French Exceptionalism Research Articles

Auditing standards and the persistence of the audit expectations gap: Evidencing the absence of French ‘exceptionalism’

Auditing standards have become a central feature in the world of auditing. One of the primary claims made for International Standards on Auditing (ISAs) is their capacity to reduce the audit expectations gap (AEG), but the gap persists despite the widespread adoption of ISAs. France is an intriguing case site for studying the development and impact of audit standard setting, especially given its reputation as a country for maintaining its own distinctive audit regulatory traditions. Its claimed resistance to Anglo‐American influences, however, is not what stands out in our archival analysis of French audit standard‐setting processes and an accompanying series of interviews with key participants. In contrast, the French audit standard setting emerges as a process that has largely aligned with the spirit of ISAs and adopted a narrow interpretation of the AEG. The presented analysis challenges the operational significance of a claimed French exceptionalism and adds to a growing questioning of the capacity of auditing standard setting to drive fundamental advancement in auditing practice and to meet public expectations.

Postcolonial Studies Meets Global History

Abstract In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Georg W. F. Hegel labeled it a “world-historical” event. Just a few decades later, Karl Marx was equally fascinated by this Revolution, contributing to the notion that it served as a global turning point that would bend European society toward a post-feudal, modern world. Though scholars of postcolonial studies have long scrutinized these nineteenth-century thinkers’ narratives of progress, they played a large part in cementing the French Revolution's place in world history. Scholars of French studies have recently challenged long-held notions of French exceptionalism. This article explores the relationship between postcolonial studies and global history, both tenuous and complementary, as they relate to the emerging field of global French studies. Providing a reading of these intersecting methods in the historiography of both the French Revolution and 1968 in France, I contend that postcolonial studies is a form of global history.

Remembering France's glory, securing Europe in the age of Trump

AbstractThese days, when we hear the slogan ‘let's make our country great again’ we almost automatically assume the state concerned is the US, and the leader uttering the slogan is President Trump. This article invites readers to explore the discourse and practices through which another national leader is seeking to restore his country's ‘greatness’ and promote national and international security. The leader concerned is France's Emmanuel Macron. Why focus on the French president? Because since his election he has become the most dynamic European leader, on a mission to enhance France's international stature, and to do so via a broader process of protecting and empowering the EU. More broadly, France stands out as a country whose political leadership has long been committed to the goal of playing a global role. As Pernille Rieker reminds us, ‘Since 1945, French foreign policy has been dominated by the explicit ambition of restoring the country's greatness [la grandeur de la France], justified in terms of French exceptionalism’.1Macron has cast his vision of national/European greatness, security, and international order in opposition to the isolationist, rigidly nationalist visions articulated by his domestic opponents and, internationally, by President Trump. In his view, France and Europe can only be secure if they defeat the illiberal ideas advocated by the increasingly vocal political forces, particularly far-right movements, seeking to undermine the core values and multilateral principles of the post-1945 international order. Under these circumstances, an analysis of Macron's policies and practices of grandeur can help us gain a better understanding of the competition between liberal and illiberal worldviews – a competition that is increasingly pronounced within the Western world.

French status seeking in a changing world: taking on the role as the guardian of the liberal order

France has a long history as a traditional European great power. But is this still the case today? The analysis in this article shows how French exceptionalism, often referred to as ‘grandeur’ is still the guiding principle of French foreign policy, but that it is being practised differently today. President Macron may be right in arguing that ‘France is back’, but it is important to note that modern French power projection or status seeking takes place through a set of very different mechanisms. The key argument put forward in this article is that French status is increasingly based on a type of symbolic power, and to understand the mechanisms through which this power is managed, insights from social psychology and Social Identification Theory (SIT) are helpful. SIT points to three different strategies for maintaining a position within a social hierarchy that may also be valid for international politics: social mobility, social competition and social creativity. While France has adopted different types of strategies in earlier periods (social mobility in the immediate post-war years and social competition during the Cold War), the analysis in this article shows that French foreign policy practices are now increasingly being legitimised through the creation of a new narrative. Interestingly, this narrative consists of the current French political leadership’s eagerness to take on the role as ‘the guardian of the liberal order’, which fits nicely with what SIT identify as a strategy of social creativity.

Business marketing in France: can the case be made for “French exceptionalism” or is it just a slight variation?

