Chirac Research Articles

Presidents of the Fifth Republic: The Virtues of Comparison, not a Comparison of Virtues

In setting out to compare Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency with those of his predecessors under the Fifth Republic, we need to keep in mind that, except for Georges Pompidou (who died before completing his seven-year term), and Jacques Chirac (who had already served seven years before being elected for a further five), Sarkozy is the first president to come into office with a relatively short five-year term ahead of him. Moreover, in the course of his presidency a major financial and economic crisis arose that greatly reduced his room for maneuver. In many respects, the pattern of this presidency resembles that of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, with a period of reform abruptly cut short by crisis. That said, the pension reforms pursued from the beginning of Sarkozy's presidency probably mark a very clear turning point, displaying a marked form of political voluntarism.

Olympian Dreams

Olympian Dreams

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

Uncanny city: Revisiting Alexandria's haunted spaces

This article explores an aspect of France’s relations with North Africa that has hitherto received relatively little attention from cultural commentators working in the broad area of postcolonial Francophone studies, certainly in the United Kingdom, namely, the photographic representation of Alexandria in the 1980s and 1990s. During this period the city was finally emerging from the near oblivion in which it was plunged following the Suez Crisis of 1956 and the subsequent expulsion by the Egyptian government of the cosmopolitan community which had been responsible for its erstwhile success and prosperity since the 1850s. The article takes the photobook Alexandrie revisitée (Hassoun 1998) published as part of the celebrations surrounding L’Année France-Égypte launched by Presidents Jacques Chirac and Hosni Mubarak, as a representative case study of the depiction of the city at the end of the twentieth century. Using theories of nostalgia, the uncanny, and photography, this study demonstrates how the aesthetic form and content of Alexandrie revisitée functions as a historical, cultural, political and memorialist document, as well as a product of the ‘special relationship’ between France and Egypt.

REVERSING THE TAXES APPROACH FOR A WIN-WIN TOBACCO CONTROL POLICY

Increasing the price of cigarettes is a core ingredient of comprehensive tobacco control 1. There is long-standing evidence of the effectiveness of increased tobacco prices for reducing tobacco consumption. In developed countries, a roughly 10% rise in price decreases sales by 4% 2. Therefore, tobacco tax increases apparently offer a win–win solution, because states will collect more taxes and the burden of smoking-related illnesses will decrease 3. France has become an exception among rich countries by flying in the face of this evidence. In 2004 Jean Pierre Raffarin, Jacques Chirac's Prime Minister, announced a freeze on tobacco taxes for 4 years—‘a good compromise’, according to the president of the Tobacconists Union. On 30 May 2011 Xavier Bertand, the Minister of Heath, announced that he will maintain the freeze, even though France has seen a 2% increase in smoking prevalence during the past 5 years. Warnings from public health experts have fallen on deaf ears. Accordingly, turnover of the tobacco industry has shown a 3% rise from 2008 to 2009, despite the global economic crisis. The French government seems more interested in promoting the profits of the tobacco industry than in the health of its people. Ironically, it would probably pay governments to hand money over to the tobacco industry to incentivize a reduction their turnover. The turnover of the tobacco industry in France is about €1 billion, while at the same time France spends €47 billion a year treating smoking-related illnesses and only collects €12 billion in taxes 4. Each Euro paid to the shareholders represents €10 paid by the smoker and a cost of €350 to the community (the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses minus collected taxes). If the state were to pay €10 to the shareholders for each €10 decrease in tobacco industry turnover, it would save €340 for the community. A Pay4Decrease plan of this kind is unlikely ever to be put into place and would no doubt have unintended adverse consequences, but the arithmetic shows how much damage the tobacco industry is doing to society and the dereliction in duty of governments such as that in France, who are not engaging with even the most basic policies to protect their citizens. Dr Braillon, a senior tenured consultant in Public Health was sacked in 2010 from Amiens University Hospital by the French Department of Health against the advice of the National Statutory Committee (Abuse of libel laws and a sacking: the gagging of public health experts in France. Tobacco control blog, 8 November 2010: http://blogs.bmj.com/tc/2010/11/08/) (Archived by Webcite at http://www.webcitation.org/617xxNddg).

