Arthur Goldhammer

The rise of la NUPES has sharpened the generational divide in French politics.  Le Monde reports that an IPSOS-Sopra Steria poll conducted before the first round shows Macron’s Ensemble! taking […]

The first round of the legislative elections yielded inconclusive results. The so-called “presidential” party, now named Ensemble!, could end up with a slim majority, but then again it may not. […]

No, I’m not referring to the Boston Celtics. By “green machine” I mean the coalition of forces responsible for several important votes in the European Parliament today. MEPs rejected several […]

This year’s legislative campaign, which will culminate on Sunday in the first of two electoral rounds, is perhaps the strangest I have witnessed in more than half a century of […]

When you’re wrong, it’s best to fess up. I said that la NUPES would be lucky to get 100 seats. Current projections have the Mélenchonistas gaining 195-230 seats! Macron’s Ensemble […]

I’m in France for the first time in 2 1/2 years. I’ve spoken to many people in the past week who have tried to convince me that I’m underestimating the […]

Emmanuel Macron is firmly at the controls of the aircraft, but its destination remains unclear. After three weeks of flying in circles, the pilot-in-chief settled on a new government but […]

I’ve been on an island with poor Internet since last Friday, so I’ve had to catch up on all the hot takes about Emmanuel Macron’s nomination of Elisabeth Borne to […]

Elsewhere on this site you’ll find an excellent set of reviews of Martin Conway’s Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968. Of the immediate postwar period Conway writes: But Communism no longer […]

L’unité fait la force, as the saying goes. Has Jean-Luc Mélenchon achieved the impossible, unifying the fractious French left as never before? Has he single-handedly revived the hope of a […]

The dust has barely settled from the presidential election, but the legislative campaign is in full flood, with rumors swirling everywhere in the accelerating currents. Macron has “put a target […]

There is no such thing as one-party democracy. Alternation in power must exist as a possibility. While Emmanuel Macron’s decisive victory on Sunday was unequivocally a victory for French democracy, […]

Here’s my article on the election results in The New Republic. Here are a few additional thoughts. The republican front, said to have collapsed, still exists and remains fairly robust. […]

In politics, they say, a week is a long time. Had I written this post a week or two ago, I would likely have entitled it “On the Brink” rather […]

I sum up the debate for The New Republic.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is calling on voters to elect him prime minister by filling the National Assembly with Unbowed deputies. Marion Maréchal, Guillaume Peltier, and Nicolas Bay–all ex-Le Penist turncoats–are calling […]

The much-awaited debate will take place tomorrow. The candidates have haggled over every aspect. By common agreement the studio will be kept at a chilly 19° C. to guard against […]

France Insoumise voters were asked to express their preference for the second round on the party Web site. 215,292 did so, and 37.65% said they would cast a blank protest […]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is entitled to a little crowing. He outran his polls and improved his position slightly compared with 2017. But in negotiations with the Greens and Socialists over a […]

Athens put Socrates to death for leading its youth astray, and ever since some who aspire to the title “philosopher” have sought to demonstrate their worthiness to be Socrates’ successors […]

Most commentary on the election has concentrated on the personalities and policies of the candidates. What little attention has been devoted to deeper structural changes in French society has tended […]

I emerge briefly from behind the blog to discuss the election on Korean television.

Emmanuel Macron has a problem. His largest reservoir of potential voters lies among those who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. The endorsements he has received from Nicolas […]

Again in The New Republic.

I am slightly more confident now than I was a few hours ago that Marine Le Pen will not be the next president of France. True, she improved her first-round […]

I’m still betting on Macron, but I’m also sweating, for reasons I set forth in this article for The New Republic.

The polls are alarming. First-round polling suggests that the second round will be a repeat of 2017, with Macron facing off against Le Pen, but Le Pen has been closing […]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon held a rally this weekend and, by common consent, assembled the largest crowd of the campaign. He has risen modestly in the polls as Zemmour and Pécresse have […]

What happened to the candidacy of Anne Hidalgo? Recent polls have put her at around 2-2.5%, about a third of the dismal score that Benoît Hamon made in 2017, which […]

Parties no longer count for much. Elections hinge on personalities, or at any rate personae, and public personae are created by the media. So I thought it would be interesting […]

On March 3 at 11AM EST I will be participating in a panel on the French elections.