ABSTRACTPurpose: The aim of this article is to elucidate the state of B-to-B marketing research in France by conducting a review of theoretical and empirical studies in this field that have been published over the last three decades.Methodology/approach: Authors identified relevant literature sources, and proceeded with classifying the publications according to their main theme of study (as determined by reviewing the topic, the abstract, and/or keywords). To extract the main articles, authors explored multiple electronic databases, including Source Premier (EBSCO), Elsevier Science Direct, Google Scholar, and Cairn.info. This methodology has allowed comparisons both in time and in relation to similar works done in other countries. The analysis focuses on the main contributions of French literature in the B-to-B domain and establishes that progress has been made in understanding the issues of B-to-B marketing in France, as well as in the development of the theory in this field.Findings: The review shows that B-to-B marketing research in France, although under-represented in relation to its B-to-C counterparts, is gradually emerging from the shadows and covers important topics that are increasingly diverse and varied. By identifying the main topics studied by French B-to-B marketing researchers, this work advances this academic discipline while also providing valuable information.Originality/value: This study is the first attempt to conduct an in-depth examination of the state of B-to-B marketing research in France. Findings yielded by this literature review would be beneficial to both B-to-B marketing researchers and practitioners and promotes this research field.

Recruitment in public administrations: diversity policies and selection practices in a French city

ABSTRACTThis paper presents the results of an ethnographic study of recruitment processes in the public service of a French city. It begins by engaging with the existing literature on representative bureaucracy and discrimination of members of minority groups and then surveys some of the existing literature on French exceptionalism in this domain. Based on an analysis of gate-keeping practices and recruitment, set off against the numerical under-representation of candidates with an immigration background, the paper argues that a series of seemingly minor mechanisms help to explain why so few of these candidates are being selected. It concludes by arguing that the empirical study of these mechanisms provides avenues for strategic interventions in selection processes aiming to create more genuine equal opportunities for members of minority groups.

Yet Another French Exception:

While the CJEU’s decision to establish the right to be forgotten certainly ignited a debate among Western privacy scholars and policymakers hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, no country has participated in the debate with as much fervor as has France. This article addresses the following question: What explains France’s unique sense of urgency with regard to digital right to be forgotten? I argue that extralegal factors rooted in France's enduring antagonism towards US digital hegemony bear most of the explanatory weight. Despite undergoing several shifts in national cybergovernance policy over the years, France has, from the 1970s onward, maintained two core political objectives: first, the rejection of American digital hegemony, and second, a demonstration of French exceptionalism in the cybersphere. Through its support for an extraterritorial right to be forgotten, the nation conveys a political message to its European counterparts and the United States: France is ready and willing to lead the Western resistance against American digital hegemony.

Book Review: Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party by David S. Bell and Byron Criddle

David S. Bell and Byron Criddle Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014; 235 pp: 9780230282278, 68 [pounds sterling] (hbk) Two decades after their 1984 work chronicling the rise of France's Parti Socialiste (hereinafter PS, or Socialists) as a party of government, Bell and Criddle's latest work provides an excellent, and much-needed, up-to-date account of the party, with a particular focus on the post-Mitterrand era. Exceptional Socialists: The Case of the French Socialist Party (2014) is a crisply written work that offers both a well-informed history of the party's evolution and a rich discussion of the influence of the French political institutional context on the party's ideology and policy programmes. The book's density of information on the party and the surrounding institutional environment mean that it will be of interest to scholars of French politics, whilst its accessible style and relatively short length also mean that students or those with a keen interest in the Parti Socialiste would benefit from the book. The introduction sets out a neat, if brief, case for 'French exceptionalism' and its relationship to French socialism. This helps to form the basis of the book's central claim, that the PS remains 'exceptional' amongst its European counterparts due to its historical resistance to 'social democratisation' and poor electoral record. It is this theme that the authors weave through the rest of the book as they explore what has shaped the party's ideology, policy programmes, discourse and electoral strategies. Of the books subsequent eight central chapters, the first six are organised thematically around the most salient institutional factors that have shaped the PS since its founding in 1969. This begins with a look at the competitive context of the French electoral system, before an account of the internal institutional structures and workings of the PS as a party is set out. It is, however, Chapter 4's discussion of the party's competing internal factions, or courants, that have characterised the party since its inception, which helps to put flesh on the bones of this institutional account of the party. Although, as they note, the ideological strength of these factions has been replaced by a more superficial, personality-focused battle between leading individuals (p. 58), the chapter's concise biographies of key 'faction personalities' in the post-Mitterrand party aptly demonstrates to the reader the fractious and elite organisation of the central party. Following this, Bell and Criddle cover the party's historically tense relationship with presidentialism, which, though contrary to the party's republican values, helped to establish an institutional environment wherein the PS could supersede the Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) as the major party on the Left. Yet despite the decline of the PCF, the historic influence of the Communists, and indeed the wider 'minoritarian left', in shaping PS ideology is not underestimated. This account captures the awkward ideological position in which the PS finds itself on French political terrain; caught between influential Marxist parties to its left, which has led to a resistance of 'social democratisation' and in particular the social liberalism of the Third Way (p. 111), and its inability to even establish a reputation as the 'party of welfare' due to support for the welfare state on the right (p. 121). The latter two chapters then go on to plot the historical trajectory of the party from 1988 to 2014, and work effectively to tie together the assorted themes already covered, before the concluding chapter presents a highly critical analysis of Hollande and the PS governments since 2012. …

