Relations In France Research Articles

Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance by Ronald Angelo Johnson (review)

Deplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance. By Ronald Angelo Johnson. (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2014. Pp. 241. Cloth, $49.95.)Reviewed by Gregory K. WeimerJoining a growing body of scholarship on Saint-Domingue and its relation to the early American Republic, Ronald Angelo Johnson argues that race was a central political issue in John Adams's relationship to Toussaint Louverture. Diplomacy in Black and White provides a fresh perspective on the dynamic role race played in Dominguan-American diplomacy, particularly in the period surrounding the Intercourse Act of 1799. In the first monograph-length study of this topic, Johnson uses foreign correspondence, congressional debates, presidential papers, and newsprint to argue that the Adams administration successfully negotiated concepts of race in order to foster a mutually beneficial Atlantic World alliance with General Toussaint Louverture in Saint-Domingue. Ultimately, Diplomacy in Black and White tells the story of the planning, execution, and collapse of Dominguan-American diplomacy at the end of the eighteenth century.Johnson argues that between 1798 and 1800 a major shift occurred in geopolitical diplomacy. When France's relationship to the United States and Saint-Domingue faltered during America's Quasi-War with France, Dominguans and Americans sought out each other. For the Adams administration, a close association with Saint-Domingue represented an opportunity within the Caribbean to increase trade and expel French forces from the Western Atlantic. For General Louverture, the United States was a trade partner and a source of commercial, military, and political support for his conquest of Hispaniola. Thereby, Adams and Louverture established a short-lived diplomatic bond under the Intercourse Act of 1799, and a subsequent tripartite treaty was agreed to by British, Dominguan, and American officials. Johnson argues that within the United States, the Adams administration skillfully handled the topic of race (inherent in Americans' perceptions of Louverture and SaintDomingue), to gain support for this alliance.Diplomacy in Black and White highlights several important events in Dominguan-American diplomacy, each chapter-length: Joseph Bunel's 1798 diplomatic mission to Philadelphia, the 1799 Intercourse Act, Edward Stevens's appointment as consul general, the joint command of Commodore Silas Talbot and General Toussaint Louverture, John Marshall's appointment as secretary of state in 1800, and the reversals of Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Highlighting each, Johnson draws attention to diplomacy fraught with racial implications and operating on several different levels.In the first two chapters, he argues that race was influential both in Americans' perception of the Intercourse Act of 1799 and in Adams's strategy for supporting this law. In 1798, Louverture initiated talks by sending Joseph Bunel as special envoy to Philadelphia, armed with a promise to protect American shipping interests in Saint-Domingue. Seizing the opportunity, while responding to anti-French sentiments, the Adams administration and leading Federalists brought the Intercourse Act to Congress. This law maintained the commercial embargo of France but allowed the president to reopen market relations with French territories that defended American ships from French privateers. Race became a major component of the resulting political debate, as southern lawmakers questioned the extent of America's commitment to a racially diverse Saint-Domingue. …

Explaining France's NATO ‘normalisation’ under Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012)

Shortly after coming to power in 2007, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his willingness to ‘normalise’ France's relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). His aim was to reverse a central tenet of Gaullist foreign and security policy which, since General de Gaulle's 1966 decision to withdraw France from NATO's integrated military command, had relied on the country's ‘specific’ status in the Atlantic Alliance. While there had been unsuccessful attempts – under Presidents Francois Mitterrand in 1990–1991 and, most notably, Jacques Chirac in 1995–1997 – at such normalisation over the previous two decades, Sarkozy's move proved successful and, in 2009, France again became a fully integrated NATO member. Despite hints that he would ‘review’ this decision and perhaps reverse it or at least correct it, his successor, Francois Hollande, has decided to maintain the status quo. This article seeks to offer an explanation for Sarkozy's decision and to analyse why it was successfully carried out.

