France: a background. It is an old essay (in two parts), but I have found it excellent. In twenty years, seven governments, an average of less than three years a piece. All devoted, with minor variations, to similar policies. Not one of them re-elected. No other country in the West has seen such a level of disaffection with its political establishment. In part, this has been a function of the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic, whose quasi-regal presidency, with its (till yesterday) seven-year terms of office, has both encouraged and neutralised continual expressions of electoral ill-humour within an otherwise all too stable framework of power. The Fourth Republic combined instability of cabinets with rigidity of voting blocs: the Fifth has inverted the pattern, uniting apparently immovable policies with congenitally restless electors. Such restlessness has not just been a by-product of institutional overprotection. More and more plainly as the years went by, it reflected disbelief in the nostrums of neo-liberal reform that every government, left or right, unvaryingly proposed to its citizens. lrb.co.uk/v26/n17/perry-anderson/degringolade
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 19:10:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015