Decisions In France Research Articles

The moral experience of parents regarding life-support decisions for their critically-ill children: a preliminary study in France

The common paediatric critical care practice in France is for physicians (rather than parents) to maintain the ultimate responsibility for lifesupport decisions in children. Some French literature asserts that it is inappropriate for parents to bear such responsibilities because they do not have the required knowledge and should be protected from feeling culpable for such decisions. The aim of this grounded theory preliminary study was to examine the moral experience of parents of critically-ill children that required life-support decisions in France. A convenience purposive sample of seven parents was recruited in Paris. Five principal themes emerged as significant from these interviews: (1) a need for more information; (2) physicians should be responsible for life-support decisions; (3) the child's concerns and wishes need to be better heard; (4) maternal guilt; and (5) physicians require better training in parent communication. These findings raise important issues for clinical practice and further research in France.

Keeping Identity at a distance: Explaining France's new legal restrictions on the Islamic headscarf

Since 1989, France has endured repeated, contentious debates about the ‘Islamic’ headscarf. In February 2004, French legislators approved a new law prohibiting students from wearing conspicuous ‘religious signs’ in public schools. Contrary to some observers’ assumptions, this measure was not caused mainly by new efforts to combat terrorism or by pro-Christian prejudice. Explaining France's decision to pass this surprising new legislation requires attention to both historical continuities of French political thinking and the changing French and international context. French republican understandings of citizenship and secularism have long made the headscarves issue peculiarly sensitive in France. However, the new law marks a clear departure from previous French policy. Explaining that rupture requires attention to more immediate social and political factors, most importantly: dissatisfaction with the previous policy; effective mobilization of public sympathy by new feminist groups; concern about rising anti-Semitism; and, somewhat paradoxically, developments in international human rights law.

Extending Offensive Realism: The Louisiana Purchase and America's Rise to Regional Hegemony

John Mearsheimer suggests that, whenever possible, great powers are constrained to seek regional hegemony, the safest feasible situation for a state. This objective is hard to achieve because other great powers want to block the attempt, but it is doable because buck-passing and other hurdles make balancing inefficient. Contra Mearsheimer, I argue that it is the absence of balancers, not balancing inefficiencies, that best explains when states can hope to dominate their neighborhoods. Regional hegemony is only achievable when it is easy. I use property space techniques to develop an extended version of offensive realism that clarifies why states will sometimes prefer not to block a hegemonic bid. In particular, I argue that local considerations will often prevent a continental great power from responding to a rising state in another region. I test my argument by process tracing the U.S. purchase of Louisiana and show that France's decision to sell is best explained by its pursuit of its own territorial ambitions. My extended version of offensive realism suggests that its single success story of the last 200 years, U.S. dominance of North America, provides no encouragement to contemporary states contemplating a bid for regional hegemony.

An Emerging Strategic Counterculture?

Michel Fortmann is professor of political science at the Universite de Montreal. Martin Larose is a doctoral student in the history department of the same institution. The authors express their gratitude to SSHRC for the support that made this study possible.INTRODUCTIONAs Stephane Roussel reminds us in this special issue, government leaders must from time to time make hard choices in security matters. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who became prime minister in 1968, is a case in point. After ordering, in the spring of 1968, a general review of Canada's foreign and defence policies, the government announced, on 3 April 1969, its intention to gradually reduce, in consultation with allies, the country's military presence in Europe. The Atlantic alliance thereby effectively lost the pre-eminent position that it had occupied in Canadian foreign policy since 1949. Although the actual troop reductions turned out to be less drastic than envisioned, the Liberal government's choice in 1969 represented a clear break with previous policy.What explains this departure from well-established policies? Structural-realist theory would argue that a new configuration of power in the international system, or a decline of Canada's position therein, might have been the cause of the decision. A strengthening of Europe or a weakening of the Soviet threat might have thrown into question Canada's role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Alternatively, a significant reduction in the resources that Canada could commit to its defence policy might have motivated the choice. Neither factor, however, provides a convincing explanation in the context of the late 1960s. To the contrary, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia reinforced the reality of the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact in Europe, and NATO's 1967 adoption of the doctrine of flexible response reactivated the debate over conventional defence. Europe's political division on defence issues was aggravated by France's decision, the previous year, to withdraw its forces from NATO's integrated command. Finally, Canada's decision to reduce its military presence came at the very time that the east and west were preparing for negotiations over reciprocal reductions in their military forces in Europe. How to explain this decision, which is in apparent contradiction to the strategic reality of the time?The cultural approach provides a partial answer. According to this approach, strategic choices are not merely the reflection of a rigorous and objective analysis of the international environment; they also result from the interpretation of that environment in the light of the prevailing strategic culture. This culture, as defined by Alastair Iain Johnston, has two components: the first consists of basic assumptions about the international order, its stability and the usefulness of military force; the second reflects the operational preferences of the decision-makers (i.e., those choices that appear most rational given one's perception of the international system).(1) Thus, strategic culture is a filter through which reality is perceived, limiting, in the eyes of the decision-makers, the available options. The Liberal government's decision to reduce the Canadian military presence in Europe is thus a reflection of its vision of the world and its resulting preferences. One must therefore refer to the source of the government's perceptions in order to explain the 1968-1970 change in defence policy.The cultural approach also helps us understand how policies change. In the case under consideration, two Weltanschauungen came into conflict, one reflecting the dominant values and preferences of the internationalist or Pearsonian tradition (1945-1968), the other the emerging worldview of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and intellectuals from his generation. The revision of Canada's NATO policy thus provides an opportunity to examine the conditions under which a new approach to security questions (a strategic counterculture) can arise and challenge the dominant culture. …