Social Memories in (Post)Colonial France: Remembering the Franco-Algerian War

This article examines social memories in France over the last 10 years. There has been a significant amount of 'memory work' during this period, concerning various aspects of French history, including the World Wars, but predominantly postcolonial issues: the Algerian War, the legacy of slavery, memories of Empire and memories of Immigration in particular. The 'devoir de memoire' (duty to remember) and 'work of memory' (Paul Ricoeur) have taken on greater, and controversial, proportions. While President Jacques Chirac was for some the 'president du devoir de memoire' (President who championed the duty to remember), President Nicolas Sarkozy seems intent on ending what he sees as the trend towards 'repentance'. After a discussion of the wider memory culture in France, this article focuses on collective and social memories of the Franco-Algerian War (1954-62) Through an analysis of various 'vectors of memory' (Henry Rousso) it argues that the recent upsurge in 'memory work' in France is very much anchored in the present postcolonial social context in France. That memory work is however largely symbolic and in some ways unsatisfactory. It shows that much of the recent work of memory has been only belatedly and partially undertaken by the State, and with civil society in some ways yet to follow.

Europe's Last Word

Europe's Last Word

French Polynesia

French Polynesia Lorenz Gonschor (bio) The frequent making and unmaking of political alliances by opportunist politicians, resulting in regularly occurring ousters of governments since 2004, continued during the review period, with one successful motion of no confidence in late 2009 and another change of majority in the assembly in 2010. Yet none of these events represented anything substantially new. The ongoing chaotic situation continued to annoy the French government, which by mid-2010 was planning yet another revision of the territory's organic law. [End Page 215] Meanwhile, the economic situation is further deteriorating. Before this inevitable round of the political debacle began, however, public attention in Tahiti during the beginning of the review period was turned for a while to the long overdue efforts by the French judiciary to examine some of the earlier misdeeds of leading politicians. Most prominently, the investigation of corruption charges against Senator Gaston Flosse intensified in the second half of 2009 at a pace never seen before. (Former President Flosse held office as the country's top elected official under various titles 1982-1987; 1991-2004; Nov 2004-Feb 2005; Feb-April 2008.) Among other things, Flosse was accused of receiving bribes amounting to several million euros from French businessman Hubert Haddad. Because some of the payments were apparently masked as payments for advertisements in the French Polynesia telephone directory, as well as in the onboard magazine of the territorial airline Air Tahiti Nui, the corruption plot became known as the "phone book affair." In connection with this affair, various government departments, banks, offices, residences, and the headquarters of Flosse's party, Tahoeraa Huiraatira (People's Rally), were searched by the authorities, incriminating materials were seized, and enough evidence was gathered to arrest several officials and businessmen and place them in detention. By July 2009, the detained included Geffry Salmon, the former director of the territorial post office and Air Tahiti Nui; Flosse's secretary Melba Ortas; Haddad's business partner Michel Yonker; and Haddad himself. Another former postal director, Alphonse Teriierooiterai, who had been detained earlier, was released in July pending further investigations (TPM, Aug 2009). However, the principal suspect in the affair, Flosse himself, was initially protected from investigations because of his parliamentary immunity as a senator. In late June, the prosecutor's office formally demanded the lifting of Flosse's immunity, and on 22 July, the Senate granted a partial lift so that he could be interrogated for a short while in Paris a few days later. Because increasing evidence was accumulating, in late August the prosecutor's office once more demanded the lifting of the senator's immunity (TPM, Aug 2010, Sept 2010). The intensification of these judicial inquiries coincided with the appointment of José Thorel as the new public prosecutor on 31 August. During his first few months in office, Thorel proved that he was much more determined to prosecute political corruption cases than his predecessor Jean Bianconi, whom some suspected of being a crony of former French President Jacques Chirac and therefore rather inclined to protect Flosse and his collaborators (TPM, March 2010). Besides the "phone book affair," judicial investigations were also conducted into the activities of the former presidential intelligence service, staffed with retired French secret service agents, which Flosse had illegally set up during his presidency in order to carry out surveillance and spying operations on his political opponents during the 1990s and early 2000s (TPM, Sept 2009). [End Page 216] A third matter, dubbed the "sushi affair," involved the embezzlement of public funds to pay for an exclusive party hosted in the presidential palace to celebrate the expected election victory of Tahoeraa in May 2004 (a miscalculation, since the elections were ultimately won by Flosse's opponents and marked the end of his semi-authoritarian regime). On 24 September, for this "affair," Flosse received a one-year suspended prison sentence, a fine of more than one million CFP francs (US$10,000), and one year of ineligibility for public office, to be effective immediately (meaning he would lose his position as senator, and thereby his immunity). However, the senator's attorneys managed to obtain a delay by lodging a second appeal (TPM, Oct 2009). As...

