Legislative Politics

This chapter proposes an assessment of the state of the study of legislative politics in France. It starts with a review of how the study of legislative politics has developed comparatively over time and identifies the major current debates in the comparative literature. Then it turns to the French case, explaining its weaknesses and peculiarities, and assessing the current state of legislative studies in France. We see that, for a long time, legislative studies were rare in the landscape of French political science. Things, though, have evolved since the end of the 1990s, when there was a renewed scholarly interest in central institutions and actors of the French political regime as well as the emergence of new work that was better connected with the methods, theories, and topics of mainstream legislative studies. Finally, we underline some dimensions of the agenda for the future study of legislative politics in France.

Executive Politics in France

This chapter begins by reviewing the study of executive politics comparatively. It then reviews the study of executive politics in France, showing how scholars based in France were once at the cutting edge of international scholarship in this area. However, with the turn of French political science to political sociology, the study of the French executive tends to be carried out more by scholars outside France and by comparativists rather than by scholars within France itself. In this context, the chapter proposes a research agenda that urges a focus on the application of the new institutionalism to the French case, particularly the comparative work in this area, for an emphasis on the study of personalization and mediatization; for the literature on political psychology to be applied more systematically; for work on coalitions, and government formation and termination, to be extended; and for constructivist approaches to political leadership to be applied.

A Framework for a Comparative Politics of France

The larger comparative theory-building and stocktaking goals and questions, and the plan of the book, are presented in this chapter. The major dynamics and developments of French political life are discussed in terms of explaining and understanding the evolution of French politics. The next section provides an overview of French political science to situate the analysis of the study of French politics both inside and outside France in the chapters that follow. The outside-in/inside-out approach of the book is next highlighted in terms of how the vast majority of the chapters follow a common three-part comparative framework: the development of the study of French politics first outside and then inside France and then the emerging research agenda. The chapter then outlines the book’s structure in three sections: conceptual foundations, large-scale processes, and comparative politics dimensions—institutions; parties, elections, and voters; civil society; and policy and policymaking, both domestic and international.

Defense and Security Policy

This chapter examines what the international literature tells us about French security and defense policy, but also what the French case teaches us about this literature. French scholarship on security and defense policy has demonstrated three main trends: the legacy of Charles de Gaulle’s vision and policies, a strongly policy-oriented production, and the influence of sociological approaches in French political science more generally. These trends have given the impression that the Fifth Republic’s security and defense was unique among Western democracies. The chapter tries to bring together the main elements of a research agenda that can connect the French case to the international literature, including: expanding the sociology of security and defense policy actors and institutions; analyzing the changing articulation between defense policy and war; and tracking the reaction of the French “strong state” to the the privatization of defense functions, the civilianization of the military, and growing international cooperation.