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441. Contradictions in the Carribbean: Martinique and the 2002 French National Elections

Author:
William F.S. Miles
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Results of the French legislative elections in 2002 reflect great ideological diversity among the electorate of the overseas department of Martinique. They also belie the apparent political uniformity as expressed in the preceding presidential elections. (In Martinique, incumbent President Jacques Chirac had just received his highest score of any voting district in the Republic.) One staunch pro-statehood incumbent lost to a Socialist; the pro-Chirac mayor won by the greatest margin of any district; an incumbent backed by Aimé Césaire was defeated by an ex-Communist; and the pro-independence incumbent deputy narrowly defended his seat from a pro-statehood challenger. The elections were also marked by a record number of candidates, low voter turnout, clientelistic politics, and the power of mayoralty. These results put Martinique out of step with the French nation as a whole. Wishing to remain within France, but struggling to remain something other than France: Martinique's contradictory political culture endures in the Caribbean. The editor wishes to include here, with apologies to the author, the acknowledgements, which were inadvertently omitted as the proofs went to press. They read: "Fieldwork for this research was made possible by a sabbatical leave from Northeastern University. From September 2001 through June 2002 the author was visiting researcher with the Centre de Recherches sur les Pouvoirs Locaux dans la Caraïbe (CRPLC) at the Schoelcher (Martinique) campus of the Université des Antilles-Guyane. Special thanks go to CRPLC director Justin Daniel. Prof. William Miles".
Political Geography:
France and Caribbean

442. Review Essay - Is the King Dead? Performing Sovereignty in the Modern Era

Author:
Sheryl Kroen
Publication Date:
09-2003
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
It is common practice among early modern French historians to interpret society, culture, and politics through an analysis of the metaphors, narratives, and rituals that mediated the relationship between sovereigns (kings and queens) and the nation. La Mort du Roi: Un essai d'ethnographie politique comparée transposes this practice to the modern period, in particular by focusing on the discourses and rituals surrounding dying and dead heads of state in France and elsewhere. It was the death of François Mitterrand in 1996 that provided the inspiration for this transposition, worked out in a year-long seminar organized by Jacques Julliard in 1996 and 1997 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Topic:
Sovereignty
Political Geography:
France

443. OECD Health at a Glance - How France Compares

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
In many respects, France fares well among OECD countries in terms of indicators of the health status of its population and resources allocated to its health care system. The French population (and particularly French women) enjoys a relatively high life expectancy compared with the average across OECD countries. The French have a free choice of doctor, and can approach relatively easily both generalists and specialists. Also, the French health system has not generally experienced the problems of long waiting lists for certain treatments, as has been the case in several other OECD countries. The health care system in France is predominantly funded through public sources, but with services delivered by both the public and private sector. Universal access is provided to doctors and hospital services, with some co-payments for patients which vary depending on the type of services. Since the introduction of the Universal Health Coverage Law (Loi de la Couverture médicale universelle or CMU) in 2000, people with low income who are not covered by complementary insurance have access to doctors and hospitals free of charge. Overall, public satisfaction with the health care system in France has traditionally been much higher than in most other countries. However, health spending in France is relatively high in comparison with the OECD average.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
France

444. Economic Survey of France, 2003

Publication Date:
07-2003
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
After several years of rapid expansion, the French economy has entered into a period of below potential growth, with a negative output gap opening up. Monetary conditions have been relaxed, while fiscal policy has eased excessively, provoking the European Commission to initiate an excessive deficit procedure. As uncertainty dissipates towards the middle of this year, the economy should pick up speed, reaching a growth rhythm of around 2 per cent in 2004. Nevertheless, over the medium term, in the absence of substantial reforms the ageing of the population risks threatening economic and fiscal equilibrium. Current pension and healthcare reform initiatives and plans to redress spending over the medium term go in the right direction. However, in order to ensure medium and long-term fiscal sustainability, additional policies to slow the expansion of health and pension spending are required, while efforts to raise employment rates and potential output are needed to improve the economy's ability to finance future ageing-related expenditure. Here, programmes that offer the possibility of on-the-job training should be expanded so as to reactivate young and lowskilled workers, while reforms to early-retirement schemes and the pension system need to be continued so as to restore work incentives for older workers. Ongoing tax and labour market reforms and policies to facilitate the development of high-tech and fast growing enterprises, which should help promote investment and higher productivity growth, also need to be pursued. The opening of the capital of stateowned enterprises and their eventual privatisation, and planned improvements to governance structures should help promote growth, but revenues from sell-offs ought to be used to reduce debt. Finally, in order to better manage the totality of public expenditures, the authorities need to implement reforms that can be used to ensure that all spending organisms contribute to controlling spending. Here, it will be necessary to implement mechanisms that would improve the effectiveness of measures to control healthcare spending. Moreover, decision-makers need to be more directly confronted with the long-term consequences of their actions. Initiatives such as decentralisation and the new budget framework law should help in this regard. Pursuit of reforms along all of these lines should permit society to meet the fiscal challenge posed by population ageing, while retaining high levels of service.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Economics, International Organization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and France