What is New Media?: Ten Years after <i>the Language of New Media</i>

What is New Media? Ten Years after the Language of New Media Alexander R. Galloway (bio) A frank assessment to begin: There are very few books on new media worth reading.1 Just when the naysayers decry the end of the written word, bookstore shelves still overflow with fluff on digital this and digital that. And even as a countervailing chorus emerged that was more skeptical of the widespread adoption of new media—in France, Jacques Chirac once spoke disparagingly about “that Anglo-Saxon network” (for, as anyone knows, in the beginning there was Minitel)—it was evident that the Internet revolution had already taken place in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. Like it or not, the new culture is networked and open source, and one is in need of intelligent interventions to evaluate it. In the years since its original publication in 2001, Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media has become one of the most read and cited texts on the topic.2 It is a key entry in the disciplines of poetics and cultural aesthetics, and has helped define the new field of software studies. The book is not without its limitations, however, and perhaps today one may begin to reevaluate the text with the fresh eyes of historical distance, and through it reassess the rampant open sourcing of all aspects of cultural and aesthetic life, from our tools to our texts, from our bodies to our social milieus. The Language of New Media comes out of the first generation of Internet culture. What this means is that the book is the product of a specific sliver of history when the conditions of the production and distribution of knowledge were rather different than they are today. What was once a subversive medium is now a spectacle playground like any other. The first phase of Web culture, one must admit, carried a revolutionary impulse; call it the Saint-Just to today’s imperial era. Manovich’s book is a product of that first phase. Walls were coming down, hierarchies were crumbling, the old brick-and-mortar society was giving away to a new digital universe. On the one hand, new virulent ways of looking at the world were forming with unprecedented ferocity—sometimes conveniently labeled the California [End Page 377] ideology—coalescing around the neoliberal impulse to open source everything (information wants to be free, desire wants to be free, capital wants to be free) and the promise to liberate mankind in ways only dreamed of by our forebears in the social movements of the 1960s. On the other hand, amid this process of leveling, a new Republic of Letters began to form using e-mail and bulletin-board systems that seemed to offer a real intellectual and social community devoted to the exploration and critique of new media. The Language of New Media is a product of this community. Discussed and refined in online forums like nettime and partially previewed prior to publication on the e-mail list Rhizome (a website named enthusiastically, if naively, after the emancipatory topology described by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), The Language of New Media was written for, within, and against the new Internet culture of the late 1990s. This is not to suggest that Manovich’s book has nothing more to say to us today, nor that we should look backward with nostalgic yearning for a simpler time. On the contrary, the simple premise of the book—that new media may be defined via reference to a foundational language or set of formal and poetic qualities identified across all sorts of new media objects, and indeed across historical and social context—suggests the opposite approach: we are required to think critically and historically because the digital is so structural, so abstract, so synchronic. The strength of the book lies in its description of digital technologies as poetic and aesthetic objects. It aims to be a kind of general textbook on new media. Manovich begins from his own experience with software and then he extends his observations so that the “telling detail” becomes a piece in a larger system. Is Manovich’s worldview a modernist one? I think...

