T21

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 […]

May 1, 18h30 (CET) The Case of Ourika Zoom REGISTER HERE The extended CCDS community is invited to the talk “The Case of Ourika: Children, the French Slave Trade and […]

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, […]

To debrief the second round of the French presidential elections, Tocqueville 21 has invited a distinguished set of academics, journalists, and commentators on French politics to provide their thoughts on […]

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. […]

The winner of the 2022 French presidential election will soon be known, with many commentators comparing its historic character to the 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum.   From […]

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 […]

Une évaluation honnête de n’importe quelle campagne électorale mettrait en avant l’importance des images et des impressions. Pour cette saison en 2022, c’est d’autant plus vrai. Le deuxième représente avant […]

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 […]

Tocqueville 21 · Post-Covid and Green Economics with Charles Dumas Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast!  As the war in Ukraine and the French elections have drawn most media […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

Again in The New Republic.

To debrief the second round of the French presidential elections, Tocqueville 21 has invited a distinguished set of academics, journalists, and commentators on French politics to provide their thoughts on […]

To debrief the first round of the French presidential elections, Tocqueville 21 has invited a distinguished set of academics, journalists, and commentators on French politics to provide their thoughts on […]

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 […]

French President Emmanuel Macron has graced the pages of the likes of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal many times in recent weeks, but not for the […]

Lucien Jaume is a philosopher, political scientist and professor at Sciences Po who has contributed to the rediscovery of the French liberal tradition. The author of numerous books on the […]

Polls suggest that President Emmanuel Macron enjoys a prohibitive lead in the elections to be held in France on April 10 and 24. While they seem unlikely to defeat him, […]

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

April 19, 19h30 (CET) Interpreting the French Presidential Election Zoom REGISTER HERE With France heading into a tumultuous presidential contest, the Mile End Institute has brought together a panel of […]

On John Rawls: A special edition of The Tocqueville Review. In the next few days, The Tocqueville Review will be publishing its Spring 2022 Edition. Keep a close look at […]

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 […]

April 12, 17h00 (CET) Clara Rachel Eybalin Casséus Francophonie Through Decoloniality Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE Clara Rachel Eybalin Casséus will present her latest book, Une Caraïbe décoloniale: […]

In 2016 I traveled around France interviewing participants in the events of May and June 1968 for a book I was preparing, May Made Me, an oral history of the […]

  The writing is on the wall for the 2022 French elections, and the word on everyone’s lips is perlimpinpin. With The Economist estimating a 90% chance of reelection for […]

Souverainisme Depuis le déclenchement de la guerre en Ukraine, une question revient en boucle dans l’actualité : celle de l’unité européenne et de son indépendance énergétique, sécuritaire et agroalimentaire. Si […]

A book review of Michael J. Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (Penguin, Allen Lane, 2021). “Those who work hard and play by the rules […]

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 […]

March 23, 17h00 (CET) Julian Culp (AUP) Democratic Citizenship Education in Digitized Societies Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE     In this paper I offer a new conceptualization […]

** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. […]

  DATE TBD Delphine Dogot (Law of Université catholique de Lille) Augmented Order: The Ordering Promises Of Blockchain Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE   Blockchain technologies are deployed […]

First off, an exciting conclusion to an exciting series: Samuel Moyn of Yale has been giving the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford on the theme of “The Cold War and the […]

Review of Philippe Le Goff, Auguste Blanqui and the Politics of Popular Empowerment (Bloomsbury, 2020)   In June 1852, the incarcerated radical Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) wrote a publicised letter describing […]

“Never Put Yourself in a Position from Which You Cannot Retreat Without Losing Face and from Which You Cannot Advance Without Grave Risks” – Hans Morgenthau   This is the […]

** This is the fourth in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. 1. […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. The […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanction as a Tool of Modern War. Each […]

This is part II of a four-part series on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, focusing on the economic ramifications of the Ukraine invasion. Part I can be found here. Part […]

This essay is the first in a series of analyses on the historical, geopolitical, and economic underpinnings of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Part I establishes a parallel between Russia […]

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 […]

As threats of a Russian invasion of Ukraine inundate the news cycle, Emmanuel Macron has reasserted crucial diplomatic influence between the White House and the Kremlin in hopes of averting […]

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 […]

