Ep 73 - Navigating “Républicain” with Emile Chabal

Républicain is a false friend, especially for Americans, but not for the reasons you might think. To explore how and why this term’s meaning varies so widely from France to the U.S., Emily is welcoming Emile Chabal, a historian of twentieth century European and intellectual life and author of France, a book that delves into the paradoxes that define this country.

https://emilechabal.com/



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Credits 
Host: Emily Monaco. @Emily_in_France; Website: http://www.tomatokumato.com and http://www.emilymmonaco.com Producer: Jennifer Geraghty. @jennyphoria; Website: http://jennyphoria.com

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Édith Piaf - La Vie en Rose (DeliFB Lofi Remix) 
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About Us 
From one Emily in Paris to another... just speaking French isn't enough to understand the intricacies of the locals, but it's definitely a good place to start. Famously defended by armed "immortals" of the Académie Française (no, we're not making this up) the French language is filled with clues that show interested outsiders what, exactly, makes the French tick. 

Each episode, listen in as Emily Monaco and an expert take a deep dive into a word that helps us gain a keener understanding of the French.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You are listening to Navigating the Frenchon Paris Underground Radio. For more great
content and a bonus episode of Navigatingthe French, please join us on Patreon.
Hello and welcome to Navigating the French, the podcast where each episode we
take a look at a French wordand try and see what it tells us

(00:22):
about French culture. I'm your host, Emily Monico. Today I'm joined by
Amy de Chabad, a historian oftwentieth century European and intellectual life and author
of France, a book that delvesinto the paradoxes that define this country.
He's here to discuss a word whoseconnotations vary widely across different countries and political
structures, hyper Rican. Welcome Amediato the podcast. Thank you so much

(00:49):
for joining me here today. I'mso so excited to have you on,
in large part because after reading yourbook, I've sort of started passing it
around among my friends and fellow friendsfiles because I think it's one of the
most readable and yet really really interesting, deep sort of analyzes that I've read
of French culture in a really longtime. So I'm very excited to have

(01:12):
you on today. Thank you somuch for joining me it's a real pleasure
and it's wonderful to hear that mylittle book on France is making its way
through the bookshelves and the tables ofinteresting people, because that was the whole
point of writing the book was reallyto introduce people to France, but also
introduce them to some of the reallycomplicated historical and sociological and political questions that

(01:37):
dominate contemporary French public life. Soif your friends are learning from it,
then that makes you particularly happy.Absolutely, and I am really excited that
we're here to discuss I think thebiggest false friends that I see in terms
of sort of we're talking about asocio political context in France, which is
this word, especially as an American, that means two very very different things,

(01:57):
republican and rey pubriquent. And youdelve into this from a number of
different angles. I love how contemporaryyou get in this bookcase. I think
we have a tendency to look atFrance almost as though it's kind of halted
in the past, especially when itcomes to, you know, the French
Revolution and the effects that we feelof, you know, these constant revolutions

(02:17):
through the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in France today. So before we
delve too deep into the politics,because I know we're going to talk a
lot about that, could you justright off the bat, tell me a
little bit about why republican and potentiallybig r republican is a poor translation of

(02:37):
the French term rey pubriquent. Whatis the difference between those two words for
you? Well, I think thishas a lot to do with what you
described as a sociopolitical context. Right, the word republican is in fact a
perfectly accurate translation of the French hypebriqun. It works. The problem is that

(02:58):
in English, and particularly in theAmerican context, republican has come to be
associated very strongly with the Republican Partyand with republican politics, and so that
has changed the meaning of the word, or rather not so much change,
but perhaps added very important layers tothe meaning of the word in English.
But the origin of this term,right, republican and what is republican about?