From the Governance of Sustainability to the Management of Climate Change: Reshaping Urban Policies and Central–local Relations in France

This paper analyses the interlinked usages of the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘sustainable development’ over the past two decades of French urban policies. It shows that the importance of ‘sustainable development’ procedural principles has significantly declined in public agendas alongside the rise to prominence of climate change issues. Based on a study of the urban policies developed by central French government authorities since the 1990s, it identifies two main phases. In the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘governance’ slogans were extensively mobilized in urban policies for the purposes of modernizing public action. In a context of economic, social and institutional transformations, these urban policies aimed at constructing local dynamics of collective action and encouraged the emergence of projects relying on incremental and deliberative practices. As of the mid-2000s, this dynamic weakened and climate change replaced sustainable development as a reference in urban policies. This shift occurred in the context of a neo-managerial restructuring, with central government authorities regaining influence over cities and urban policies being redefined around quantitative and technical objectives.

Anthropology, Ethical Dissonance, and the Construction of the Object

In this article, I discuss certain questions relating to the ethical difficulties faced by anthropologists when dealing with two different social groups and when one group holds a position of dominance over the other. In the first example, I draw on my work on doctor-patient relationships in France; in the second, on a study on reproduction in immigrant African families from Mali and Senegal, living in polygynous households in France. I use these examples to explore questions of positionality, beneficence, and potential harm. I show the choices I made in order to construct an epistemologically ethical object.

Employee Representatives in France: Employerss Perceptions and Expectations Towards Improved Industrial Relations

The first part of the chapter provides an overview of historical, legal, political, and cultural factors which have shaped the system of industrial relations in France to this day. Drawing on the quantitative results of an on-line survey and on the qualitative analysis of a series of interviews with a sample of HR managers in France, part 2 and 3 analyze how employers perceive employee representatives when it comes to social dialogue: eight factors impacting the quality of industrial relations are summarized. Building on this, part 4 introduces eight suggestions to improve the quality of social dialogue in France.

A “New” Black Nationalism in the USA and France

This essay examines the relationship between Black Nationalism and demographic change in the Black population of the USA and France. It shows that, unlike previous generations, most Blacks in France are born in France and share common sociopolitical and cultural reference points. As a result, this Black French population deploys new Black Nationalist expressions advocating that Blackness is an integral part of the French nation and that Black citizens are entitled to the same opportunities as Whites. Subversively, people of African descent are inserting Blackness into a supposedly color-blind nation. In contrast to France, the African Diaspora in the USA is increasingly diverse. But due to the misrepresentation of African-American identities and cultural differences, many Black migrants seek to distance themselves from African Americans, a relationship that ironically mirrors intra-Black relations in France of the 1960s and 1970s. Like France, however, demographic change within the Black population in the USA has also reconfigured the parameters of Black Nationalism. I contend that Black Nationalism in the USA is increasingly transnational in character. Indeed, in the post-civil rights era, the Caribbean and African migration has expanded the scope of Black Nationalism from primarily focusing on empowering Black America to offering Caribbean and African countries a better place in the global village. In the process, as the activities of the numerous African chambers of commerce reveal, not only do these “new” transnational Black Nationalist expressions flirt with neoliberal policies but they also adopt a color-blind perspective.

De l'émergence du psl en tant que nouvelle variable d'ajustement aux relations industrie-commerce en france : le cas des psl frais dans les filières agroalimentaires en bretagne

By comparing very directly the issue of the emergence of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs), at the beginning of the 1990s, as an adjustment variable for multi-actor logistics chains to that relating to industry / trade relations in France, this This article, based on an empirical field approach at a regional level, addresses the issue of the issues and consequences attached to the emergence of a third actor within a channel currently dominated by the distributor. Thus, the surveys carried out successively in 2010, 2011 and 2012 among the agro-food sectors in Brittany make it possible to take stock of the specific positioning of LBPs within a territory and to underline the phenomenon of "logistics wall" with which certain small businesses are confronted. industrial.

OPPORTUNITY COST OF DEFENSE: AN EVALUATION IN THE CASE OF FRANCE

The aim of this article is to explore the defense–growth relationship in France. In particular, in the context of the crisis, we would like to compare the effects of military and nonmilitary spending on growth. Our results reveal that this is a complex relationship with a bidirectional causality. In the long run, defense expenditure exerts a positive influence and outperforms the impact of nondefense expenditure. However, an opportunity cost arises in the short run.

