emmanuel-macron
  • Marc Lazar: France on the Brink of a Regime Crisis
    Giancarlo Bosetti , Alessandra Tommasi 5 September 2025
    A historian and political scientist, emeritus professor at Sciences Po, and holder of the BNP-BNL-Paribas Chair in “Italian-French Relations for Europe” at LUISS, Marc Lazar is one of the foremost observers of French and European politics. In his latest book, Pour l’amour du peuple. Histoire du populisme en France, XIXe–XXIe siècle (2025), he traces the roots of French populism. In Left. Crisis and Challenges of the European Left (End of the Twentieth Century–2020s) (2024), he examines the challenges facing the European left. Earlier, together with Ilvo Diamanti in Peuplecratie (2018), he described the rise of the “people” as a new central actor in politics. We meet him on the eve of the confidence vote on September 8, which could bring down the Bayrou government and usher in a new period of political and institutional instability in France.
  • The French Elections: Descartes, Where Art Thou?
    Massimo Nava 11 July 2024
    A republican jolt, a democratic tremor, a belated injection of prudence and wisdom. The descriptions of the historical and incredible result of the snap elections in France have been abundant. In just seven days, between the first and second rounds, the political majority shifted from the far right to the far left. The majority of the French, from a host of backgrounds, blocked the path of the National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, who went from euphoria to despair in the same breath.
  • The Geopolitics of Laïcité: Making Sense of the Franco-Turkish Dispute
    David Rigoulet-Roze 23 December 2020
    France, and what it represents, appears in many respects to be a priority target for political Islam in general, and for its extremist avatars in particular. This not a coincidence, since France embodies a singular conception of freedom of expression inherent to laïcité, which it has historically elevated to the rank of a cardinal republican value. “France is an indivisible, laïque, democratic and social Republic. It ensures the equality before the law of all citizens without distinction of origin, race or religion. It respects all beliefs.” It is precisely this respect for all religious beliefs that has been called into question and manipulated for largely political purposes by neo-Ottoman Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan amid the controversy generated by the republication, on September 2, 2020, of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by the Charlie Hebdo weekly newspaper.
  • The Illiberal Turn of French Laïcité
    Philippe Portier 22 December 2020
    France, just like the rest of Europe, has changed so much since 1905 that socio-political pressures to review the relation between State and religions has become a must. The bill recently put forward by its government aims at a global reform that would, if passed, directly impact freedom of worship, claims Philippe Portier.
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