Politics

Opening the doors to the backstage of political campaigns, Daniel Laurison invites us to take a closer look at the work of politicos who have played critical roles in presidential elections in the United States.

For over a century, the left has owed its political identity and major political victories to a critical adherance to the Enlightenment. This is why, Stéphanie Roza argues, abandoning this legacy is dangerous.

The behavioral sciences have revolutionized our understanding of individual choices and actions. These approaches are leading to new public policies, which raises important ethical and political questions.

How do citizens view the power of the President of the Republic? An analysis of letters sent to the Élysée Palace reveals the relationship between French citizens and their head of state, as well as the role played by an invisible service: the presidential post office.

What if human lives actually do have a price tag? Ariel Colonomos analyses the social and political conditions of pricing practices for human lives, offering an innovative interpretation of the role of the state in modern European history.

Do the institutions and procedures of democracy deliver more social justice than authoritarian regimes or a hypothetical government of experts? They can, suggests one philosopher, by virtue of the impartiality they foster between citizens.

Democracy has become a key element of government legitimacy throughout the word. A new book’s comparative approach sheds light on the ambivalence of democratic norms, and the paradox of their strategic appropriation by authoritarian regimes like Russia and Turkey.

Bruno Perreau explores the concept of minority by analyzing what separates democracy from majority domination. Based on experiences of injustice, minority ethics is the foundation of more emancipatory political relations.

How can the ideal of deliberative democracy be put into practice? A collective work analyses the “deliberative turn” in theories of democracy and outlines pathways for how deliberation could be implemented in mass democracies where public opinion continues to be shaped by the media and political parties.

Building on his research on corruption and white-collar crime among the ruling classes, Pierre Lascoumes takes us deep into the institutional mechanisms behind the fraud perpetrated by those who wield political and economic power in France.

How do environmental concerns affect forms of democratic participation? Comparing a deliberative process in Poitou to citizens’ mobilization in Ardèche, an ethnographic study examines how citizens engage in politics and conflict.

Is neoliberalism essentially martial in nature? To show that it is, is the aim of a book co-written by four authors on both the historical experience of neo-liberalism and analysis of what are considered to be its founding texts. Though stimulating, the argument is not always convincing.

What if the impending ecological crisis required a recommitment to republicanism? This is Serge Audier’s thesis: we must not respond to environmental challenges with an anti-modern or anti-statist reflex, but with a new conception of the general interest.

The 2017 legislative election, which resulted in a landslide victory for La République en Marche, brought up the question of change in the political profession. Étienne Ollion shows that the National Assembly under Macron has done little to renew political practices, often sidelining newly elected members.

While France would appear to have all the conditions required to become a neoliberal country like any other, neoliberalism’s roots are much shallower in France than elsewhere. Kevin Brookes argues that the uniqueness of France’s trajectory can be explained by the “high ideological cost” of justifying neoliberalism.

Targeted assassination campaigns seem increasingly well established as a newly prevalent way of war. Through a comparison between the United States and Israel’s practices of assassination, Amélie Férey analyses the discourses which legitimise this practice despite its apparent incompatibility with political liberalism.

Is the project of deliberative democracy unrealistic? Against the cynical assimilation of democracy to a set of voting procedures aimed at satisfying the interests of the greatest number, Charles Girard argues that deliberation is a relevant ideal for a society of equals.

The last few decades have been marked by a profound reconfiguration of the dividing line between the state and the market. As the state increasingly ensures that market competition functions without impediments, the field of intermediation and influence is experiencing an unprecedented expansion.

For twentieth-century American pragmatists, democracy was a radical experiment involving the deliberate and deliberative participation of the people in identifying and resolving their own problems. Who are their descendants today?

With taxpayer suffrage abolished and universal suffrage achieved, political participation in our democratic societies should no longer be conditioned on property ownership. However, as Timothy Kuhner shows, politics remain subservient to capital.

In France as in the United States, transparency has become a core democratic requirement, and is the cornerstone of all the laws that claim to regulate the funding of political life. But this art of disclosing information often coexists with the ability to conceal it.

What can we expect from elections? A. Przeworski urges us to be minimalist: elections provide only imperfect control over the actions of those in power and are not enough to counteract the political effects of inequalities, but they are still the best way to resolve conflicts without taking up arms.

What if it were necessary, in politics, to allow ourselves to be guided by our affinities rather than trying to build a general and often too distant theoretical position? And what if proximity had more value than truth? This is Valérie Gérard’s hypothesis, in an open-minded and stimulating book.

For a long time, the origin of the term État-providence in French was ascribed to late Second Empire liberals who apparently coined it in a negative sense. In reality, though, the notion reaches further back to the generation of 1848, where it emerged as a response to working-class demands. Understood in this way, the expression regains its legitimacy.

Can a state exclude people in the name of the common good? What gives legitimacy to definitions of borders and belonging? In this work of political theory, B. Boudou argues for a pragmatic, democratic and shifting approach to borders: only shared interests can define a community.

The historically informed study of participatory mechanisms in the Indian capital, New Delhi, shows that democracy resides less in procedural engineering, whether participatory or electoral, than in the mobilizations that take advantage of it.

Urban soil endures ubiquitous and serious pollution from past industrial activities. This pollution is invisible and undifferentiated, which invites us to amend theories of environmental justice.

The ways in which political parties are funded, in France and elsewhere, tend to reinforce the invisibility of certain groups and the political influence of the wealthiest people in society, in particular through right-wing parties. Are there, Julia Cagé wonders, more democratic ways of funding democracy?

How will the different regions in the UK be impacted by Brexit? Mary C. Murphy’s book explores the unique case of Northern Ireland, a region isolated both geographically and politically from the rest of the country, in the run-up to the referendum as well as in its aftermath.