Revue de presse du 14 février 2022   La France, L’Energie   Le nucléaire fait son grand retour en France avec l’annonce par le Président Macron de la construction de six […]

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 […]

  Liberalism In an intriguing essay for Engelsberg Ideas, Samuel Gregg offers an introduction to the thought of Jacques Rueff – arguably one of France’s most influential liberal thinkers. A […]

French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has neither hidden nor made much of his being Jewish. When questioned—and almost exclusively when questioned; he seldom volunteers the information—he describes his Berber Jewish […]

Tocqueville 21 · East Asian Geopolitics with Leo Howard Welcome back to the Tocqueville 21 Podcast! We’ve got quite an interesting array of episodes planned for the coming weeks on […]

“Two horses put before the same carriage, made to pull in opposing directions…” Over recent months, there have been rumblings of discontent on the American left about the United States […]

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 […]

February 10, 17h00 (CET) Jessica Feldman (AUP) Technology, Activism and the Social Good Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE     The American University of Paris invites you to […]

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 […]

Our director Stephen Sawyer will be giving a talk entitled “The Birth of the Democratic Social Contract, 1800-1850” at the SPOT seminar on Political Theory at Sciences Po on February […]

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 […]

January 28, 18h00 (CET) Ambassador Muriel Domenach  Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE   In conjunction with the D.Rad comparative research project on radicalization trends and deradicalization policies in Europe […]

February 9, 17h00 (CET) Peter Stone (Trinity College Dublin) Why Open Democracy?  Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE   ABSTRACT This paper examines open democracy, the conception of democracy […]

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 […]

** This is the author’s response to a series of four reviews of her new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

Almost two years ago, on a February day in 2020, three men chased Ahmaud Arbery through a coastal Georgia suburb with pick-up trucks and guns and killed him. Arbery was […]

** This is the fourth and last in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French […]

A book review of James McAuley’s The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France (Yale University Press, 2021). In The House of Fragile Things, Washington […]

** This is the third in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

** This is the second in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

** This is the first in a series of four reviews of Sarah Shortall’s new book Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics. Each […]

In a wonderful contribution to the newest issue of The Tocqueville Review / La Revue Tocqueville (Vol. 42, No. 2, 2021), David A. Bell writes about Alexis de Tocqueville’s reflections […]

The Netanyahus : A Reading and Talk with Joshua Cohen Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 19:30 10, rue du Général Camou, 75007 Paris Please RSVP for in-person attendance (limited) or […]

Published in the Fall of 2021, the latest edition of The Tocqueville Review is now available online. (Vol. 42, No. 2) L’édition la plus récente de La Revue Tocqueville, publiée en […]

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 […]

January 19, 18ho0 (CET) Paola Monachesi  Mediating Sustainable Cities Remote REGISTER HERE   What is the relation between digital and environmental sustainability? How can data contribute to a more sustainable […]

A book review of Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020)    In late November of this year, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) […]

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 […]

The CCDS events program commenced with a lecture entitled, “How Should Republicans Conceive of Transnational Solidarity?” given by Dr. Miriam Ronzoni in conjunction with the Contemporary European Democratic Theory lecture […]

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 […]

The 2022 presidential campaign launch of polemicist Eric Zemmour on the 30th of November caused a stir in the national French commentariat. In a video as (politically) flamboyant as a […]

  Revue de presse du 16 décembre 2021. « Oui ! suivez-moi, suivez-moi. Je suis le dieu du jour. » L’homme qui prononça ses paroles est en réalité devenu dieu d’un mois. Décembre, […]

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 […]

Listen to Tocqueville 21’s Director Prof. Stephen Sawyer on France Culture’s Les Chemins de la Philosophie as he discusses Tocqueville, public opinion, and democracy.   LISTEN HERE    

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 […]

A book review of James Wyllie’s Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany (St Martin’s Press, 2019). Within the proliferation of literature on seemingly every aspect of […]

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 […]

December 8, 17h30 (CET) Marc Hecker (IFRI) and Élie Tenenbaum (IFRI) The End of the War on Terror?  Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE   It has already been […]

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 […]

December 7, 18h30 (CET) Jennifer Anne Boittin (Penn State University) Undesirable: Passionate Mobility and Women’s Defiance of French Colonial Policing 1919-1952 Hybrid: Remote/American University of Paris REGISTER HERE This presentation […]

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 […]