<em>Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa</em>, Paul Faber

Reviewed by: Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa Heather Marie Akou Faber, Paul. 2010. Long Live the President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers. 96 pp. € 80;19.50 (paper). Long Live The President! Portrait-Cloths from Africa was created as a catalogue for the exhibit, Long Live the President!, which was on display from 1 April to 22 August, 2010, at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The author, Paul Faber, is the senior curator of the museum’s ethnographic collection from Africa. The purposes of this exhibit were threefold: to build on a similar exhibit by Anne Spencer (In Praise of Heroes), which appeared at the Newark Museum in 1982; to highlight a topic important to many African cultures that is not widely known outside of Africa; and to celebrate one of the world’s best collections of printed cotton fabrics from Africa, augmented by loans from M. Bernard Collet (a private collector), and the Vlisco factory museum (a Dutch company with a long and distinguished history of producing “wax” prints for the African market). Most of the book is taken up by archival photographs and sixty highly detailed, full-color plates. This is just a sampling from the exhibit, which included more than one hundred fabrics and garments made of printed cotton cloth from all over Africa. These fabrics—which should be inspiring to anyone interested in the dress and/or politics of Africa—includes images of well-known and not-so-well- known figures, such as Kwame Nkrumah, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Julius Nyerere, Mobuto Sese Seko, Nelson Mandela, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and even Western figures, such as Pope John Paul II, Jacques Chirac, and Barack Obama. There are images of presidents’ wives and a tribute to the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson. Almost all the fabrics were produced in Europe or Africa within the last fifty years. The dates and places of production— which sometimes differ from the place of usage—have been carefully documented; this adds a great deal of value for scholars and collectors. A comparison of images to the catalogue for In Praise of Heroes shows very little overlap; the breadth and quality of this collection is clearly outstanding. Archival photographs—such as an image of Mobutu wearing his own portrait cloth—are fascinating to see and have not been widely accessible until now. A full page of photographs showing the interior of the Utex factory in Kinshasa is valuable, not just because the factory is now Chinese-owned, but because obtaining photographs of textile factories while production is ongoing is so difficult. Unfortunately, the text of this catalogue is disappointing in comparison, especially since it contributes little to existing knowledge. In just seventeen pages, it covers the history of printed cloth, portraiture, and politics on the whole African continent. This is a vast subject, one that deserves much greater or in-depth attention. In fact, most of the text focuses on the production and distribution of commemorative cloth, while the wearers’ perspective is left to speculation. An example from In Praise of Heroes demonstrates what has been left out. Based on her own experience in Tanzania and on the research of her colleagues in other countries, Anne Spencer noted [End Page 107] how African consumers tend to treat commemorative cloth in different ways, depending on their level of respect for the person depicted. Fabrics showing a popular figure, such as Patrice Lumumba, might be carefully saved for decades, and even reproduced in other countries. Fabrics with unpopular figures, such as Mobutu or Bokassa, might be worn in a subversive way by sitting on the person’s face or cutting it in half on a garment. Although the Tropenmuseum’s exhibit included several garments, this aspect of garment design was barely considered. Long Live the President! does make an important observation about the shift from “big-man politics” to multiparty, democratic elections (and the role of cloth as a tool of education and propaganda), but there is not enough space to give these topics any kind of serious study. For the purposes of scholarship, it would have been better if this catalogue, and perhaps the exhibit, had focused...

Nicolas Sarkozy a-t-il radicalisé la droite française? Changements idéologiques et étiquetages politiques

This article draws on two research strategies to analyze the radicalizing effects of "Sarkozyism" in France. The first uses the computer program ALCESTE to compare systematically the presidential campaign discourses of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy as a way to evaluate how Sarkozy has altered the ideology of the French right. This analysis shows that a radicalization of the French right has in fact taken place with regard to questions of immigration, national identity, and sécurité. The second strategy makes use of the sociology of labeling to analyze expressions of "anti-Sarkozyism" on the internet. A cartographic study of the web sheds light on the variety and dynamism of this anti-Sarkozyism, and in so doing helps us take the full measure of Sarkozyism's strong polarizing effects.

When ‘Bolkestein’ is trapped by the French anti-liberal discourse: a discursive-institutionalist account of preference formation in the realm of European Union multi-level politics

This paper investigates the bottom-up preference formation over the draft Directive over services liberalization and its impact on co-decision at the European Union (EU) level from the theoretical perspective of discursive institutionalism. Firstly, it is demonstrated that the anti-liberal discourse framed by the French left led President Chirac to reconfigure his strategic interests and embrace a strongly anti-liberal stance against the proposed Directive. Secondly, evidence that the anti-liberal discourse framed by the radical left was very efficient in politicizing the Directive proposal is provided. This forced the governments to act responsively towards public opinions while using communicative discourse in the intergovernmental realm. Since the French position overlapped some of the key actors' preferences, it played a crucial role in altering the initial balance of power. The quest for a compromise securing a super-qualified majority within the European Parliament implied both the use of communicative discourse against the Bolkestein proposal and the relative neutralization of its anti-liberal aspects.

