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The American media rarely report news about France unless it is sensationalistic and upholds Gallic stereotypes: French foreign policy determined to make the United States fail! France engulfed in religious riots! France outraged at decision to open McDonald's in the Louvre museum! This news usually confirms two long-held clichés about French politics: its exceptionalism and its resistance to change. Indeed, many recent political developments in France could be interpreted in light of these clichés. The 2000 law on the 35-hour work week was about carving a French exception in a world governed by neoliberal imperatives. The 2004 law banning religious symbols in France was about refusing the changes brought about by immigration and affirming the exceptionalism of the French Republican model. The French rejection of the European constitution in 2005 was about resistance to the forces of globalization and European integration.
Yet for all this talk of immobilism, France is a country that has undergone considerable political and social change over the past 20 years. Five decades after its creation under inauspicious circumstances, the Fifth Republic has proved a resilient yet malleable political armature that has enabled France to adapt to the twin challenges of Europeanization and globalization. The American media may have perceived a whiff of change with the election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, but while Sarkozy is proving to be a traditional French leader in the conduct of both economic and foreign policies, the real change in the French economy and society lies elsewhere, and has been more insidious. France has been on a reformist trajectory long before the election of Sarkozy, even if French leaders have always been cautious about publicizing reform and have preferred a path of reforming by stealth.
The two books under review complement and update a growing literature analyzing how much France has really changed in the past two decades and how much it still clings to its "exceptional" status.
In The French Fifth Republic at Fifty, Sylvain Brouard, Andrew M. Appleton, and Amy Mazur assemble a team of transatlantic experts to assess the successes and failures of the Fifth Republic in a variety of policy areas on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. The central argument of the 15...