Forecasting partisan dynamics in France and in Euroland

Election forecasting has become a standard part of the tool kit for political scientists around the world. However, that focus is almost exclusively on forecasting national electoral contests. Here we offer another, unique, focus – the changing political color of the core nations of the European Union, the Fifteen. First, we offer a model that forecasts the fortune of classic right-wing rule for this region, labeled Euroland. Then, we examine those forecasts, as compared with France in particular. France holds special interest because, according to our forecasts for 2015, it could well swing right, while the rest of Euroland goes left. One suggestion, of course, is that the tradition of French exceptionalism will continue.

“The Conspiracy of Imbeciles,” Reloaded

This essay is a rhetorical invention. It projects what Jean Baudrillard would have found theoretically interesting in the recent Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) affair, configured as a transpolitical media pseudo event revealing the immunodeficiency of Europe’s political class. The DSK affair is doubly contextualized in relation to its reception on both sides of the Atlantic: in (academic) North American feminists’ critique of French cultural exceptionalism and in French (real-time) resolutely nonhermeneutic coverage of “the already told story.” Both readings of the affair are centered upon a key Baudrillardian term, seduction, either in its “hot” (Don Juan) form or in its “cold” ludic form. When viewed from the perspective of immersive, immediate, and immanent forms of distance-abolishing media (such as smartphones and GPS), the summer sex scandals of 2011 instantiate shifts within simulation toward integral reality.

The French return to NATO: Reintegration in practice, not in principle

Sarkozy's decision to bring France back into NATO's integrated military structure in 2009 represents in some ways a break with French exceptionalism. But how deep is this change? This article examines whether the decision has led to a real integration of France along various dimensions of integration; whether the decision represents a continuation or a break with the traditional French approach and the effects of this reintegration on NATO/EU cooperation. The empirical analysis of French political and military practices in NATO combines a focus on macro-level foreign policy formulations with a micro-level study of how French officials and representatives communicate and interact on a day-to-day basis. The analysis shows that France has become increasingly integrated into NATO since 2009 on most dimensions except with regard to cultural integration. Thus, France may be reintegrated in practice, but not yet in principle.

(Re)cycling in Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003): Spokes in the wheels of French exceptionalism and global exploitation?

Sylvain Chomet’s animated feature Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003) makes recurrent references to cycles and recycling. Putting spokes in interlinking wheels, these offer new perspectives on the exploitative cycles of the global market and challenge some of the constituent discourses of French exceptionalism: economic, philosophical and cinematic. Instead of figuring a big bad American Other, the film exposes French co-implication in the global market, past and present, and in its exploitative entertainment industry. The examination of these motifs reveals intersections with and divergences from altermondialiste debates and critics of (late) capitalism such as Barthes, Baudrillard, Debord and Derrida. Chomet also seeks to negotiate the ways in which his film in turn colludes in such cycles. Indeed Chomet’s recycling of cinematic techniques and images (feature and animation; French, Hollywood and anime; hand-drawn and CGI) invites questions as to the enduring critical potential of cinema.

'I Class Struggle': French Exceptionalism and Challenges for Socialist Studies

‘Je lutte des classes’ ‘I class struggle’ – sticker worn by protestors in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille, and other major French cities on Tuesday, October 12, 2010, during the 5th day of strike action. The protests aimed to challenge proposed legislation to raise the legal age of retirement in France from sixty to sixty two years of age. As in the English translation, the original French is grammatically awkward, an ambiguous if not ambivalent union between ‘I’ and ‘class struggle’.

Internationalizing the French Revolution

“All history is contemporary history,” observed Benedetto Croce. Work on the French Revolution has often proven his insight.* In today’s globalizing climate, it is worth examining French revolutionary historians’ uneven embrace of the current historiographic trend toward transnational approaches. On one hand, scholarship has been comparatively slow to take this turn for several reasons, notably the persistent belief in the centrality of the nation. The revolutionaries themselves built claims of French exceptionalism into their construction of universalism, and historians have inherited the strong sense that the Revolution held particular power and played an integral role in constructing French national identity.

Comparative, Arab, and European Studies: Still a French Exceptionalism?

Comparative, Arab, and European Studies: Still a French Exceptionalism?

