Fixing France How to Repair a Broken Republic

A French-Algerian journalist, born and brought up in a neglected Paris suburb, offers unique insight into crisis-ridden France from a very different perspective to the establishment elites

France, the romanticized, revolutionary land with an enlightened historical mission—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity for all—is failing its own citizens and its admirers around the world. How did the country get here, and what can be done about it?

In Fixing France, Nabila Ramdani assesses the fault lines in her struggling nation with unflinching clarity and originality. 

The makeshift Fifth Republic, which emerged from the cataclysmic Algerian War of Independence, has produced extremism. Constitutional reform is urgently needed: an all-powerful monarchical president displays little interest in democracy, while a mainstream far-right party founded by Nazi collaborators threatens to deliver a head of state. 

Segregated suburbs, institutionalized rioting, economic injustice, a monolithic education system, the debasement of women, deep-seated racial and religious discrimination, paramilitary policing, terrorism, and a duplicitous foreign policy all fuel the growing crisis.

Ramdani’s critique is stark but provides real hope: the broken French Republic can and must be fixed. 

Nabila Ramdani is a French-Algerian journalist, broadcaster and academic who specialises in French politics, Anglo-French issues and the Arab and Muslim Worlds. Educated at Paris University and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), she started her academic career teaching at Jesus College, Oxford University, in the U.K., and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the USA. Nabila holds an MPhil from the LSE in International History, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa, an MPhil from Paris VII University in British and American History and Literature, and an Agrégation (France’s highest teaching qualification) in English.