(03:23):
In English, It's about republic Soit's about the idea of a republic
and what a republic looks like.Now, of course, so are many
different republics. So that's already somethingwe could delve into a war detail.
Even in English, the word republiccan mean a lot of different things,
but at its core, republican inEnglish has the same meaning as republican in

(03:45):
French. The difference is the journeyof this word through the modern history of
France, and in the case ofFrance, republic has become freighted with meaning,
and that meaning is attached to,as you mentioned earlier, French Revolution
and other revolutionary moments in modern Frenchhistory, and so it's taken on a

(04:09):
whole different set of connotation in Franceto the connotations it has certainly in the
US and even elsewhere in the speakingworld. So it's really to do with
the history surrounding the word rather thanthe word itself. So I love the
way that you described this as revolutionarymoments, and I think this is a
really apt moment for us to kindof explore the French political structure that is

(04:33):
the republic. Because currently in Francein twenty twenty four, we are on
the fifth Republic. So just froma you know, for anyone who isn't
familiar with the way that that happenedor why we are on our fifth republic,
can you kind of explain how wegot to be where we are today

(04:54):
in as cliff notes a way asyou can for those who wanted to know
a lot more, but you knowvery very well into this in your book,
but just as a surface level,of course, very happy to do
that. I think the first thingto say is that in French, republican
and repubilic referred to different things whichare often conflated. One is a set

(05:15):
of institutional and political structures and theother is values. And so when you
talk about first republic, second republic, third republic, fourth of public,
fifth of public, what you're reallytalking about is institutional political structures and is
the way the state and government isorganized in France. We might later come
on to what republican values might be, because that's really important in the contemporary

(05:42):
debate, but in terms of institutionalpolitical structures, you are absolutely correct.
France is in its fifth republic,and the fact that the sins fift of
republic should really be a reminder thatthe history of republicanism in France has been
very, very contested since the FrenchRevolution. So the first Republic is born

(06:04):
in seventeen ninety two as an outcomeof the first stage of the revolution,
and so the revolutionary's proclaim a republic. This republic does not have a monarchy.
So that's one of its crucial aspects, and particularly important in the French
context, is that in the FirstRepublic, the revolutionaries derive their power and

(06:24):
legitimacy from the people. Right,So the French Revolution takes the lessons of
the American Revolution one step further interms of investing sovereignty in the people.
So republicanism in the French Revolution isabout getting rid of the monarchy and about
giving power to the people in avery simplistic way, and it's more complicated

(06:46):
than that, but that's the easiestway perhaps to grasp what's going on.
And the First Republic is basically terminatedin eighteen oh four when Napoleon declares himself
as an emperor and then goes onto rule ntil his defeat in eighteen fifteen,
and France does not have another republicthen until the Revolution of eighteen forty

(07:06):
eight, when the Second Republic isinaugurated as a result of the revolutionary wave
that takes off in the first fewmonths of eighteen forty eight, and those
revolutionaries and that revolution is inspired bythe principles and the ideas and the memory
of the French Revolution First Revolution.But that republic is also short lived.

(07:27):
It only lasts a few years,and in eighteen fifty one, Napoleon the
Third is he becomes known again,declares himself emperor and again terminates the republican
project. It's only in eighteen seventythat we start to see the emergence of
what you might call a long termrepublic. And so eighteen seventy is the

(07:48):
moment of the inauguration of the ThirdRepublic, the end of Napoleon the Third's
rule, the end of the SecondEmpire, which was what we call the
period that when Napoleon the Third government, and from eighteen seventy all the way
through until nineteen forty, so thefall of France, when France is defeated
by Hitdler and Nazi Germany out theoutrek of the Second World War. From

(08:09):
eighteen seventy to nineteen fifty. Thesystem of government for that entire period is
the Third Republic, and it's aparliamentary democracy. And it's a parliamentary democracy
that goes too many phases, ofcourse, because there are a lot of
historical events that happened between eighteen seventyand nineteen forty, not least for the
Paris Communy in eighteen seventy one,the First World War from nineteen fourteen to

(08:31):
eighteen and of course the rise offascism from the nineteen twenty to late nineteen
twenties ofwards in Europe. Come theSecond World War, France has defeated.
The northern part of France is occupiedand directed governed by the Germans, and
the southern part of France is governedby the Vishi regime, so called Viti
regime, which is a collaborationist regime. So that's the end of the republic.

