There is an old rule in French politics: nice weather chases the voters away, as the attraction of going to the beach or watching pretty girls or boys from a
"Where have all the intellectuals gone?", Pete Seeger might sing in 2007 had he been French. Since the affaire Dreyfus a century ago, intellectuels de gauche (leftwing intellectuals)
In his latest book, Le capitalisme des héritiers: La crise française du travail, French economist Thomas Philippon, professor of finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University, explains
Jacques Chirac has, as expected, gracefully announced that he won't stand for a third term in the forthcoming presidential elections, thus putting an end to his forty years
The French presidential campaign is a clear example of how difficult it can be for the left, in a democratic country, to achieve power. It raises a perennial question: why
In France, whenever the immigration question is mentioned politics is never far behind, especially at election-time. In a primetime Q&A session on 5 February, rightwing presidential candidate and
At the end of an American-style party convention held in Paris on 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was, with a vote of 98%, anointed by the governing Union for the
France's political system in one important respect has a different character than its counterparts in Britain, Germany or the United States - with the result that its electoral
Since General Charles de Gaulle became president in January 1959, France has lived under a "monarchical republic" where the head of state is all-powerful, keeping the upper hand
In his 1927 movie Metropolis, the pioneering director Fritz Lang portrayed the wretched of the earth surging towards light and freedom, to the amazement of those they had been anonymously
This Hungarian October has opened with the country continuing to be shaken by an extraordinary political crisis. It began with the leaking of a tape on 17 September 2006 in