It looks more and more like the 2022 presidential election will not be about electing the next president–few doubt that the incumbent will be re-elected–but rather about the future complexion […]

Emmanuel Macron has been accused of being the “president of the rich,” but he has his ways of reaching out to “la France qui se lève tôt.” One of them, […]

This year’s presidential campaign has thus far generated little excitement, but behind the scenes a remarkable party realignment seems to be well under way. This was underscored by three events […]

The results of the People’s Primary were announced yesterday on a platform full of young activists, none of whom seemed to be more than 30 years old: “Never trust anyone […]

The French party system is in deep distress. This was already apparent in 2017, when the arrival of “neither right nor left” candidate Emmanuel Macron destructured the opposition that had […]

Voting begins today in the so-called Primaire Populaire, or People’s Primary. The impulse behind this “election” (which should more properly be classified as a poll, an Internet survey conducted without […]

This year’s French presidential campaign has all the dynamism of an equestrian statue. Instead of the (misleadingly) dramatic duel between Macron and Le Pen expected initially, we have instead a […]

The jaws of French talking heads have been flapping wildly since Emmanuel Macron vented his sentiments about the unvaccinated: “J’ai très envie de les emmerder.” The English-speaking media have chosen […]

Valérie Pécresse reportedly intends to devote the beginning of her campaign to “le régalien“: “Il ne faut pas lâcher cette thématique, au moins jusqu’à fin janvier, insiste le député Eric Pauget. Son […]

A new poll sheds light on the Pécresse electorate. It is essentially the Fillon electorate–older, more likely to be retired, more Catholic, and wealthier than the average voter–augmented by a […]

Just what the left needs: another presidential candidate. “Squabble among yourselves; leave me out of it,” said Jean-Luc Mélenchon. One can understand his frustration. Meanwhile, the Macroniste camp called attention […]

Emmanuel Macron’s second presidential campaign will be nothing like his first. In 2016-17 he enjoyed the advantage of enigma: no one knew who he was or what he represented (though […]

As I predicted in my previous post, Valérie Pécresse has obtained a significant “post-convention bounce,” while Éric Zemmour has slumped. A new IFOP poll has Macron at 25% and Pécresse […]

On Thursday (look it up!) I predicted that Pécresse would win the LR runoff 60-40. It was just announced that she got 60.95% of the final vote. You heard it […]

In an interview with Le Monde, historian Robert Paxton refutes Éric Zemmour’s contention that Vichy sacrificed “foreign” Jews to save “French” Jews. One hopes that this admirably concise statement of […]

Ciotti 25.59% and Pécresse 25%, a perfect picture of the LR today. Ciotti is of course the most Zemmour-compatible of Les Républicains, while Pécresse, like Bertrand, was for a while […]

Today, Josephine Baker entered the Pantheon, and Éric Zemmour declared his candidacy for the presidency. The contrast between the two events could not have been greater. The Baker pantheonization was […]

Anyone who follows French presidential elections knows that there is a regular pattern to insurgent candidacies. The first movement is triumphal and allegro. The crescendos build as the novel candidate […]

The new German government will be announced in a few minutes. There will be no surprises: Olaf Scholz of the SPD will be chancellor, Robert Habeck of the Greens will […]

Renaud Muselier, the president of PACA, has quit Les Républicains. The reason: he believes that the party he helped to found has erased the line that used to divide it […]

Raphaëlle Bacqué and Ariane Chemin, Le Monde‘s indefatigable political profilers, published today a profile of Billionaire Vincent Bolloré, whom they credit with having established “un pôle réactionnaire” in the media, which […]

As it does every year, the Institut des Politiques Publiques has published an assessment of the distributive consequences of the government’s economic and social policies. Macron haters will be disappointed […]

France and Germany are headed for a major clash over the development of nuclear power. On Tuesday, President Macron announced that France would begin building new nuclear power plants for […]

Anyone watching the debate among the five LR candidates for the party’s presidential nomination must be wondering whatever happened to Europe. The first questions asked of each candidate were 1) […]

The Polish supreme court has raised a direct challenge to the supremacy of the Treaty of the European Union over the laws of member states. The Polish court grants the […]

In a poll conducted in February 2021, Fondapol asked voters in France, Germany, Italy, and the UK to place themselves on a left-right spectrum. In all four countries, self-described right-wing […]

The Financial Times has an article today on the replacement of Hervé Gattegno as editor of the Journal du Dimanche and Paris Match, allegedly at the behest of the owner of both […]

Ipsos, CEVIPOF, the Fondation Jean Jaurès, and Le Monde have combined to produce the clearest snapshot to date of the state of the French electorate in advance of the 2022 […]

The title, with its nod to Sartre’s L’Être et le Néant, is probably all that one needs to read, but Davet and Lhomme, the duo who put the final nails […]

The French party system, already fractured beyond recognition, has disintegrated even more in recent weeks. True, the Greens now have a candidate, Yannick Jadot, behind whom they have nominally united […]

France is angry. She has recalled her ambassadors from the US and Australia. Yesterday, not one but two major news organizations contacted me for comment. “I can’t help you,” I […]

The Republican presidential field took on a new complexion today. Michel Barnier announced that he is in, as did Eric Ciotti, but Laurent Wauquiez took himself out of the running. […]

It seems that Éric Zemmour may be on the verge of throwing his hat in the ring for 2022 and that a fair number of ex-Lepenist politicians may be prepared […]

The 2021 regionals are history. What to make of the results? First, the vast majority of voters continued to abstain. Second, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National suffered a severe setback. […]

Tocqueville 21 · French Politics with Art Goldhammer We are proud to launch the Tocqueville 21 Podcast! Our goal is for this podcast to be a forum to explore in-depth […]

