process of norm socialisation. Instead, it seems that the purported 'consensus norm' has been far from successful in transcending fundamental power asymmetries between the EU Member States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]