Blog

When French and American scholars and journalists attempt to discuss the role of religion in their respective democracies, it is often apparent that in more senses than one, they are […]

I appreciate these comments, the time it took to write them, and the questions they raise about Sex and Secularism. My aim in this response is not to cover all […]

Le récent et dernier ouvrage de Joan Scott, Sex and secularism, paru en 2017 aux éditions de l’Université de Princeton va être très bientôt disponible en français. La rapidité de […]

Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism is a remarkable achievement. Among the reasons it is so: it manages to be, all at once, and with a seamless coherence, two very […]

Sex and Secularism is an intellectually erudite and politically powerful intervention into a contemporary Western common sense: with secularism comes gender equality (even if that promise is endlessly deferred), and […]

Sex and Secularism is a powerful historical polemic against one widespread picture of the relationship between secularism and gender equality. This picture is that the secularist tradition of thought has […]

President Macron is a well-respected man. Even his detractors credit him with being a remarkably thoughtful and intelligent man. Why, then, has he allowed himself to be portrayed as thoughtless […]

The events of Mai 68, of course, stretched beyond the month of May 1968 itself. But as we’re winding down our reflections on this fiftieth anniversary of these events, we thought we’d […]

The euro crisis did not destroy Europe, but the immigration crisis might. The plight of the Aquarius has put the issue back on the front pages, even as the size […]

Three economists of broadly social liberal stripe–Jean Pisani-Ferry, Philippe Martin, and Philippe Aghion–have sent Emmanuel Macron a note articulating their disappointment with the “imbalance” of his economic policies to date. […]

The French party system, devastated by the Macron tsunami, has not recovered. Only a bleak wasteland remains. If one looks closely, there are signs of life, but just barely. Small […]

Angela Merkel has never been a leader in a hurry. She took six months to form her current coalition government. She has taken even longer to respond to Emmanuel Macron’s […]

This is a friendly reminder to our readers in Paris that Tocqueville 21 is hosting a discussion on the contemporary legacy of Mai 68 this Friday at the Bar Commun […]

Albert Memmi, Tunisie, An I (CNRS Éditions, 2017). Albert Memmi, Portraits (CNRS Éditions, 2015). Albert Memmi, Penser à vif: de la colonization à la laïcité (Non Lieu, 2017). The Albert […]

  Le réédition du livre du sociologue Alain Touraine sur les événements de mai-juin 1968 nous donne l’occasion de revenir sur son analyse du « mouvement de mai » et son contexte […]

I try to stay positive about Emmanuel Macron, recognizing that a failure of his presidency–and let’s be clear: the last two French presidencies have ended in abject failure–could well prove […]

In France, Mai 68 is an “event”—or rather, a series of événements, the temporality itself having occupied quite a bit of philosophical discussion over the years. In any case, having a single month that […]

On Saturday June 9, Stephen Sawyer and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins are organizing a conference on the anniversary of Mai 68 at the American University of Paris (6, rue Colonel Combes – 75007 Paris). The […]

Gilles Texier est doctorant en histoire et enseignant à l’Université de Paris 1. Membre du Nouveau parti anticapitaliste, il a été impliqué dans le mouvement étudiant sur le site de […]

In December 2017, Austria got its new government, a coalition between the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), headed by the charismatic 31-year-old college dropout Sebastian Kurz, the world’s youngest head […]

Les termes « démocratie » et « santé » sont fréquemment rapprochés dans le débat public et peuvent être accolés de plusieurs manières. Si l’on s’amuse à les permuter, les combinaisons obtenues ouvrent de […]

Mayday has always been problematic for the French left but never more so than this year. It is problematic because some unions, primarily the CGT but also at times the […]

In a recent post, I began to address Tocqueville’s Cold War legacy, specifically the narrative in which Tocqueville became an authority that could be invoked in the service of Western […]

The new online magazine AOC (analyse, opinion, critique—nothing to do with wine or other protected labels), started off a series today on the role of environmental thinking in the major political […]

The US media take an interest in France mainly when there is an election or a state visit. With Macron in the US right now, my views have been solicited […]

Axel Honneth et  Jacques Rancière, Recognition or Disagreement. A Critical Encounter on the Politics of Freedom, Equality, and Identity, édité par Katia Genel et Jean-Philippe Deranty (Columbia University Press, 2017) […]

I’ve been on the road quite a bit over the last few weeks and haven’t had much time to post, so I’m coming to this a little late, but there’s […]

