Made in France: Societal Structures and Political Work by Andy Smith

Session Submission Type: Virtual Author meet critics

Session Description

This book’s first aim is to provide a comprehensive account of what structures socio-economic life in France and how politics constantly affects it. Specifically, the book seeks to grasp what has driven change, or its absence, since the end of the 1970s and thirty years of unprecedented economic growth and social shifts. Most existing analyses attribute change to exogenous forces such as ‘globalization’ or ‘the rise of neo-liberalism’. Without dismissing these claims, my analysis paints a more nuanced picture that shows firstly that much has not changed and, secondly, attributes any change or its absence to forces and mobilizations that are endogenous to France.
The book’s second aim is to propose and empirically test a generic analytical framework that could be applicable to understanding other nations and their comparative analysis. In a nutshell, this framework guides research to produce data upon two interdependent dimensions of societal structuring (social institutions and power relations) and the ‘political work’ which is constantly deployed to change or reproduce them (either successfully or unsuccessfully). The concept of political work focuses attention upon three linked processes: problem definition, policy instrument setting and legitimation. Its analytical role is to systematically unpack the agency of societal structuring.

Sub Unit

• Partner Associations / Association Française de Science Politique

Chair

• Amy G. Mazur Washington State University

Presenters

• Céline Belot Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS Pacte, Sciences-Po Grenoble,

• Frederic Merand Université de Montréal

• Craig A. Parsons University of Oregon

• Andy Smith

• Christine Musselin FNSP