Accidents Happen: François Ewald, the “Antirevolutionary” Foucault, and the Intellectual Politics of the French Welfare State

In January 2006, Jerome Monod, a close advisor to then President Jacques Chirac, bestowed France’s highest award, the Legion d’Honneur, on Francois Ewald, a prominent French intellectual. Monod’s praise only barely concealed how unlikely it was, given their respective careers, that such an occasion would bring them together. A successful businessman, Monod had established himself as a counselor to France’s political elite. Ewald’s career had followed, to put it mildly, a somewhat different trajectory. After studying philosophy, he threw himself into the revolutionary politics that crystallized around the student and worker strikes of May 1968. Through his activism, he met the philosopher Michel Foucault, whose studies of madness and deviance appealed to the contrarian sensibilities of the sixties generation. By the seventies, Foucault, teaching at the College de France, the summit of French academic life, had appointed Ewald as his assistant and was supervising his doctoral dissertation. Following the philosopher’s death, Ewald became the de facto executor of his intellectual estate, coediting a major Foucault anthology, overseeing the publication of his lectures, and founding a center dedicated to his memory. Needless to say, it was not these accomplishments but later and less revolutionary endeavors that earned Ewald his medal. By the early 1990s, Foucault’s student had become the house intellectual of the French insurance industry and an ideological standard-bearer of the Medef, France’s primary employers’ organization. Those attending Ewald’s award ceremony were thus treated to a singular piece of oratory, in which a captain of industry, praising a former Marxist, wondered aloud: “What happened inside of you

Ideas, tradition and norm entrepreneurs: retracing guiding principles of foreign policy in Blair and Chirac's speeches on Iraq

AbstractThe significance of ideas to foreign policy analysis remains contested, despite a plethora of empirical studies applying ideational frameworks. Drawing on social constructivism, this article proposes a causal understanding where ideas derived from tradition define the political space for contemporary debates and effect foreign policy behaviour. This ideational approach is substantiated by a historical study of guiding principles in British and French foreign policy, which establish a set of baseline expectations for the analysis of Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac's speeches on Iraq. The empirical study shows that whereas Chirac largely stayed within a French ideational framework, Blair applied a more complex combination of ideas from both traditions. Conceptualising Blair as an aspiring (but ultimately unsuccessful) norm entrepreneur is a fruitful interpretation of this role.

France's return to NATO: the death knell for ESDP?

Our article focuses on the likely impact of France's return to NATO's integrated military command on the future of the European security and defense policy (ESDP). First, we describe the triangular relationship between France's defense, NATO and European defense policies that dominated the era of the Gaullist–Mitterrandist consensus (1958–95) and its gradual erosion under Jacques Chirac's tenure (1995–2007). Second, we explain the context in which President Sarkozy made the decision in 2007 to rejoin the Allied military command. Relying on interviews with French foreign and defense policy-makers, we address the extent to which ESDP considerations really played a role. Finally, we develop four scenarios for the future of European defense: (1) ESDP gets a new lease of life; (2) France becomes a normal player in a NATO-dominated Europe; (3) NATO and ESDP work out of a division of labor; and (4) France becomes the Trojan horse of European cooperation inside NATO. To develop each scenario, we rely on rationalist and constructivist mechanisms drawn from International Relations theory.

“It takes a village … ” : Transgressing Rural Geographies in Sinapi's Camping à la ferme