Pricing and Reimbursement of Pharmaceutical Products in France

This article highlights the pricing and reimbursement approval process in France. A product approved on the grounds of its safety, quality, and efficacy cannot be launched before it has passed, and been approved by, the Transparency Commission and a price has been agreed upon with the Pricing Committee. The reimbursement dossier is usually submitted to the Transparency Commission after the license has been obtained. These two committees, and how they make pricing and reimbursement decisions, are detailed. It is expected that both pricing and reimbursement decisions in France will become more stringent.

France's decision

France's decision

New Light on the Commons Debate of 1763 on the American Army

T HE British decision of I763 to maintain large peacetime army in North America has long been point of discussion and controversy among historians of the American Revolution.' Yet little attention has been paid to the debate of March 4, I763, when the Committee of Supply of the House of Commons took into consideration the annual army estimates.2 New information is provided by two hitherto unpublished reports of this debate. Both were made by members of Parliament who were supporters of the ministry of Lord Bute. One was sent to Bute by Charles Jenkinson, his private secretary, who drew an official salary as Treasurer of the Ordnance.4 The other was taken down by Sir Roger Newdigate, an archtypal High Tory country gentleman.5 America was merely one of the topics touched upon in the wide-ranging debate, and only the parts of the two reports relating to America are reproduced here. Although brief, they provide both the official public reason why such an unexpectedly large army was retained in North America and some new information on the attitudes of prominent British politicians. Opening the debate, Secretary at War Welbore Ellis informed the House that France's decision to maintain over twenty thousand men in arms in the West Indies was sufficient reason for Britain to keep a great force in North America. Ellis then attempted to make the decision ac-

Le Général de Gaulle et la guerre civile au Nigeria

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeABSTRACTThis article analyses France's position in the face of the secession of Biafra. First describing the background of France's decision to become involved in the Nigerian war, the author then discusses French support for Biafra in the African political context. The principal points of French policy are summarized in three parts: the support for historic African leaders, the maintenance of a francophone community, and the primacy of geopolitical considerations. Nigeria federation represented for de Gaulle a threat to be controlled, but his attitude was modified by the generally hostile reaction of the leaders of francophone Africa.

Dividend, Investment and Financing Decisions: Empirical Evidence on French Firms

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the dividend, investment, and financing decisions of French firms. A basic premise of the study is that increased perspective in business finance can be gained through better understanding of the financial behavior of companies outside one's domestic economy. While the literature of finance and economics includes many significant empirical studies based on dividend, investment, and financing data on American firms, the body of evidence on continental European firms is still relatively small, owing in large part to the difficulties encountered in gathering meaningful financial data on individual firms. In order to examine for the first time the relationship of dividend and investment decisions in France, using well-known models of financial bahavior, we were able to obtain annual data on a sample of French companies over a seven-year period. Our intent is to add to the understanding of the robustness of these models by demonstrating their empirical validity in Europe and to report several differences from previous empirical findings for American firms.