Revenant(s) de guerre? Spectres of Decolonization in the French Second World War Combat Film

This article examines the reticence of French film to engage with the Second World War combat film as a genre, and links this to the reticence and silence in French cultural memory over France's wars of decolonization. The theoretical frames of the argument are informed by the work of Rothberg, Silverman, Ricœur, and Rousso on cultural memory and the ideologization of memory and forgetting. The article explores three films produced at crucial points in the history of France's relations with its colonial others: Denys de La Patellière's Un taxi pour Tobrouk (1961) and Henri Verneuil's Week-end à Zuydcoote (1964) and Les Morfalous (1984). It considers how these films inflect the generic tropes of self and other, insider and outsider, home and away against the hegemonic representation of France, in the Anglo-American combat film genre, as fracture or dissolution, and of French people as passivity or absence. By examining these films' inflection of the Second World War combat film, the article concludes that each is haunted by anxieties over war, identity, and decolonization that relate not to the films' diegetic histories of the Second World War, but to other uneasy histories of France's wars of decolonization, histories that are simultaneously raised and repressed in hegemonic French culture.

Contemporary France

Part of a series of introductory works ‘conceived to meet the needs of today's students’, Contemporary France shares a common structure with other Palgrave titles covering countries as disparate as India, Russia, and Japan. In a couple of hundred pages authors are expected to range well beyond their specialist domain to provide an accessible survey of history, politics, socio-economic arrangements, and cultural life. Here Helen Drake, whose own research has been particularly concerned with France's relationship to European integration, has succeeded in producing a well-balanced and coherent sweep of the field. The book is divided into eight chapters, beginning with a historical overview that considers the legacy of past events and sets up classic themes such as grandeur, exceptionalism, and the republican tradition. Subsequent chapters focus on the Fifth Republic and are weighted towards the present, addressing image and identity, politics, the state and policy-making, social structures and education, culture, the economy, and France's international relations. Linked by frequent cross-referencing, the sections do a pretty consistent job of condensing large amounts of information into convincing and readable syntheses. The main analytical thread is that of ‘challenges’, and how France has adapted to change over the last half century. This allows Drake to consider both how republican ideals have fared as a template, and how national cohesion and identities have been affected by decades of transformation. With space and therefore nuance at a premium, Drake navigates this terrain skilfully. Avoiding undue reverence and excessive pessimism about France in the twenty-first century, her even-handed analysis nonetheless succeeds in conveying something of the peculiar urgency and intensity of French debates over identity and the state of the nation. Periodic references to English-language scholarship introduce readers to the wider literature, notably concerning the idea of exceptionalism. The latter theme is also woven into the book, sometimes as a framework for comparison — for example, with other European states buffeted by the same macroeconomic forces — and at other times as normative discourse — for instance, during the 2005 referendum debate. Published in 2011, the book does not quite reach Marine Le Pen's succession as Front National leader, but it clearly traces the trajectory of the last quinquennat. As Drake wryly notes, ‘France expects something special, almost other-worldly, from its presidents, and presidents do not come much worldlier than Nicolas Sarkozy’ (p. 223). One minor criticism concerns the bibliography and referencing. Bearing in mind the publisher's pitch, some suggested further readings organized by chapter theme might have been welcome, and would certainly have been more useful than the rather superfluous UK press articles (often secondary sources for well-established information) that accrue in the bibliography. That small point aside, this book is a lively and accessible guide to contemporary France that will be a valuable resource for students. Drake opens her Conclusions by observing that ‘it is impossible to take a neutral stance on France’ (p. 220), but she has produced an admirably balanced survey that should equip and inspire its readers to continue exploring the subject.

