Abstract: Public “common sense” should be conceptualized as an important force structuring the politics of belonging. Homing in on the embodied and sensory aspects of common, taken-for-granted knowledge and the habits of perception that inform it, this article demonstrates how culturally entrained listening practices structure rights to the city and the exercise of citizenship. By tuning into the significance of ambient religious sound, it offers an empirical, ethnographic investigation into how common sense, in dialogue with constitutional and municipal law, shapes practices of citizenship and participation in French public space. The article argues that common sense deriving from perception and interpretation of public sound among majority French represents a stubborn obstacle to French Muslims’ exercise of full citizenship; indeed, it enacts a kind of violence that locks French Muslims out of agentive citizenry, rendering them objects to be muted at will, not fellow citizens to be heard. PubDate: 2020-11-03
Abstract: This introduction to the special issue on case study research, which showcases cutting edge research by emerging scholars on France, describes the connection between these articles and current developments in political science methodology. SI contributors situate their analyses in thick description of France itself, demonstrating how modernity, rationality, common sense, citizenship, and democracy are inherently abstract concepts that only take on political meaning and significance within a specific national context. Simultaneously, these essays flesh out mid-level theories that are more amenable to cross-national generalization without losing rigor in the process, contributing to broader political science literature on experience versus reason, the European and Christian roots of secularism and how this contributes to contemporary discrimination, welfare state development, and political lawyering and the judicialization of politics. PubDate: 2020-10-20
Abstract: This article develops a framework to explain ideological diversity within political parties in parliamentary democracies from the positions of individual legislators. First, I review the different theories explaining the variation of ideological diversity within political parties in the field of party politics and legislative studies. Then, I propose to model the relations between legislators, their party and their constituents as a competitive delegation process building on the principal-agent theory. I draw on the literature on the distribution of power within political parties to argue that intra-party ideological diversity can best be explained by vertical bargains taking place between the different territorial layers of political parties. PubDate: 2020-10-15
Abstract: In the field of comparative politics, France is often taken to exemplify the resilience of the centralized modern state. Stanley Hoffmann popularized this thesis by highlighting the French state’s “obstinacy” despite post-war reform efforts. This article revisits Hoffmann’s obstinate state thesis by tracing how lawyers and judges shaped French political development. I demonstrate that continuity in French officials’ claims to centralized power belie a deeper story of how legal actors catalyze institutional change in unlikely places: in civil law countries without a history of judicial review, in authoritarian regimes without regard for judicial independence, and in seemingly monolithic states without much room for democratic self-governance. These findings compel a comparative research agenda placing lawyers and judges at the center of the study of political development. PubDate: 2020-10-15
Abstract: The logic of French mental health policy—which already stands out against that of other countries—also appears at odds with the usual logic of French social policy. “La sectorisation psychiatrique” rejected the liberalism prominent in the rest of the health system, adopted Beveridgean principles decades in advance of other policy areas, and began to centralize precisely during the period of déconcentration. This article explains these puzzles by pointing to the role of public sector trade unions. Archival sources document how the historical advocacy of unions representing public psychiatric workers shaped public policy in mental health. Examining their political activity can revise standard interpretations of the French welfare state and illuminate a generalizable theoretical relationship for comparative analysis. PubDate: 2020-10-12
Abstract: The tropes of restraint and remediation that accompany the reform of public services and public administrations often locate in efficient costing the key to the state’s economic fitness. Knowledge of costs does not feature in such reforms solely as information conducive to the strengthening of budgetary reform. It is also knowledge that needs to be practised and exercised in order to achieve a virtuous modification of the conduct of the state. The case of public hospitals and universities in France illustrates how knowledge of costs is made sense of by state practitioners as a behavioural lever. A Foucauldian angle on the narratives and policies that inform such exercising of knowledge of costs reveals the contours of a new paradigm of the state’s self-care. PubDate: 2020-09-10
Abstract: This article studies the polarizing role Henri Bergson played in twentieth-century political theory in France and beyond. A controversial and charismatic philosopher, Bergson’s thought traveled a notoriously convoluted itinerary. Though his critiques of scientific positivism before the First World War endeared him to Catholic intellectuals, sectors of the French left were his most committed interpreters, a fact that mystified and enraged his contemporaries. Tracing the assorted ways the left took up Bergson—from syndicalism to négritude—brings into focus the left’s historically bipolar relationship to scientific progress and its promise of emancipation. It also underscores something fundamental about the history of the twentieth-century left: It maintained an ideologically unpredictable yet indispensable concern for “lived experience.” PubDate: 2020-09-08
