The French school year began with a surprise announcement: schoolgirls could no longer wear a popular style of dress originating in the Islamic world, the abaya. Not longer after, the […]

Historien, spécialiste de l’histoire politique et intellectuelle de la France contemporaine, professeur émérite des universités à l’Institut d’études politique de Paris, Michel Winock a écrit une quarantaine d’ouvrages. Il est […]

A word with a long history in leftist movements has recently resurfaced in French political discourse: “hegemony.” It has been primarily used in connection with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who, thanks to […]

Despite the failure of the French left to advance a candidate to the second round of the presidential election for the second consecutive time, the political figure dominating the press […]

  The French Left’s “Historic” Unity The deal has been made. Days after Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Olivier Faure embraced one another at the May Day march in Paris, their parties […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  French politics   French politics has been unusually present in the US media of late: in Jacobin, Harrison Stetler reports on Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s presidential candidacy, which so […]

  L’époque accélérée où nous vivons nous fait perdre la notion du temps. Cela fait déjà un peu plus de dix ans que Jean-Luc Mélenchon s’est rapproché du populisme de […]

  Chantal Mouffe is a democratic theorist whose work as been cited as an inspiration for radical political movements across the globe, and who has elicited controversy for her advoacy […]

This week’s elections for the European Parliament may be the most consequential in the continent’s history. On the one hand, right-wing parties and other anti-establishment “populist” movements may be poised […]

Jean-Luc Mélenchon contains multitudes. After the Notre-Dame fire, he was among the most eloquent of commentators, intimately familiar with the history of the cathedral. But his familiarity with the vast […]

Review of Le Retour des populismes : L’État du monde 2019, edited by Bertrand Badie and Dominique Vidal (La Découverte, 2018).   The populism industry is booming. According to numbers assembled […]

After a number of comments and conversations since my last post on the so-called “nationalist” left in Europe, I have two quick thoughts I want to add. First, some people have […]

In the attempt to hold myself to my new year’s resolution of posting here rather than in long Twitter threads, I want to flesh out my reaction to a provocative […]

  Over the last several years I’ve tried to resist comparisons between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Bernie Sanders, mostly because these comparisons tend to posit a simplistic notion of “left-wing populism” […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

  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 […]

  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 who […]