French Politics and Society (review)

The original edition of this book was a very welcome addition to the generous choice of studies that already existed on contemporary France. This new edition preserves the virtues of its predecessor while adding to the lucid and persuasive analysis of how France's position is evolving in a European and global context. The strengths of Cole's book as a core text on the undergraduate syllabus are the coverage it offers, the exceptionally clear way it is organized and the user-friendly format it provides. The sections and headings direct students straight to the issues they may wish to research, and the intelligent use of bullet points and tables offers succinct summaries of key points and facts. However, Cole's study also operates at a level that research students and academics will find gratifying owing to the theoretical and methodological rigour that underpins his analysis. The highly informed, specific and punctual observations on issues such as the economy, the party system and regionalism, are woven into a coherent, overarching vision of the paradoxical realities that constitute French society and what it aspires to be. It is in the nature of this kind of study that it will always be overtaken by events: most recently in France the dramatic shock to the political system resulting from the referendum in which the French electorate refused to approve a constitution for Europe, and the flare-up of urban violence in the autumn of 2005 that shook the assumptions of the governing elite about the nature of integration in French society. It is greatly to the credit of Cole, however, that his study provides a political and social context in which to situate these events retrospectively, and an analytical framework in which to assess them as part of the evolution of the French polity. Moving beyond the familiar evocation of the balance between continuity and change in the development of modern France, Cole offers the more sophisticated perspective in which there is an inevitable and ongoing interplay between the pressures for change and ingrained national traditions, and suggests that the truly pertinent question is whether change reinforces national contextual traditions or goes against the grain of those traditions. Cole has achieved the rare feat of producing a study of French politics and society that is both an invaluable tool for teaching and an impressive contribution to the ability of his fellow-academics to interpret the factors that shape France currently, and that will do so in the foreseeable future.