France from 1851 to the Present: Universalism in Crisis

Celestin and DalMolin have written an interesting and thoughtful general cultural history of France over a 150-year period, organized as a wide-ranging narrative, that covers many types of cultural events, movements and personalities, linking them into the general flow of French history. Notwithstanding the subtitle, however, their central unifying theme, universalism, frequently disappears from view. Taking universalism partly as the belief that French political and cultural values are derived from reason and are inherently superior to those of other nations, and partly as a synonym for French exceptionalism, several of the chronologically organized chapters do not discuss universalism at all and others do so only tangentially. Part of the difficulty is that, especially in the first half of the book (by DalMolin), the discussion of political history and political thought is somewhat simplistic, and without a full discussion of universalism as a political concept the remainder is limited. The point is argued that there was an accepted universalism which lay at the root of French identity and that the various crises at the start of the twenty-first century can be understood as a crisis of universalism (and of the supposed end of French exceptionalism), but it is also not made clear in what ways the contemporary crisis is substantially different from (and therefore more ‘real’ than) earlier crises of French confidence. That being said, the narrative itself is clear, well-presented and contains a wealth of examples and comparisons between different cultural developments, from art and literature through music and cinema, dress, inventions, architecture and events such as the great exhibitions. Cultural developments are contextualized within wider social, economic and political changes and give a good sense of general cultural activity and change across a long period of time. There is perhaps not as much on religion as one might expect in a cultural history, but the range of material covered is impressive. Each chapter contains numerous ‘dossiers’, with in-depth discussions of particular examples, often containing substantial quotations from key primary sources related to the particular question being discussed at that point. One of the strengths of the book is that it includes colonial France, the cultural interaction between the colonies and the hexagon and the images of the colonies within France and weaves this theme into the main discussion, rather than leaving it to one side, disconnected from the rest. Although there are slight differences between the two sections written by each author (there is more on art in the first part and more history of ideas in the second), the text reads well as a single work. It will make a good resource for students, given its accessibility and the extensive material presented. It is perhaps unfortunate that the notion of universalism is quite secondary, but there is plenty to interest in this impressive cultural history.

Secularism, State Policies, and Muslims in Europe<BR> Analyzing French Exceptionalism

Islam has increasingly become an internal affair in several western European countries, where the population has grown to ten to fifteen million. In recent years, the European public has intensely discussed Muslims and Islam on several occasions, from terrorist attacks in London and Madrid to the debates on Danish cartoons. In short, there is today a Muslim question in the minds of many European politicians when it comes to the issues of immigration, integration, and security. European states have pursued diverse policies to regulate their populations. The most controversial of these policies is France's recent ban on wearing headscarves in public schools, which has been discussed in France and abroad since 1989. Other European countries, however, have taken students' headscarves as a part of their individual freedom and have not prohibited them. A survey of twelve major French and British newspapers between 1989 and 1999 shows how controversial the issue was in France, in comparison to Britain. According to the survey, the number of articles on the headscarf issue in French newspapers reached 1,174, whereas the British newspapers carried only eighteen.) As a result of this debate, a bill was passed in the French assembly and the senate and signed into the law by President Jacques Chirac in March 2004. The first article of the new law

Fragmented France: two centuries of disputed identity

1. French Identity: The National Search for Retrospective Legitimacy and Unanimity 2. Intellectual Interpretations and Projections of the French Revolution 3. Tensions and Trajectories: the Constituents of French Exceptionalism 4. Enduring Conflicts and Elusive Consensus 5. A Liberal Democratic Republic Struggles to be Born, 1814 - 1878 6. Institutional Immobilism, Ideological Ferment and Reluctant Socio-Economic Modernisation 7. Partisan Intellectuals and Polarised Political Culture 8. Adversaries: Polarised and Fragmented Party Politics of the Right 9. Adversaries on the Left: Revolutionary Rhetoric and Reformist Realities 10. Embattled Nation: Politicised Army, Imperial Decolonisation and European Integration 11. Diluting French Political Culture with European Social Liberalism Epilogue. Confronting the National Identity Crisis

L'administration et les politiques de recherche : quelles spécificités ?

A comparative and multidisciplinary analysis of research policies and their administration leads to a paradox : both in their context and in the solutions adopted, these policies have particularities which distinguish them from other sectors of public action. Yet the questions they ask are not fundamentally different from those raised in other sectors : are we in a period of crisis or decline ? Is “French exceptionalism” the problem ? Is the state able pilot a policy ? Is state policy-making “difficult to read ?&#8221

Football in France: a cultural history

Contents List of Tables vii Acknowledgements ix Glossary xi 1 Introduction: Studying French Football 1 2 Establishing Football in the French National Consciousness 19 3 Towns and Cities: a Socio-economic Geography of French Football Clubs 47 4 Fans: a Sociology of French Club Football 77 5 Coaches: Building the Successes of French Teams 115 6 Players: 'les Bleus' and French National Identity 150 7 Television: Football as Spectacle and Commodity 179 8 Chairmen: Business, Politics, and Corruption 196 9 Conclusions: French Exceptionalism vs. Commodification 224 Appendix 244 Bibliography 247 Index