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes 1 Sully reportedly claimed: “Labourage et paturage sont les mamelles de la France.” Pétain's June 25, 1940 radio address states: “La terre, elle, ne ment pas … Elle est la patrie elle-même. Un champ qui tombe en friche, c’est une portion de France qui meurt. Une jachère à nouveau emblavée, c’est une portion de France qui renaît.” See Barbas 66. 2 For a comparative study of citizenship and a history of jus soli, see Brubaker. 3 For the impact of Yves Robert's films on audience figures, see Powrie, French Cinema in the 1990s, 3. For an analysis of Claude Berri's films as “nostalgia for rural communities,” see Powrie, French Cinema in the 1980s, 50–61. 4 Even TF1's TV reality show “La Ferme des célébrités” presented rural France as a tough, wild place for city-dwellers to survive. 5 Other critically acclaimed documentaries addressing this malaise include: Depardon's Profils Paysans (2000, 2004), La vie moderne (2008), and Meunier's La vie comme elle va (2004), followed by Ici Najac, à vous la terre (2006). 6 Their portrayal of men and farmers, in particular, signals a crisis in the patriarchal order traditionally associated with the land in France. Philibert evokes a dying father and Meunier interviews an inconsolable widower. Depardon's aging farmers can’t find wives and die single and childless. Such documentaries present French audiences with a disappearing breed inhabiting increasingly deserted rural areas. 7 In his television address in November of 2005, President Chirac said : “C’est une crise de sens, une crise de repères, c’est une crise d’identité.” See Chirac. 8 Director Jean-Pierre Sinapi focused on various minorities in his previous films Vivre me tue (2003) and Nationale 7 (2000). 9 For his personal discussion of his experience within the Villepin government and acrimonious relationship with then Minister Sarkozy, see Begag's Un mouton dans la baignoire. The title itself alludes to Sarkozy's words about the killing of a sheep for the Muslim celebration of Aïd-el-Kebir. 10 The TIG (Travail d’Intérêt Général) was instituted in the mid 1980s and aimed at substituting community work for a jail sentence and at involving the community at large in the social rehabilitation of the delinquent. Only public organizations can offer TIG and the benefits are meant to be mutual (for the community and for the individual). Concrete examples of TIG include maintaining and keeping up public spaces (lawns, beaches) and fixing up “national” buildings (“patrimoine”). For a fuller description, see Ministère de la Justice. 11 The term was actually used by Begag in an interview with Marc Cheb Sun and Hélène Ganzman: “Et bien oui, il faut traverser le périphérique, aller chez les indigènes là-bas, les descendants de Vercingétorix … C’est risqué, parce qu’on s’en prend plein la gueule, surtout lorsqu’on est basané …” See Begag “La diversité, c’est mon pays !” 12 On RTL's “Chronique de Denis Girolami,” Girolami comments, “du fermier poivrot à la mairesse opportuniste en passant par l’agriculteur facho sans oublier la bouchère nymphomane.” 13 The Politique Agricole Commune was criticized for encouraging farmers not to plant for fear of losing subsidies. 14 To describe the same idea of a mobile frontier, but in a different context (Duvivier's Maria Chapdelaine about French settlers in Canada), Winifred Woodhull contrasts the pioneering défricheurs who “push back the frontiers of the wilderness” with the sedentary settlers. See Woodhull's “France in the Wilderness” in Stovall 61. 15 See “Dossier Presse Camping” 7.

Displaying colonial artifacts in Paris at the Musée Permanent des Colonies to Musée du Quai Branly

The vast cultural artifacts plundered from Africa, Asia, the Pacific region, and the Americas – regions in which France once had colonies, have been distributed among various museums in Paris. For the past seven decades, much of these artifacts from the colonies were at various museums including the Musée Permanent des Colonies (whose name has changed several times) until President Chirac officially inaugurated the new Musée du Quai Branly. The architecture of the Musée Permanent des Colonies and Musée du Quai Branly are reminders of France's relation to its colonial past and postcolonial present.

Local Politics, Identity and Football in Paris

The creation of the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club in 1970 has been best described as a gamble which, 35 years later, has proved stupendously successful: PSG has enjoyed remarkable sporting success and built up a sizeable audience. Why has PSG thrived where forerunners had failed? One of the most convincing explanations put forward is political. In 1977, Paris elected a Mayor for the first time since 1794. The incumbent, Jacques Chirac, took personal interest in the development of the club. A study of the PSG case, and the City council's policy towards PSG, elicits both the role played by a football club in building a local identity and the importance of this identity in local elections, notably after Jacques Chirac became the President of the French Republic in 1995.

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by Sally Price

Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac's Museum on the Quai Branly by <i>Sally Price</i>

The Difficulty of Justifying European Integration as a Consequence of Depoliticization: Evidence from the 2005 French Referendum

AbstractThis article analyses the 2005 French referendum debate on the EU Constitutional Treaty as an instance of depoliticization. Particular emphasis is placed on the argumentative strategy of President Chirac as, despite the treaty's focus on institutional reform, he eventually chose to justify the document in terms of social policy: an ultimately unconvincing strategy because voters believed it was contradicted by current EU policy priorities. On this evidence,paceGlyn Morgan, prioritizing a justification of EU finality over that of institutions and policies does not seem appropriate. Rather, the priority for integration is to overcome elites' strategies of depoliticization during referendum campaigns.