The French State in Question

by H. S. Jones

• ISBN13: 9780521890991
• ISBN10: 0521890993
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The French State in Question places the idea of the state back at the heart of our understanding of modern French history and political culture, and challenges the accepted view of the Third Republic as a 'weak' state. At its core is an examination of a central problem in French politics of the belle epoque: should the employees of the state have the right to join trade unions and to strike? The book examines this as a problem of intellectual history: it seeks to explain why this was such an intractable question, and does so by demonstrating the importance of legal theory and the idea of the state in French political culture. In this important and innovative essay in the history of ideas, Stuart Jones shows how during the Third Republic French legal thinkers engaged in a vigorous rethinking of the idea of the state, and assesses their significance for the development of French political discourse.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Political culture and the problem of the state

2. Law and the state tradition

3. Administrative syndicalism and the organization of the state

4. Public power to public service

5. Civil rights and the republican state

6. From Contract to Status: Durkheim, Duguit and the state

7. Maurice Hauriou and the theory of the institution

Conclusion.