According to received wisdom parties have played a mainly destructive role in French political development. Of questionable legitimacy, pursuing narrow sectarian goals, often corruptly, they have brought about division, weakness and the collapse of regimes. A proper reading of history suggests differently. By combining historical research and contemporary political science theory about party, the author shows that for over a century party has irrigated French democracy in often invisible ways, brokering working compromises between groups divided strongly along social, political and cultural lines. The key to this success is the party system, which allowed for a high degree of collusion and cooptation between political elites, rhetoric notwithstanding. This hidden logic has persisted to this day despite the advent of presidentialism and remains the key to the continuing prosperity of French democracy.

This book reasserts the importance of the French Revolution to an understanding of the nature of modern European politics and social life. Livesey argues that the European model of democracy was created in the Revolution, a model with very specific commitments that differentiate it from Anglo-American liberal democracy.

This book is about the mundane, local, every day practices that constitutes democracy. Focusing on France and Finland, the book defines politicization as the key process in understanding democracy in different cultural contexts and shows a nuanced picture of two opposite models of European politics.

This is the first full-length study in English of the Popular Front, the left-wing coalition which emerged in France during the 1930s in response to the threat of fascism and which went on to win the elections of 1936, giving France her first socialist premier, Léon Blum. After a brief narrative history of the Popular Front the book is organised thematically around the main historiographical debates to which the Popular Front has given rise. Among the issues considered are the origins of the strikes of 1936, the reasons for the failure of the Popular Front economic policy, the relationship between culture and politics in France in the 1930s and the causes of France's policy of non-intervention in the Spanish Civil War. The book views the Popular Front at three levels - as a mass movement, political coalition and government - and argues that it must not be seen just as a narrowly political phenomenon but as a political, social and cultural explosion which attempted to break down the barriers between all areas of human activity in the highly compartmentalised society of France in the 1930s. Even if the Popular Front ultimately failed in this aim it has acquired legendary status in France, and the epilogue to the book briefly examines the 'myth' of the Popular Front from 1936 to the present day.

Beyond France’s own national historiography, the French Revolution was a fundamental point of reference for the nineteenth-century socialist movement. As Jean-Numa Ducange tells us, while Karl Marx never wrote his planned history of the Revolution, from the 1880s the German and Austrian social-democrats did embark on such a project. This was an important moment for both Marxism and the historiography of the French Revolution. Yet it has not previously been the object of any overall study. The French Revolution and Social Democracy studies both the social-democratic readings of the foundational revolutionary event, and the place of this history in militant culture, as seen in sources from party educationals, to leaflets and workers’ calendars. First published in 2012 as La Révolution française et la social-démocratie. Transmissions et usages politiques de l’histoire en Allemagne et Autriche, 1889–1934 by Presses Universitaires de Rennes in 2012.

Christian Democracy, which may briefly be defined as organised political action by Catholic democrats, has been a major political force in Western Europe since the Second World War, not least in France. The aim of this book, first published in 1973, is to trace the Development of Christian Democracy in France from its origins in the 1830s to the present day, discussing its theories and its importance in French history and politics, with particular (but by no means exclusive) reference to the Fourth Republic (1946-58) when the MRP was one of the key centre parties. Dr Irving provides a thorough analysis of MRP, its economic, foreign and colonial policies, and gives reasons for the relative decline of French Christian Democracy in the 1960s. This French movement has been little understood in Britain and a throrough history has been badly needed. This study will be valuable to all those who, in the context of a United Europe, wish to understand the political forces at work at its conception. It will be valuable especially to students of modern history and politics.