Robert Elgie - The Changing French Political System

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The Changing
French Political System

Editor
ROBERT ELGIE

First published 2000 by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS

This edition published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Copyright 2000 Frank Cass Publishers

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

The changing French political system
1. France Politics and government 20th century
I. Elgie, Robert
320.9'44
ISBN 0-7146-5043 9 (cloth)
ISBN 0-7146-8098 2 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

The changing French political system / editor Robert Elgie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5043-9 ISBN 0-7146-8098-2 (paper)
1. FrancePolitics and government1995 2. FranceSocial
conditions1995 I. Elgie, Robert.
JN2594.2.C494 2000
320.944'09'049dc21 99-058569

This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue on
The Changing French Political System of
West European Politics (ISSN 0140-2382) 22/4 (October 1999)
published by Frank Cass.

VINCENT WRIGHT, 193799

The first issue of West European Politics published in February 1978, Vincent's brainchild with Gordon Smith, characteristically did not begin with any pretentious mission statements. Its title reflected the practical research interests of its founder-editors but set the scene for a process of extending and expanding its concerns into a journal of comparative European politics with a strong empirical basis in the countries extending westward from Mitteleuropa. It reflected Vincent's approach to comparative politics via the best inductive route: an initial comprehensive grounding in the study of a single country, from bottom to top and then from top to bottom. In his case the country was France but he never remained imprisoned within its frontiers.

Vincent maintained critical detachment from his object of investigation, studying it longitudinally over time and laterally by implicit or explicit comparison. He was, from his doctoral days, inoculated against the propensity to superficial culture-bound generalisation, having immersed himself in the wholly untypical electoral politics of the Basses Pyrnes during the Second Empire what the advocates of a one and indivisible France might have called the extreme south-west. In the early 1970s he broadened his research into two books, on the Conseil d'Etat and the Prefects in the Second Empire, showing his increasing interest in government, particularly administrative justice as well as administration more generally.

Recognition of the quality of these books, published in French, ensured that he enjoyed lifelong links with the contemporary embodiments of these pillars of the French state, affording him privileged insight into the inner workings of French government not accessible to almost all scholars, French or foreign. Vincent earned the, at first, grudging respect of the French he encountered because he understood many aspects of their culture and institutions far better than they did themselves. So although he sadistically applied the principle qui aime bien chtie bien, he was always in great demand as lecturer, discussant and contributor to French publications.

Vincent not only put this enviable understanding of France into his writing of The Government and Politics of France (1978), whose popularity ensured that he was pressed into preparing drastically revised new editions. He attracted and intellectually inspired, as much by his example as by precept, generations of graduate students, first at the London School of Economics but especially at Nuffield College, Oxford. There emerged a flow of first rate theses whose publication, as articles and books, have immensely enriched our knowledge, first of French government and latterly comparative European politics.

Inimitably, Vincent did not seek disciples. (His doctoral students were frequently encouraged to publish their work in this journal, both ensuring that it was constantly refreshed with the research results of those working at the frontiers of our knowledge, as well as helping them to establish their reputations at an early stage in their careers.) He demonstrated what could be attained by bending all one's intellectual capacities to disentangling intractable interactions and presenting one's findings in accessible and stimulating language, without smoothing away the complexities. Vincent exulted in dissipating confusion by incisive clarification. He excelled at systematically taking problems apart to understand them, giving priority to dismembering over reconstituting. He relished the dialectical clash of thesis and antithesis, not worrying too much about whether a synthesis would ever emerge. The convivial controversialist he was would have regretted ending the argument. Vincent was a lifelong, card-carrying member of the remorseless thinking, pellucid writing and pugnaciously talking classes.

Vincent eschewed solemnity in himself and mercilessly mocked it when others took themselves rather than their subject too seriously. Although Vincent was always hard on the portentous humbug and the hollow rhetoric in which not only French intellectuals are prone to indulge, he liked to be regarded as more turbulent and tough-minded than he was deep down. Vincent had a great sense of fun, enjoying robust even knockabout -argument. He was a rounded human, not just a workaholic. Fastidious in his tastes, he rejoiced in sharing the good things of life with his chosen friends, especially in conversation.