Description
A valuable edition to the Politics, Culture and Society in the New Europe series, this fascinating book seeks to explain and explore the fortunes of the French Socialist party. The party is employed as a test case to examine the veracity of the 'crisis of social democracy' literature and its predictions for the future direction and fortunes of social democratic parties. Ben Clift extends his analysis in an attempt to define the wider relationship between social democracy and globalization.
Topics covered in this seminal account include the ideological redefinition in the French parti socialiste, as well as the changing political economy of French socialism. After an in-depth party profile of the Jospin government, Clift concludes by investigating the political economy of the French Socialist electoral strategy.
Table of Contents
1. The Crisis of Social Democracy
2. Globalization and Social Democracy
3. The Historical and Institutional Context of French Socialism
4. Organisational Change in the Parti Socialiste in the 1990s
5. Ideological Redefinition in the PS
6. The Changing Political Economy of French Socialism - Neo-Keynesianism Resurgent
7. The Policy Profile of the Jospin Government
8. The Political Economy of French Electoral Strategy
Conclusion
Bibliography
Reviews
French Socialism in a Global Era is ambitious both theoretically and empirically. Clift demonstrates a very sure theoretical and empirical touch and an impressive capacity to synthesise various literatures and apply them to different facets of Socialist Party experience. The book is rigorously researched, and also very wide-ranging. Clift demonstrates convincingly how internal party dynamics (organisational, intellectual, institutional) can mediate the effect of exogenous and endogenous changes, and very convincingly challenges some of the central presuppositions of the end of social democracy and end of history schools.
Professor Alistair Cole, University of Cardiff,