For the second time in three days, President Macron, le pourfendeur de la présidence bavarde of his predecessor, sat down for a lengthy interview. Regarding the content of his discussion with journalists […]

The president, champion of la parole rare, emerged from his palace yesterday, just as le président bavard, as his successor has labeled him, published a book accusing the former of betrayal of […]

I have a review out today of Eric Fassin’s pamphlet against left populism (and by extension against Jean-Luc Mélenchon), written last spring during the French presidential election campaign but still […]

This past February, the Times Literary Supplement published a translation of Edith Wharton’s lecture, “France and Its Allies at War: The Witnesses Speak.” It’s a curious little speech, delivered in […]

This week, rail workers and civil servants in France staged a massive demonstration against Emmanuel Macron’s planned reform of the national rail service, coordinated with plans for an ongoing transit […]

A funny thing has happened to the French left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon realized his dream of destroying the PS, but thus far he hasn’t been able to put anything solid in […]

Editor’s note: The following post by Vincent Lloyd is based on the arguments in his new book out this month from Columbia University Press, In Defense of Charisma.   1. Charisma is […]

With the news that Stéphane Le Foll, le dernier vieux grognard du Hollandisme, has withdrawn from the contest to lead the Socialist Party out of the wilderness, it is now certain […]

“When France sneezes, Europe catches cold”: in these days, Count Metternich’s famous quip could arguably be extended to nearly all European democracies, whose precarious health reverberates on the whole Continent. […]

Editor’s note: This article by David Kretz originally appeared online in The Point Magazine last December. Since then, it’s become only all the more evident that the Center for Political Beauty’s style mixture […]

Patrick Weil, whom we recently featured on this blog, has a fascinating interview in a recent issue of Marianne on laïcité and the way it has been approached by Emmanuel Macron and the […]

There has been much discussion, and much cant, in recent weeks about le statut des cheminots. Macron wants to change it. For this he has been accused by some in the […]

Film review: Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig; The Florida Project, written by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch, directed by Sean Baker Tocqueville’s observations on raising girls in the United […]

  Olivia Leboyer est docteur en science politique et enseigne à Sciences Po Paris. Sa thèse a été publiée en 2012, Elite et Libéralisme, CNRS éditions. Ses recherches actuelles portent sur […]

Hugo Drochon is a political theorist and historian of political thought, with interests in continental political philosophy, democratic theory, liberalism and political realism. His latest book is Nietzsche’s Great Politics, and he […]

Gilles Perret has a new documentary out this week based on footage of Jean-Luc Mélenchon during his 2017 presidential campaign. The film, L’insoumis, has been predictably praised to high heavens as […]

As noted this morning on France Inter, Emmanuel Macron, who beat the records set by Jacques Chirac and François Hollande for time spent at the annual agricultural fair in Paris, […]

There has been so much said about the tragedy of what happened last week in Parkland, Florida, as well as about the insanity of America’s gun culture, the grip of […]

Florian Philippot, formerly ubiquitous on the airwaves as the articulate front man for the Front National, became the scapegoat for the FN’s failure in the presidential. Things became so uncomfortable […]

Antisemitism has been called “the socialism of fools.” By analogy, one might call Wauquiezisme “the Machiavellianism of fools.” Elsewhere on this site, the political theorist Hugo Drochon has an elegant […]

I review three excellent and thought-provoking new books on democracy for The American Prospect.

Aurore Lambert est secrétaire générale de la Revue française des affaires sociales et doctorante en science politique à Paris 1. Ses travaux portent sur le capital culturel des élus nationaux. […]

In the midst of our series on elites and democracy in France, I thought I’d take a slight détour américain by way of Tocqueville. A recent column about American elites in […]

Patrick Weil is a historian of immigration and citizenship law, a senior research fellow at the CNRS and the University of Paris 1, and a visiting professor at Yale Law […]

  This month, the Tocqueville 21 Blog will be featuring a series of articles and interviews on the subject of elitism and democracy in contemporary France. All democracies have to […]

  Danielle Charette is a PhD Student with the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where she studies political theory. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a BA in […]

Guest contributor Michael C. Behrent teaches modern European history at Appalachian State University (North Carolina). After recently publishing a review of Marcel Gauchet’s L’Avènement de la démocratie series for Dissent, Michael had […]

Emmanuel Macron has been on the move. At the Davos conclave of the world’s movers and shakers, he made a splash by announcing not only that France was back but […]