Abstract: In this article, we explore the impact of electoral participation on electoral dynamics in Quebec. We propose a parsimonious model that considers the linguistic composition of districts and the effective electoral support for parties to explain electoral politics. In modeling these dynamics, we introduce three new concepts, namely leverage effect, push effect, and differentiation effect. Our findings show that the 2018 election represents an extension of dynamics established in 2012 and played a corrective role to those of the 2014 election. They also demonstrate that leverage effects are not effective mechanisms for ensuring electoral success. PubDate: 2020-09-01
Abstract: From 1970 to 2018, either the Québec Liberal Party or the Parti Québécois won the elections in Québec. The Coalition Avenir Québec ended this long period of bipartisan alternation by winning a majority of seats in the 2018 election. Using datasets that cover five elections (2007, 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2018) over a period of 11 years, we provide a unique longitudinal perspective of citizens’ vote choice calculus. More specifically, we analyse long-term factors that are known to be crucial to make sense of electoral outcomes. Do factors such as generations, sex, attitudes towards Québec sovereignty and party identification have the same weight in voters’ calculus over time' Our results show a relative stability, but also several interesting variations, especially regarding the effect of support for Québec independence. This perspective deepens our understanding of recent political developments in Québec politics. PubDate: 2020-09-01
Abstract: Over the past decades, the far right has become one of the most studied phenomena in international political science, attracting more attention than all other party families combined. This article critically assesses the scholarly progress made so far and discusses what future research on the far right should focus on. It argues that although the number of studies has grown disproportionately, scholars have been slow in acknowledging that far-right politics have entered a new phase, where traditional aspects progressively lost momentum and new ones acquired central stage. To understand the transformations in the contemporary far right, scholars must address three shortcomings of international comparative research—Eurocentrism, Electoralism and Externalism. Today, we need to re-embed the study of the far right into the broader literature on party politics and political sociology, acknowledging the diversity that exists within the far right, its diffusion beyond (western) Europe and its mobilization outside the electoral arena. PubDate: 2020-06-20
Abstract: In an election, political parties present positions on multiple policy issues. These competing sets of propositions are then evaluated by citizens on election day. Parties present dozens of issues, while voters make one single choice. Hence, it is not straightforward to assess which issues affect the overall result most. Conjoint experiments allow to shed light on the underlying decision process. We identify various policy issues likely to have swayed the vote during the Quebec 2018 election and analyze which party positions citizens prefer, and how it could have benefit or played against parties. We also provide a contextual framework where we inscribe these results within the literature on political realignment and constitutional depolarization. Results indicate that Quebec’s political game is opening up with a mix of short-term discrete policy promises (i.e., electoral reform) and long-term ideological issues (i.e., the environment) having an impact on vote choice. PubDate: 2020-05-26
Abstract: This article introduces a special issue that takes a close look at the outcome of the October 2018 Quebec election where a newly created party (the Coalition Avenir Québec) took power with a majority of seats. The special issue’s five articles collectively examine different factors having played a role in shaping Quebec citizens’ voting behavior in 2018. The extent to which citizens decide to turn out at the district level and their vote choice calculus are both investigated. The latter is analyzed through the lens of long-term factors such as language, attitudes toward Quebec independence, and party identification, as well as more short-term factors such as policy preferences on emerging issues like immigration and the environment. While several contributions point toward an important, perhaps long-lasting, realignment of the Quebec party system, others also highlight some elements of continuity, bringing nuance to an overall explanation of the election’s outcome. PubDate: 2020-05-21
Abstract: Whether it is about Québec independence, French language or immigration, nationalism is a crucial feature of Québec politics. The Québec 2018 election is not an exception. Scholars have developed theories about individual identity, the nation and nationhood, but we lack a citizens’ perspective. We provide the first thorough description of Quebeckers’ nationalism, which reveals a roughly normal (i.e. non-polarized) distribution of ethnic nationalism attitudes. Most importantly, we measure ethnic nationalism with a never tested measure in Québec and we show that it substantially explains vote choice in the Québec 2018 election—especially the support for the Coalition Avenir Québec. Our research builds bridges between debates in political philosophy and political science and deepens our understanding of the Québec 2018 election. PubDate: 2020-04-29
Abstract: This paper tests the explanatory power of exposure to English on nationalist attitudes in the 2018 Quebec general elections, during which all major political parties exceptionally excluded holding a referendum on Quebec independence. Data emanate from an exit poll conducted in Quebec City and in Montreal on October 1, 2018 (N = 122). Results from a population-based survey experiment demonstrate that exposure to written English through a bilingual survey is a positive predictor of support for independence for French-speaking Quebecers who encounter spoken English frequently in their daily lives. This suggests that exposure to written English bolsters nationalist attitudes as real-life out-group contact increases. These results reinforce causal claims on the contextual determinants of political attitudes. PubDate: 2020-04-25
Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
[2626 journals]