445. Take the State Back Out? Comparing French Responses to Globalization in Agriculture and Shipping

Author:
Mark Aspinwall and Imtiaz Hussain
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
How autonomous is a state in today's highly interdependent international economy to pursue policies that diverge widely from the international norm? Does the degree of autonomy vary for different domestic sectors? We adapt and apply Benjamin Cohen's unholy trinity model (1993), to a comparative assessment of how France responded to globalization over agriculture and shipping, focusing on three dimensions—investment, transaction costs, and government policy responses. Although France is reputed to possess a strong state machinery (Katzenstein, 1987; Wilson, 1987; Skocpol, 1985), our analysis raises qualifications. On the one hand, regardless of government policy intentions, we find irreversible forms of disinvestment in both sectors, though different in nature—geographic for shipping, and functional for agriculture; on the other, we also find continued dependence upon the state—for aid in shipping and resisting free trade in agriculture. We further find that, although internal and endogenous, as well as external and exogenous, factors influence policy-making, the nature of these factors are different for the two sectors. We conclude by drawing implications of our findings for state-society relations and European integration.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and France

446. Disenchanted Conscription: A Military Recruitment System in Need of Justification

Author:
Anna Leander
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The Economist's point of view is a widely shared one. It also seems warranted by current trends in policy-making in developed democracies. The US, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have abolished or are phasing out conscription. Even France, mother of citizens armies through the revolutionary levée en masse, just saw (literally as the event was broadcasted as a main feature of the evening television news) its last conscript leave the armed forces. The Nordic countries and Germany have not abolished conscription, but conscripts make up a shrinking share of the armed forces, which governments plan to shrink even further. For many observers this confirms that they simply lag behind. They will soon be brought to reason and abolish conscription. But this is a simplistic understanding of what determines the fate of conscription.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Government, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and Portugal

447. Indeterminate and Inhuman: Georgette Leblanc in L'Inhumaine (1924)

Author:
Maureen Shanahan
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
This essay argues that L'Inhumaine, directed by Marcel L'Herbier, succeeded as a display of avant-gardism but failed as a heterosexual romance due to misquotation of heterosexual paradigms and its citation of gay, lesbian, and queer signs of the era. Georgette Leblanc, who was the film's lead actress and a principal financial contributor, signified as too “authoritative” both to collaborators and critics, yet her role in shaping the narrative has not been acknowledged. Leblanc scripted the principal character, the singer Claire Lescaut, as an “inhuman woman” who refuses marriage, fails to mourn her suicided male suitor, and is reviled by other women, suggesting post-war women who persisted in their careers and failed to mourn male losses from the Great War. In one scene, when a theater audience breaks into partisan factions rioting over Lescaut's “inhumanity,” two garçonnes or mannish women appear to take Lescaut's side against others in the audience, a scene staged in part by Leblanc's lover Margaret Anderson, co-editor of the Little Review. The presence of the garçonne couple suggests Leblanc and Anderson's desire to connote a lesbian meaning to the “inhuman woman” and to address a lesbian spectator. In addition, Leblanc's age, on-screen persona, and her partnership with a younger male actor disturbed the contemporary ideological ordre familial in post-war France. Instead, both Leblanc and Jaque Catelain, the male lead, resembled other public queer figures, such as Sarah Bernhardt and Jean Börlin, the lead dancer for the Ballets Suédois. In its emphasis on theatrical performance, audience relations, masking and deflected emotions, L'Inhumaine produces a slippage between the visible and invisible and permits multiple spectatorial positions.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
Europe and France

448. Russia faces Europe

Author:
Dov Lynch
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
The crisis on Iraq has challenged key features of international relations. The United States and Britain intervened in Iraq without the specific support of the United Nations, avoiding a second resolution in February 2003 precisely because they feared coercive action would be vetoed. The UN has taken a serious blow and the parameters of international law on self-defence and the use of force are being redefined by US and British actions. The crisis has also left the transatlantic relationship in tatters, with the appearance of serious divisions in Europe and inside the European Union. France, Germany and Russia coordinated their positions against coercive actions within the UN Security Council, adopting a number of joint declarations in 2003 on how to strengthen the inspection regime. With all this, the very notion of the West as it existed in the Cold War seems under question.
Topic:
Security and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Russia, America, Europe, France, Kosovo, Germany, United Nations, and Syria

449. Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Program

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The announcement on 21 October 2003 of an agreement between Iran on the one hand and Britain, France and Germany on the other, is an important and welcome step in resolving the controversy surrounding Tehran's nuclear program. But it would be wrong to assume that it ends it. The challenge now is to use the breathing space provided by the agreement to tackle the questions – about its implementation, the future of Iran's uranium enrichment activities and Iran's own security concerns – that, for the time being, it has deferred.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Government, Nuclear Weapons, and Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, Iran, France, Arabia, and Germany

450. Do Judicial Councils Further Judicial Reform? Lessons from Latin America

Author:
Linn Hammergren
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
JUDICIAL REFORM EFFORTS IN LATIN AMERICA, and by extension worldwide, seem to fall easily prey to magic bullets. In the past two decades, reformers in the region and aid providers from North America and Western Europe have seized upon a whole series of entry points for judicial reform—including model codes, accusatory criminal justice systems, court administration reforms, information technology, alternative dispute resolution, legal services, and constitutional courts. Sometime during the late 1980s, as the issue of judicial independence came to receive more serious attention, judicial councils joined the list, and nearly a dozen countries adopted them. It was not until the late 1990s that questions about their utility began to emerge. Although Latin America is beginning to reexamine its love affair with the councils, the model has been gaining ground in other regions. Western Europeans, who invented the mechanism, have been suffering their own doubts. This has not prevented their joining with U.S. reformers in recommending it to postcommunist nations in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The cautionary lessons from Latin America's several-decade experiment with judicial councils have not yet been analyzed and disseminated. This essay is a start in that direction.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
America, Europe, France, South America, Latin America, and Central America