Marcel Gauchet is a philosopher and historian. He is an emeritus director of studies at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, and editor in chief of the journal Le […]

  Marcel Gauchet est philosophe et historien, directeur d’études émerite à l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales et rédacteur en chef de la revue Le débat. Il est notamment […]

Samuel Walker is an American engaged in graduate studies of philosophy and international relations at the Freie Universität in Berlin, where he also works as an editor and translator. — […]

  When I logged on to Facebook last night, the first thing I found in my feed was a theater invitation from Jean-Luc Mélenchon. At the Théâtre de Ménilmontant this […]

Think of all the recent manifestations of unrest among the young: the Sanders phenomenon, the Corbyn rebellion, Occupy Wall Street, Podemos, Nuit Debout, and now the German JuSos. Even the […]

It’s a year and a half before the European elections of May 2019, which will be the voters’ first turn to give a verdict on the Macron presidency at the […]

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins is a Visiting Presidential Fellow in the Religion Department at Yale University. He is writing a book for Columbia University Press, tentatively entitled The Other Intellectuals: Raymond Aron […]

This is a guest post by Adrien Abecassis. Adrien Abecassis est Visiting Fellow au Weatherhead Center for International Affairs de Harvard. Diplomate de formation, il a été conseiller pour les […]

  Directeur de recherches au CNRS et professeur de philosophie à l’Ecole normale supérieure, Jean-Claude Monod est l’auteur de Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie?, une réflexion sur le charisme et l’autorité dans la […]

  Jean-Claude Monod is a research director at the CNRS and professor of philosophy at the Ecole normale supérieure. In Qu’est-ce qu’un chef en démocratie? [What is a leader in a democracy?], he […]

  This week’s Canard enchaîné reports that Emmanuel Macron—along with Richard Ferrand, the president of the parliamentary group of La République en marche—are struggling to control the left-leaning members of the governing majority […]

Thomas Legrand, one of my favorite commentators on French politics, to whose France Inter editorial I wake up every morning, ruminated today on the “meaning of Macronism” and concluded, in […]

Albert Wu is assistant professor of history at the American University of Paris. He specializes in the global history of health and religion, and his latest book is From Christ to […]

Today we learn that La France Insoumise has seized on “selection” of students by universities as a “major issue” for the year ahead. “The young,” says FI deputy Eric Coquerel […]

Since its original publication in 2015, Wendy Brown’s book Undoing the Demos has become a standard reference for those seeking to understand the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy. Brown’s central […]

  There’s been a lot to do as we put together for the launch of this blog, so forgive me if these thoughts on the legacy of Martin Luther King […]

It’s over, after only half a century. The government has decided that the airport planned for Notre-Dame-des-Landes will not be built.  Instead, the existing airports at Rennes and Nantes will […]

Is there a more contentious issue anywhere in Europe than immigration? Macron yesterday said his piece, in the symbolic gateway city of Calais. He had harsh words for the “associations” […]

As my colleague Jake noted yesterday, this, unlike the old French Politics site, is supposed to be a bilingual blog, but thus far it’s been dominated by us Amerloques. That […]

Now that this site is up and running, a few quick updates on what’s coming. Art and I will of course be posting on French, American, and global democracy on […]

Today marks the official launch of the Tocqueville21 site, so what could be more fitting than to begin with a quote from Tocqueville himself: Among the new things that attracted […]

(Lire en français) In the inaugural issue of The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville nearly forty years ago, Raymond Aron declared proudly that the work of Alexis de Tocqueville had finally […]

(Read in English) Dans le premier numéro de The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville publié il y a près de quarante ans, Raymond Aron se félicitait de la « redécouverte » de l’œuvre […]

Word comes today that the gendarmerie is readying 30-40 squadrons for the purposing of removing the so-called zadistes (defenders of the zone à défendre, or ZAD) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. This is […]

Today, sans surprise, we learned that Stéphane Le Foll will be a candidate for the post of First Secretary. A grand thing, by the sound of it, First Secretary, with […]

Boulevard Extérieur has organized a very interesting debate on the premises of French foreign policy, responding to an article in Esprit by Justin Vaïsse. Worth checking out.

Has there ever been a luckier politician than Emmanuel Macron? Fortuna smiled on his presidential run. Opposition to his reforms collapsed with a whimper. And now he is poised to […]

… and apparently the public approves. Macron’s approval rating, which had dipped as low as 32% over the summer, prompting hasty judgments that his presidency had already foundered, is back […]