Focus: The relationship between trade unions and employers in France

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 6 Volume 20 Issue 4 2013 Unions can obtain a standing within French workplaces but this is not a question of the employer choosing whether or not to recognise the union in question tribution of leaflets, posters in the name of the trade union) and take part in elections. The other four must be met, in addition, if the union intends to negotiate collective agreements. The first is the respect for republican values. The choice was made not to elaborate a list of such values, even though respect of freedom of opinion on the one hand, the rejection of any discrimination , intolerance and fundamentalism on the other hand, have primary importance. The second is independence. A union that is under the influence of the employer cannot be deemed representative. The fact that the union has received support from employers during a strike, that its members belong mostly to the Human Resources department or that it received preferential treatment from the employer (money, support for running costs) are likely to characterise the dependency of such a union towards the employer . This criterion is an application of Convention 87 of the International Labour Organisation. The third criterion is seniority. A newly formed union cannot be granted immediate representativeness . It must have, since the day of legal deposit of its statutes, a minimum period of two years at the level to which it claims its representativeness . This rule is aimed at avoiding that a union should be created in urgency for an immediate purpose, for instance bargaining on the flexibility of working time, and at permitting the implementation of the criterion of financial transparency . With two years of seniority, the union will have at least published annual accounts of its first year! The fourth criterion is financial transparency. In the last ten years, scandals have occurred concerning the financing of unions by employers’ organisations. This criterion aims at giving greater effectiveness to the test of independence; indeed, access to union accounts ensures that the union is not funded principally by the employer. The fifth criterion concerns electoral results. It is both the most difficult to reach for unions and the most symbolic under the new system. Until the statute law of 2008, trade unions did not have to be popular in the firm or in the sector, in order to be representative and, as a consequence, to negotiate a collective agreement. Representativeness now requires 10 percent of votes at firm level and 8 percent at sector or inter-sector level. The sixth and seventh criteria are the influence of the trade union in the firm and the level of their financial contributions. The low rate of union membership in France, which has a direct impact on their level of financial contributions, will probably lead the judges to evaluate these criteria with flexibility, as they did before the adoption of the 2008 Act. I n France trade unions do not need the employer ’s recognition to act within the firm, notably to bargain. The understanding of this important feature of the French system requires, before all, to have in mind two major aspects of industrial relations in France. First, relationships between unions and employers have traditionally been conflict-ridden . France has neither a tradition of co-decision (like Germany) nor a tradition of collective bargaining (like the United Kingdom). The history of employers’ organisations in France is a long chronicle of mobilisations against organised labour, with the conviction shared with labour organisations of a fundamental conflict of interests between employees and employers. The adoption of statutory duties to bargain has favoured the rise of collective bargaining that, through the years, has been granted a strong legal status. Today, collective agreements have a binding force upon all employees of the firm, even upon those who are not members of a signatory trade union (erga omnes effect). Even though a relationship of a contractual nature has emerged between unions and employers, mostly at company level, the idea that employers would recognise trade unions is unlikely to succeed in France. Second, even though employers’ organisations constantly criticise the excessive intrusion of the State in their relationships with trade unions, union representation strongly depends...

Managing the colonial status quo: Eisenhower's Cold War and the Algerian war of independence

The Algerian war of independence (1954–1962) gradually developed into an international diplomatic crisis which affected France's relations with the US, the Atlantic alliance, the UN, and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The conflict has in recent years gained fresh attention among historians making use of newly declassified archival material to advance revisionist hypotheses about its global ramifications. Some of such hypotheses have placed the US at the centre of the denouement of the crisis. In this paper, which utilises a significant amount of declassified archival materials, I offer a new perspective on the Eisenhower administration's stance towards the conflict, and contest the argument that Paris was compelled to concede Algerian self-determination because Washington refused to sustain its vision. I argue that the US only pursued a policy of managing the colonial status quo: the war was tolerated as long as it did not threaten Western interests in the region, and did not open the way for Soviet penetration of North Africa which is at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Alignment to the French position contributed to the erosion of Washington's moral capital in the Maghreb, depriving it of the status of ‘honest broker’ in the conflict.

Les coparentalités entre gays et lesbiennes en France: le point de vue des pères

Les familles composées par des couples de même sexe sont devenues un thème important dans le débat social, politique et intellectuel français. Dans cet article, je suggère que les familles homoparentales expriment des tendances historiques qui ont significativement transformé l'organisation des relations familiales en France. A partir d'une enquête auprès de pères homosexuels français, ce texte analyse les spécificités des coparentalités entre gays et lesbiennes. La coparentalité consiste en un accord pour la conception d'enfants qui seront élevés en alternance par le(s) père(s) et la(les) mère(s). Après avoir analysé les particularités du projet parental, des contours de la famille et de l'expérience de la paternité, je propose une brève discussion sur les limites d'un modèle exclusif de filiation.

