Blog

France is finally on the verge of a national mobilization capable of bringing the country to its knees: the gilets jaunes movement, which began primarily as a revolt against diesel taxes […]

It has become commonplace to diagnose European politics with a populist disease, even as the meaning of populism is often left vague and contested. Evidence to this effect is drawn […]

The Point Magazine was kind enough to invite me to participate in a series of reflections on the 2018 midterms. My thoughts on voting after moving from Paris to Chicago […]

The evolution of photography seems to correspond with our modern capacity for sympathy. Someone in a Facetime conversation feels more present than a news clip from a month ago, while […]

Hearing the news of the raids on the offices of La France insoumise and the home of Jean-Luc Mélenchon last week, one might have had some sympathy for the left-wing party […]

France finally has its remaniement. Tonight President Macron came not to explain what he had done but to insist that it was meaningless and of no importance: the direction had not […]

President of the rich? The label has now stuck fast to the once-Teflon Macron, but does it reflect reality? Le Monde today published figures from the Institut de Politiques Publiques showing the […]

I got it wrong yesterday. I assumed that Macron’s refusal of Collomb’s resignation was meant to humiliate Collomb. It was, but I failed to reckon with Collomb’s orneriness. He resubmitted […]

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, a common narrative to explain the state of American democracy has been the story of “norm erosion.” The premise of this narrative is […]

Emmanuel Macron claims that he has heard the complaints about his arrogance and is prepared to change his style in order to govern more effectively. No change is discernible, however, […]

Review of Elie Baranets, Comment perdre une guerre : Une théorie du contournement démocratique (CNRS Editions, 2017)   In November 1968, Daniel Ellsberg wrote a review of a book-length debate with multiple […]

Two years is an eternity in politics. Two years ago, Macron’s En Marche! was not a party but a movement, full of youthful vigor and enthusiasm, in the image of […]

To mark the sixtieth birthday of France’s Fifth Republic, I recently went and flipped through a chapter I had been meaning to come back to in Raymond Aron’s Démocratie et totalitarisme […]

Maneuvering has begun in advance of the 2019 European elections. Alain Juppé summoned his troops to the Vendanges de Bordeaux, a private meeting intended to consider possible electoral strategies for […]

Emmanuel Macron’s second rentrée resembles the first. The president is trying to get the ship of state back on an even keel after a rough summer in heavy seas. The Benalla Affair […]

Is a republican politics—in the sense of the French République—possible in the United States? Much has been said about Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal and the November 2016 New York […]

First, let me express my gratitude to Tocqueville 21 and The Tocqueville Review/La Revue Tocqueville for hosting this symposium and for the sharp and constructive remarks of the respondents. My […]

What is there left to say about Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal? Few serious books about American politics in recent years have prompted such an impressive volume of […]

After the 2016 election Democrats were left to ponder: what went wrong and what was to be done? Of the many interventions that followed, perhaps none generated as much debate […]

Lilla swings hard. On almost every page of this essay we learn that as far as American politics goes, someone has done or is doing something they shouldn’t; someone is […]

Until watching Morgan Neville’s documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, it had been a long while since I’d given Mister Rogers much thought. If he came up at all in […]

One of the most frequent criticisms on the French left of La France insoumise and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (a criticism I have addressed in other writing) is that the “populist” movement and […]

The two years since Trump’s election have seen calls for a return to the activist ethos of the Civil Rights movement. The shock victory of “the first white president” and […]

Nicolas Hulot resigned this morning. The announcement came suddenly, without warning to either the prime minister or the president. “I don’t want to go on lying to myself,” the former […]

There have been rumors that François Hollande is contemplating a return to politics reported in French media over the last several weeks. Perhaps the stalling of the rise of his Wünderkind successor […]

What better time to launch a few trial balloons than the August doldrums. A Le Monde interview with former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is rich in instruction as to thinking of this […]

This post is based on a series of three articles written by Levent Yilmaz for the online magazine AOC (Analyse, Opinion Critique).   I was in Naples on 15 July […]

For those of us who came of age in the ’60s, 1968 was an annus mirabilis. I look back at those tumultuous times in an article for The Nation.

American democracy is in crisis, and if the latest headlines are to be believed, the cause of this crisis is a breakdown of civility, which can refer to anything from […]

In politics you never know what’s going to trip you up. Slow growth and sticky unemployment stats would have spoiled Macron’s summer in any case, but who could have predicted […]

I haven’t had much time to post lately, and so I’m sharing a review I wrote of last year’s winners of the Goncourt and Renaudot prizes that I’ve had in […]

Editor’s note: this post is based on a paper given at the American University of Paris’s conference on the fiftieth anniversary of Mai ’68 this past June. To see all […]

A roundtable exchange on Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018)   Donald Trump is President of the United States, and when he has not been threatening immigrants and ethnic minorities […]

This article is Samuel Moyn’s response to the roundtable exchange on his new book, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018).   In our interesting moment, Not Enough offers nothing like a definitive […]

This review is the fourth in our roundtable exchange on Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018).   No one has done more than Samuel Moyn to reinvigorate the historical analysis […]

This review is the third in our roundtable exchange on Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018).   Samuel Moyn’s Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World provides an engaged, […]

This review is the second in our roundtable exchange on Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018).   To appreciate Samuel Moyn’s new book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal […]

Cet article est le premier dans notre échange sur Samuel Moyn, Not Enough (Harvard University Press, 2018).    Les droits humains nous obligent-ils à « bénir » un capitalisme dérégulé et inégalitaire, selon la […]

Since Jacques Chirac reduced the term of the French presidency from 7 years to 5, no one has won a second term. The approval ratings of both Sarkozy and Hollande […]

I have a long article in the new issue of Dissent examining the potential future of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France insoumise. When I first thought to do a piece on LFI, not […]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week became the Democratic nominee and presumptive winner in the NY14 congressional race. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America—a left-wing organization whose membership […]

(Read in English) Lecture de Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism (Verso, 2018)   La philosophe belge Chantal Mouffe demeure paradoxalement plus familière au monde anglo-américain qu’à un public français. Espérons que […]

(Lire en français) Review of Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism (Verso, 2018)   Though the Belgian philosopher Chantal Mouffe remains far better known in the Anglo-American world than in France, this […]

Emmanuel Macron has won a Pyrrhic victory. From the beginning of his presidency he has made winning Germany’s assent to a “Eurozone budget” a strategic goal. Conventional wisdom, which despite […]

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 […]

This is Joan Wallach Scott’s reply to her four reviewers in our critical exchange on her book Sex and Secularism. To see the four reviews, follow the link here.   I […]

Cet article est le quatrième dans notre échange critique sur le livre de Joan Wallach Scott, Sex and Secularism. Pour accéder aux autres critiques et la réponse de J. Scott, veuillez […]

This is the third of four reviews of Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism. To see the other reviews as well as Scott’s reply, follow the link here.   Joan Wallach […]

This is the first of four reviews of Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism. To see the other reviews as well as Scott’s reply, follow the link here.   Sex and […]

This is the second of four reviews of Joan Wallach Scott’s Sex and Secularism. To see the other reviews as well as Scott’s reply, follow the link here.   Sex and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]