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Introduction
Political science is a new discipline in France. Although some have sought to place the origins of French political science at the end of the nineteenth century, it was born in the late 1940s and early 1950s: the French Association of Political Science (Association Française de Science Politique, AFSP) was born in 1949 under the chairmanship of André Siegfried; the first study days began in November of the same year; the publication of the first issue of the collection of 'Cahiers de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques' devoted to electoral sociology was published in 1947; the first volume of the Treaty of Political Science (Traité de Science Politique ) by Georges Burdeau was published in 1949; the French Review of Political Science (Revue Française de Science Politique , RFSP) was published for the first time in 1951. Raymond Aron noted in a report he wrote for UNESCO in 1950: 'A first remark is necessary: political science does not exist in France. We talk about the moral and political sciences - or political, economic and social. Neither as a scientific discipline nor as an academic specialty, political science is recognized as such'. Despite this, the decade that saw the creation and development of the AFSP can be seen retrospectively as a period that allowed the emergence of the first institutional and scientific foundations of a new discipline in France. It was also during this period that the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) begins to strongly support the first public research initiatives in political science. The Association Française de Science Politique has been, since 1952, of crucial financial support for its development. This direct aid has supported several scientific investigation programs and allowed the publication of the first results of its studies days or roundtables (Archives de l'Association Française de Science Politique, 1949-2009).
Activities from the late 1950s often seem to be closely associated with the breaking news of French or international politics, and the early 1960s saw major debates on the functioning of political institutions, on the presidential election of 1965, the parliamentary elections of 1962 and 1967, and on political forces with contributions from Georges Vedel, François Goguel, Georges Lavau, Maurice Duverger, Raymond Aron, Jean Stoetzel, Jean Touchard and...