The Guardian asked me to comment on last Sunday’s election. You can read the article here. Of course, the RN could still take PACA next Sunday, but the idea that […]

The headline that emerges from the first round of this year’s regional elections is that, once again, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National did not achieve the gains anticipated by many […]

The warning signs have been present for some time. Les Républicains are on the verge of a crackup. Caught between Macron’s LRM and Le Pen’s RN, the party’s electoral space […]

La laïcité–the distinctive French approach to the separation of church and state–has been a matter of contentious debate for decades. That debate has become even more heated in the past […]

On May 19, the forces de l’ordre, as the French like to say, demonstrated throughout France. The demonstration had three purposes, two clearly legitimate, the third more questionable. The first purpose […]

I assess her chances in Persuasion. The short answer: yes.

Not long ago, in the wake of the murder of Samuel Paty by an Islamist extremist, the Macron government announced a new approach to the regulation of the Muslim faith […]

May Day in France is always marked by two starkly contrasting events: a march by trade unions commemorating the history of the trade union movement, and a speech by the […]

On May 11, at 12 noon EDT, Harvard’s Center for European Studies will host an online panel discussion of Macron’s presidency and the upcoming 2022 elections. Participants will include Marc-Olivier […]

Over the past decade, since taking over control of the Front National from her father, Marine Le Pen has successfully moved the party, now renamed Rassemblement National, into contention for […]

These are difficult days for the political commentator. The normal political thrust and jab has been overshadowed by the universal preoccupation with the pandemic. Commentary on Covid is best left […]

With the 2022 presidential election looming in the middle distance, it seems that everyone in France with the slightest modicum of presidential ambition is launching a trial balloon lately. The […]

‘Tis the weeks after Christmas, in the year before the next presidential election, and ambitions are stirring throughout France and Navarre. Le Monde dutifully warns that the French left is in […]

This is the first of two reviews of Emile Chabal’s brief history of France since 1940: France (Polity, 2020).   Emile Chabal’s splendid new book is entitled simply France, without further […]

Is Macron’s flirtation with the far right intensifying? A week ago he gave an interview to L’Express in which, mine de rien, he dropped the names of Charles Maurras and Maréchal […]

Giscard-d’Estaing, who died yesterday, marked a transition in the history of the Fifth Republic. Or, rather, he should have marked a transition, but the “modernization” he championed proved abortive, and […]

Pandering to the police, which was the purpose of the notorious Article 24 of the so-called Global Security Law (see my previous post), has backfired, putting Prime Minister Castex and […]

What’s in a name? Not much, or perhaps all too much, in the opinion of Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure. In an appearance this morning on France Inter, he announced […]

This week, a group of French scholars and writers published a “Manifesto of 100 Intellectuals,” which accused various scholars and journalists in France of complicity in terrorism, and called for […]

During The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville‘s recent conference on the notion of Well-Being, economist Eloi Laurent gave a presentation entitled “Human Well-being and the Biosphere: Connecting the Circles,” in which […]

I’ve been quiet for so long that some of you must have concluded that this blog had ceased to exist. The political situation here in the US has been so […]

European summits are odd affairs, in which the high and mighty are reduced to pulling all-nighters, like second-year students obliged to endure a college bull session–which by some accounts these […]

Emmanuel Macron’s self-reinvention did not get very far. The just-appointed Castex government is as unexciting as the new prime minister himself. After Philippe, Castaner and Belloubet were shown the door. […]

There should be no surprise about Macron’s dismissal of Édouard Philippe: any prime minister who is more popular than his president is ripe for sacking. And it is doubtful that […]

Yes, the Greens did very well in yesterday’s Covid-delayed second round of municipal elections. They captured some major prizes: Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and, most surprisingly, Bordeaux. They retained Grenoble. They […]

A movie star and a reality-TV buffoon have won the presidency of the United States in recent years. Is it conceivable that the mantle of Charles de Gaulle will devolve […]

There are now numerous Covid rescue plans on the table for European leaders to consider. There is no need to run them down here because Prof. David Cameron of Yale […]

The pandemic has presented Emmanuel Macron with an opportunity. He can now reimagine his presidency without appearing to have been forced into retreat by the Gilets Jaunes and opponents of […]

It took a pandemic, but Germany’s Angela Merkel has at last agreed with French president Emmanuel Macron that a fiscal response to the crisis is necessary, that it will be […]

These are difficult days for political commentators. Politics-as-usual has given way to quarrels over the Covid-19 response. Commentators can choose one of two courses: concentrate on the errors, inevitably plentiful […]

I reflect on the corona crisis and the concomitant “Rebirth of Tragedy” at The Public Seminar. And I summarize France’s just-announced deconfinement policy for The American Prospect.

Tocquevillians recently suffered a major loss: Melvin Richter, the great historian of political thought, died a little over a week ago. Mel was the kindest of men, and intellectually generous […]

Until last week, the impending municipal elections in France were distinguished only by the eagerness of candidates across France to dissociate themselves from any of the political parties, affiliation with […]