First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Government and Politics of France has been the leading textbook on French politics for over a generation, and continues to provide students with a comprehensive and incisive introduction to the intricacies of French politics and government. This edition updates every chapter, with the addition of a new chapter on France and Europe. Recent events necessitate a new edition, particularly the 2002 elections and the growing interpenetration of France and the EU in student programmes, as well as in the real world. Whether covering the shifting balance within France's two-headed executive, the paradoxes of the French party politics, the power and fragmentation of France's administration, the growing assertiveness of French local government, or the newly visible world of the judiciary, The Government and Politics of France has always sought to confront established paradigms with the complex and untidy reality of French politics at the grass roots.

Examines and compares various forms of government in industrialized countries.

En pleine congruence avec l’ambition du Groupe Européen pour l’Administration Publique d’encourager les échanges interculturels, ce livre constitue une entreprise originale, mi-anglophone mi-francophone. Cet ouvrage issu du Congrès du GEAP 2010 a pour objet de combler un déplorable fossé et de donner une visibilité internationale au « cas français ». Dès lors ce livre, en 18 chapitres rédigés en français par une équipe interdisciplinaire (politistes, sociologues, historiens, socio-historiens, juristes) avec plus de 150 pages en anglais et une vaste bibliographie unifiée, entend offrir à tous les spécialistes de l’administration publique de par le monde un point d’accès unique au plus récent état des savoirs sur l’administration en France – ce pays où le mot État s’écrit avec un E majuscule. ============================================ In full compliance with the ambition of the European Group for Public Administration to encourage cross-cultural exchanges, this book is a genuinely original undertaking. It is a hybrid Anglophone-Francophone product. This book from EGPA 2010 Conference purpose to bridge a regrettable gap and to give international visibility to the “French case”. Thus, this book, in 18 chapters written in French by an interdisciplinary team (political scientists, sociologists, historians, sociohistorians, jurists) with more than 150 pages in English and a vast unified bibliography, offers to all students of public administration in the world a unique entry gate to the latest state of the art of administrative studies in France – this country where the State is to be spelled with a capital S.

This book discusses the trajectories of creating specialized autonomous units. An analysis of the mechanisms and measures taken for granting autonomy to specialized autonomous units and subsequently to coordinating them back is described. The book shows a range of patterns in the dynamics of specialization and coordination over 25 years.

This is the first book in English on the French agency DATAR-DIACT that has been the envy of regional planners worldwide. It sheds new light on political leadership in a bureaucracy and demonstrates convincingly the impact of political leaders on institutions. It is a study of France with lessons for other political and administrative systems.