The Melki Way: The Melki Case and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About French Judicial Politics (But Were Afraid to Ask)

Both the ECJ Melki ruling and the new French system of priority constitutional referral have received considerable scholarly attention, whether from the perspective of EU law or from that of domestic or comparative constitutional law. This paper looks at the Melki story primarily from the standpoint of domestic judicial politics. The decision of the Cour de cassation to send a reference for a preliminary ruling to the judges in Luxembourg on the conformity of the new interlocutory procedure with EU law cannot be analysed separately from the context in which it occurred. Nor can the strong reactions that it elicited be properly understood without examining the background of the constitutional reform and the role which EU law and the ECHR have come to play in the French legal system. As what was initially a modest reform was successfully reframed by the Council and its allies in the legal academy as a “legal revolution” promising to bring human rights back to their homeland, the new concrete review mechanism posed a growing threat to the Cour de cassation’s influence. The reform, it is argued, threatened to undermine not only its grip on the lower civil courts but also to chip away at the considerable autonomy it had enjoyed in developing ECHR law in the French context. In these circumstances, the Melki reference may be viewed as a last-ditch (and with hindsight poorly judged) attempt to use EU law to derail a reform that was on its way to reconfigure inter-court relations in France at the expense of the Cour de cassation. With the Melki route - killing the priority referral mechanism by dragging the ECJ into the domestic “guerre des juges” - blocked, the Court is now isolated and under pressure to apply the new procedure in a way that is more favorable to the Constitutional Council.

Review: An American by Degrees The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand

AN AMERICAN BY DEGREES The Extraordinary Lives of French Ambassador Jules Jusserand Robert J. Young Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009. 368pp, $59.95 cloth ISBN: 9780773535725Although Lyon, the city of his birth in 1855, has an Avenue Jules Jusserand, the longest-serving French ambassador to Washington (1903-25) is well-nigh forgotten today in his home country. He is better remembered in the United States, especially thanks to the Theodore Roosevelt scholars in whose works he features prominently. Canadian historian Robert J. Young's biography, published exactly 100 years after the end of Roosevelt's presidency, is a most welcome study that underscores the scarcity of French publications about this Quai d'Orsay luminary. Jusserand's close friendship with Roosevelt, under whom he served seven of his 22 years in Washington, is only one of the many extraordinary lives of this exceptional man, who died in 1932 at age 77. Jusserand represented France under five US presidents (Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge) and proved an efficient but discreet player in all of the great world affairs of the first quarter of the 20th century, including the Russo-Japanese War, the Moroccan crisis, America's intervention in World War I, the Versailles peace negotiations, the French mission to Poland after the Russian invasion, and the Washington naval conference. He was a long-time dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington. Young's thoroughly researched and elegantly written book offers his readers an extensive and fascinating slice of diplomatic and cultural history on both sides of the Atlantic during France's third republic.Jean Jules Jusserand was appointed to Washington as France witnessed the advent of a leftist coalition whose raUying cries were the republican defence of the regime and the anticlerical struggle. This radical republic, a sequel to the Dreyfus affair, led to the 1905 separation of church and state and the deterioration of France's relations with the Vatican. Ironically, Jusserand would be recaUed 23 years later foUowing the 1924 electoral victory of another leftist bloc headed by another Lyonnais, Premier Edouard Herriot. Jusserand was a renowned historian and English literature scholar, an Anglophile with a perfect command of the English language. He was an authority on the middle ages, pre-Shakespearean theatre, and 17th- and 18thcentury novels, and he wrote countless books on those subjects. He had been a member of the most important fin-de-siecle artistic, literary, and political circles in Paris and London. He knew Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Albert Sorel, Anatole France, Edmond Rostand, Alexandre Dumas fils, John Morley, William Gladstone, Robert Browning, Bret Harte, and Henry James, and was a contemporary of Alphonse Daudet, Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, Pierre Loti, Maurice Barres, and Emile Zola. He traveUed extensively in northern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa. …

