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10981. L'enjeu métropolitain des Halles

Author:
Thierry Baudouin and Michèle Collin
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
During the Fordist period, the state transformed the historic site of Les Halles, in the heart of Paris, into the agglomeration's chief mass transit gateway. Efforts to make the site into a veritable tool of social, cultural, and economic metropolitan development are struggling because of governmental modalities that remain very marked by centralism. A majority of citizens, notably those living in suburban Paris, actively stake a claim to this metropolitan dimension and to the rich possibilities of this tool. The article principally analyzes the territorializing practices of suburban youths, whose multiple subjectivities are still poorly integrated into the site. Les Halles thus reveals the question of the correspondence of these establishing metropolitan practices to the reality of the centralized institutions around Paris intramuros.
Political Geography:
Paris

10982. Les rapports ambigus entre politiques et citoyens: le cas du réaménagement du quartier des Halles à Paris

Author:
Pierre Diméglio and Jodelle Zetlaoui-Léger
Publication Date:
08-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
While Mayor Bertrand Delanoë had omitted the renovation of Les Halles in his plans for the city in his 2001 inaugural address, in 2002, at the urging of the RATP and Espace Expansion, he decided to create a working group to undertake this project during his tenure. Having made citizen participation a new goal for local government, he also announced that the project would be undertaken with Parisians, especially local associations. The first part of this article emphasizes the different postures that elected politicians, engineers, and experts have adopted over the course of forty years vis-à-vis the question of citizen participation in urban planning. The second part explores the decision- making process for the Les Halles renovation over the last four years; it considers the issues and difficulties linked to the implementation of participatory plans incorporating residents––whether they are members of local groups or not––in complex urban planning projects.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Paris

10983. On the Intellectual Sources of Laïcité: Rousseau, Constant, and the Debates about a National Religion

Author:
Helena Rosenblatt
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
That French Protestants gave strong support to laïcité is by now well established. Whether this support was due to ideological dispositions within Protestantism or to Protestantism's practical relationship to history can be debated; what cannot be debated is the disproportionate role Protestants played within the Third Republic and among the early proponents of laïcité. In recent work, Patrick Cabanel has even made a compelling case for the Protestant sources of laïcité, placing particular emphasis on the Protestant entourage of Jules Ferry (1832-1893) and stressing the inspiration provided by the pro-Protestant intellectual, Edgar Quinet (1803-1875).
Topic:
Religion
Political Geography:
Europe and France

10984. Religion, politique et régulation juridique aux États-Unis

Author:
Fabienne Randaxhe
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
From a French perspective, the relationship between the state and religion in the United States may seem paradoxical. On the one hand, the American nation was the first one to have established, by constitutional means, a separation between religious bodies and the political realm. On the other hand, religious and political spheres in the US still seem to overlap to some extent. While French approaches tend to regard US laïcité as uncertain and incomplete, this article discusses whether laïcité is in the US incomplete or aware of tensions to be lessened among religious, political and social forces. I focus on legal regulation and consider the notion of accommodation as a particular form of legal laïcité.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America

10985. Religion et politique en France dans le contexte de la construction européenne

Author:
Jean-Paul Willaime
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Strongly marked by the weight of the past, the French approach to State-Religion- Society relations has distinct qualities, and especially a strong confrontational and emotional dimension. This essay address the evolution of these relations and their tensions by focusing on three subjects that make manifest the relationship between politics and religion in important ways, namely, schools, sects, and Islam. The arena of the school is especially significant in three respects: the link between public and private schools; the question of what should be taught about religion, and the display of religious expression by students. The essay considers these matters within the context of wider transformations in religion (secularization) and politics (disenchantment and changes in the state's role in society). It concludes by situating recent developments in the context of globalization and especially Europeanization.
Topic:
Development, Globalization, and Islam
Political Geography:
Europe and France

10986. Les élections françaises de 2007

Author:
Gérard Grunberg
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The 2007 presidential elections have been the most important in France since 1981 because they provoked ruptures in the way the state and the French political system function. These ruptures, which this essay explores, include: the structural advantage the Right now has over the Left in national elections; the extension of the president's power and role in the regime; the transformation of the French political parties system into bipartism; and, finally, evolution inside the two major French parties due not only to the personality, ideas and choices of their respective candidates but also to the growing role of the president in the regime and its effects.
Political Geography:
France

10987. Analyse de l'élection présidentielle des 22 avril et 6 mai et des élections législatives des 10 et 17 juin 2007: une rupture politique?

Author:
Pascal Perrineau
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in the 2007 French presidential elections represents a true rupture: rupture with years of political apathy, rupture with what was an escalating rise of political protest, rupture with a “law” that since 1981 seemed to require that every outgoing majority be beaten. Sarkozy's electoral victory was substantial. It was built on a notion that what the French were looking for was a strong sense of direction, and it gave rise to a dynamic of striking change right after the election (a political opening to the left, a shift in presidential style, disarray in the Socialist Party, and the marginalization of the National Front).
Topic:
Politics and Law

10988. La singularité française: la campagne présidentielle de Ségolène Royal

Author:
Frédérique Matonti
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
For the first time, a woman has come close to becoming the president of France. This essay examines the conditions that account for why Segolène Royal was chosen as Socialist candidate for the presidency. These conditions were above all political and were linked to key features of the Socialist Party. But her nomination also needs to be understood in the context of the parity law. To an important extent this law reinforced the gendered order, and Ségolène Royal's candidacy emerged readily in the wake of the law. The essay goes on to analyze the candidate's campaign. Before and during the primary campaign, the general framework was conducive to her ascendancy. But, after the primaries, critics were sharp: Royal was portrayed as ever less competent. Although there is a sociological basis for the voting of 2007, misogyny also played a part in Ségolène Royal's defeat.
Topic:
Law
Political Geography:
France

10989. Once Again, From a Distance: Martinique and the French Presidential Election of 2007

Author:
William Miles
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
In May 2007, Martinique did not follow the rest of France in endorsing Nicolas Sarkozy in his bid to become president. Along with the other overseas French states Guadeloupe and Réunion (but not Guyane), Martinique supported rather the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal. Martinique thereby distanced itself from the rest of the République—as it had done in 1995—by backing a left-wing presidential candidate rather than the ultimately victorious right-wing one. 2007 represents the converse of 1981, when Martinique voted for the rightist candidate but France as a whole elected a leftist (François Mitterrand). Over time, being at electoral odds with the nation as a whole has become less troubling for Martinicans: independence, which most islanders oppose, is no longer seen at stake in presidential outcomes. On the other hand, Martinicans have become progressively resigned to their peripheral status within French presidential politics.
Political Geography:
France

10990. The Origins of Chancellor Democracy and the Transformation of the German Democratic Paradigm

Author:
Hans Mommsen
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
The main focus of the articles presented in this special issue is the international dimension of post World War II German politics and the specific role filled by the first West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer's main goal was the integration of the emerging West German state into the West European community, while the reunification of Germany was postponed. In his view, any restoration of the former German Reich depended upon the creation of a stable democratic order in West Germany. Undoubtedly, Adenauer contributed in many respects to the unexpectedly rapid rise of West Germany towards a stable parliamentary democratic system—even if most of the credit must go to the Western Allies who had introduced democratic structures first on the state level, and later on paved the way to the establishment of the Federal Republic with the fusion of the Western zones and the installment of the Economic Council in 1948.
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany