Introduction

Abstract

The notion of the ‘French exception’ can be conceived in two different ways. First, it can be understood as an evolving set of politically loaded discourses, which is often exploited by political leaders, commentators and intellectuals with a specific political agenda. Alternatively, it can be an analytical tool that is used to decipher certain specific economic, political and social issues. In this latter sense it provides a framework of analysis that has been adopted by commentators on contemporary France in an effort to establish what it is that makes the ‘French model’ stand out as ‘different’ from other countries. Each of these ways of conceiving French exceptionalism is in some respects problematic, as we shall see, and the distinction between them is in any case not as clear-cut as this might appear to suggest, not least because academics do not simply and dispassionately test hypotheses, they also take sides in the issues and debates they analyse. Nonetheless, the distinction is a useful one for understanding the different ways in which the term ‘French exception’ is used. Thus, in the first chapter Sue Collard shows how the term became common currency after the publication, in 1988, of an influential book by François Furet, Jacques Julliard and Pierre Rosanvallon: La République de centre. La fin de l’exception française. She shows how they framed and defined the notion of French exceptionalism in order to construct a specific discourse about the ‘end of the French exception’: ‘We are all agreed: we are at a turning-point … an era is coming to an end … What we are living through is quite simply the end of French exceptionality’ (Furet et al 1988: 11).