Mediation in professional relationships in France: tactics and outcomes

This study has two goals. First, it attempts to update the various tactics used by mediators in the context of professional relationships in France. Second, the study analyses the outcomes of the different aspects of mediator action. Tying together semi-structured interviews with mediators and social negotiators involved in mediation and non-participatory observation, the results show the existence of a range of diversified tactics that a mediator can mobilise based on his or her perception of the existence of dynamics for agreement. In contrast to existing Anglo-Saxon research, the mediator in the French context feels entitled to become a genuine third party and have an impact on key issues during debates. Highlighting three contingent variables (level of conflictuality, mediator's mediating experience, negotiators' mediating experience) puts the mediator's intrusion into perspective.

Does it matter for us that my partner or I commute? Spatial mobility for job reasons and the quality of conjugal relationships in France, Germany, and Switzerland

Spatial mobility has often been considered a detrimental factor for families for various reasons, stemming from increasing stress, unpredictability of daily life, increasing gender inequalities, and decreasing investment in parenting and partnerships due to time and space constraints. This contribution considers how daily long-distance and weekly commuting, frequent absence from home, and long-distance relationships for job-related reasons affect conjugal quality. To investigate this issue, we used data from a large European survey on job mobility and family life (JobMob), based on 2,914 individuals reporting a stable partnership and living in France, Germany, and Switzerland. We first empirically defined eight positions in the social space according to the current mobility practice from each partner and major socio-demographic variables. We then explored the extent to which those positions affect conjugal satisfaction and conjugal conflict within the three national contexts, complementing the analyses by including the process by which one became mobile. We found that job mobility had no significant effect on conjugal quality. Lower quality of conjugal relations rather concerned mobile people who experienced decisions to become mobile both negatively and collectively. We further discuss the importance of our results for understanding the functioning of contemporary couples facing mobility demands.
 Zusammenfassung
 Mit dem Verweis auf erhöhten Stress, Unplanbarkeit des alltäglichen Lebens, verstärkter Ungleichheiten zwischen den Geschlechtern und sinkenden Investitionen in Elternschaft und Partnerschaft angesichts zeitlicher und räumlicher Restriktionen ist berufliche Mobilität häufig als negativer Einfluss auf Familien beurteilt worden. Dieser Beitrag fragt, wie sich tägliches Fernpendeln und Wochenendpendeln, wie sich beruflich bedingte häufige Abwesenheit von zuhause und Fernbeziehungen auf die Partnerschaftsqualität auswirken. Um dieser Frage nachzugehen, verwenden wir Daten aus einer großen europäischen Umfrage zum Thema berufliche Mobilität und Familienleben (JobMob) zu 2.914 Befragten, die angeben, eine feste Beziehung zu haben, und die in Frankreich, Deutschland oder in der Schweiz leben. Zunächst bestimmen wir empirisch aufgrund des aktuellen Mobilitätsverhaltens beider Partner sowie zentraler sozio-demographischer Variablen acht Lagen im sozialen Raum. Danach untersuchen wir, inwieweit diese Lagen in den drei unterschiedlichen nationalen Kontexten Partnerschaftszufriedenheit und Partnerschaftskonflikte beeinflussen. Ergänzend wird der Prozess berücksichtigt, im Zuge dessen Individuen mobil geworden sind. Wir kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass berufliche Mobilität keinen signifikanten Einfluss auf die Partnerschaftsqualität hat. Eine verminderte Partnerschaftsqualität ist eher charakteristisch für Menschen, die die Mobilitätsentscheidungen als negativ und als kollektiv erlebt haben. Abschließend diskutieren wir, welchen Beitrag diese Befunde für das Verständnis der Organisation des Beziehungslebens von Paaren haben, die mit Mobilitätserfordernissen konfrontiert sind.

The ‘Open Door’ Policy at IBM France: An Old-Established Voice Procedure that Is Still in Use

This paper deals with Alternative Dispute Resolution in labour relations within a company in the French context. By contrast with the United States and Canada, mediation and arbitration are rarely used in France for resolving individual or collective labour relations disputes. It is therefore interesting to study such voice procedures in labour relations in France and analyse their impact on procedural justice and equity within the company. The study also analyses the incentives to use mediation/arbitration, in labour relations, as well as the disincentives. It highlights the importance of information and communication with the employees in fostering positive attitudes to it and reducing their fears. This is illustrated by an empirical study of the French subsidiary of the IBM Corporation. We focus our attention on the IBM ‘open door’ policy and describe the results of a quantitative statistical analysis of 203 respondents.

The Europeanisation of French regions

Since the mid-1980s, European policies have been identified as a key variable in the empowerment of regions. This ongoing process challenges centre–periphery relations in France. Are we, therefore, witnessing a Europeanisation of French regions? I first analyse the process of regionalisation in France and the role played by the regions in the institutional architecture of French decentralisation. This historical idiosyncrasy explains the current structural handicap of the French regions in terms of political capacity. Second, I argue that the implementation of European Union policies produced changes in French centre–periphery relationships. I explore three dimensions of Europeanisation in the case of France: (1) the adaptation of regional development policies; (2) the development of new networks of regional paradiplomacy; and (3) the evolution of the constitutional and institutional structures.

L'Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France (review)

Reviewed by: L'Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France Robert S. Coale L'Espagne Républicaine: French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France. By David A. Messenger. Brighton, U.K.: Sussex Academic Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84519-259-4. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 196. $67.50. Several cities surrounding Paris, working class municipalities of the "red belt", sport streets named after Cristino García, a Spanish loyalist and officer in the French Resistance. He was not killed in combat for the liberation of France, however, but rather was executed by the Franco regime in 1946. The fact that the García case made such an impact on French public opinion is an indication of the close postwar connection between Spanish Republicans, their movement, and early postwar French society. David A. Messenger, assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming, has published a stimulating work which describes this complex relationship between French policy and Spanish Republicanism between 1944 and 1948. This period was a turning point for both countries, a time when France moved from reconstruction to renewal, all the while striving to make its political mark in liberated Europe and balancing the concepts of "justice" and "realpolitik" in foreign affairs. This relatively short, but precise, work is structured in six chapters and narrates France's changing relationship towards authoritarian Spain and the multiple domestic and international factors that influenced its positions. The author has convincingly chosen a chronological structure; the first three chapters discuss the fluid situation and the major factors which influenced French policy from 1942 to 1947 while the remaining three chapters continue to study specific initiatives on Spain undertaken by France both on an individual basis and within the framework of the United Nations up to 1948. The author includes an impressive bibliography and supports his claims with exhaustive research in American, British, Spanish and French archives. What emerges from Messenger's study is the difficult situation in which France found itself in relation to its southern neighbor. On the one hand, wartime and economic policy were determining factors, but these were later supplanted by a postwar desire to renovate French democracy and diplomacy with regard to the "resistance" experience and instill some sense of morality. Nevertheless, France also needed to conjugate this new policy with that of its allies, Great Britain and the United States, countries which did not systematically share France's views on Spain and the Franco regime. Messenger convincingly illustrates that there was little room for manoeuvre. Free France attempted to walk a fine line, at different times, between wartime goals of freeing refugees wishing to join French forces in Northern Africa and maintaining valuable trade with Spain. After liberation, France responded to postwar popular demands to support Spanish Republicanism, but at the same time integrated the postwar policies of its allies. Despite public opinion and true sympathies for republicanism, France struggled so as not to allow the question of the Franco regime to isolate it from the international policies of Western Europe. [End Page 1006] Professor Messenger's present work began as his doctoral dissertation and, as such, may not be the final word on the matter. This enlightening view into a complex period of European history and France's international relations both during the war and in the difficult aftermath is a first step. Several subjects which are only briefly touched upon call for further study. These include the wartime economic ties between France and Spain, the dependence on imports from Spain in the reconstruction of France and also the profound sympathies in French society and public opinion towards the Spanish Loyalists which began during the civil war and continued through liberation and the postwar period. One can only hope that the considerable scholarship contained in the volume and the many avenues of study it suggests bode well for further research on the subject. Robert S. Coale Université Paris 8 Vincennes, France Copyright © 2009 Society for Military History