(08:52):
This is obviously the end of allof the principles and values and ideals
of the Third Republic. But whenthe war ends, when from is liberated,
dou Gaul is across Schilder. Gaulis a major figure at that moment.
But when he comes back, partlybecause of france experience during the war,
when he comes back to France,he's very committed to the idea of
restoring parliamentary democracy in something or another, and so even though his power as

(09:18):
a kind of leader doesn't continue verylong after liberation of France in nineteen forty
four, there are other political forces. The establishment of the fourth Republic seems
to be a way of getting pastthe calamity and catastrophe of the Second World
War, when France is obviously occupiedand defeated. So that's inaugurate. The
Fourth Public is inaugurated in nineteen fortysix with the set of new elections,

(09:39):
and the Fourth Republic continues until nineteenfifty eight. What's happening in nineteen fifty
eight were the war in Algeria's happeningin nineteen fifty eight. Dougaul returns to
politics after a long time in thewilderness, as it were, and he
comes back and he takes control ofFrench government at a time of crisis,
and he says, the only waythat we can move beyond the disaster that

(10:01):
is the Algerian War is by rewritingthe constitution and inaugurating a fifth Republic.
So the fifth of Public is bornin nineteen fifty eight, and the fifth
Republic departs a little bit from thethird and fourth of public by its presidential
structure. And so Gougaul and thosewho write the constitution emphasize the importance of

(10:22):
a strong executive authority and actually paratively, French presidents have more power on paper
than almost any other presidents in theworld. They have a great deal of
both political and military power, farmore, for instance, than the US
president. So the Fifth Republic,which is what the system of government the

(10:43):
still exist in France now, isa parliamentary democracy, but with a very
strong executive authority in the form ofthe president. And that makes it a
little different, as I said,to previous republics, which were by their
nature non or anti authoritarian, tendedtowards parliamentary government as preferable to executive rules.
And you can understand why, giventhat France had been under authoritarian rule

(11:09):
for large chops of the nineteenth century. The Fifth Republic is essentially the kind
of structure of the French state andthe structure of French government, and it
hasn't changed a great deal in formalterms since nineteen fifty eight. But one
thing that is important to mention isthat there has been a great deal of
decentralization since the nineteen eighties, andthat has evolved evolving powers to regions in

(11:33):
France, which has somewhat undercut thekind of authoritarian model of the Fifth Republic.
But basically the fifth Republic is moreor less unchanged, and that's why
many politicians now in France, particularlyon the left, argue for a sixth
Republic, for a new constitutional settlementthat will moved beyond the very president heavy

(11:54):
model that exists on now. Amazing. Okay, so that was I mean
the most completely. I'm in awethat you were able to recount so much
history so shortly and so quickly,and so definitely And one thing I definitely
want to come back to that youtouched upon while you were speaking, is
this idea that obviously republic is apolitical structure, but it's also a set

(12:16):
of values. And you were speaking, you know, about the left and
the right, and obviously about thisrole that Charles gall played in kind of
uniting the left and the right underthis idea of the republic. Can you
speak a little bit to the waysin which the left or the right might
feel about this central idea of thegoverning principles of a republic and whether the

(12:39):
values that are republic embodies are morewithin the purview of the left or the
right over time. I'm not sureif that's something that evolves quite a bit
in our idea of the Republic.Absolutely, yes, really good question.
Yeah, I hope my my historicalflybys or not too embarrassing to my colleagues.

(13:00):
We really know about the nineteenth centuryand the early twentieth century in a
way that I don't. I'm alwaystrying to synthesize pretty complicated processes. So
I think that's part of the gigright, is to you know, everything
we want to say. There's somany layers and so much complexity. Obviously,
anything that we talk about there's someonewho's an expert in that particular element.

(13:20):
So I mean, it's one ofthe hazards of the job. I
suppose absolutely, especially if you're talkingabout Republic or Republic, you are really
having to take on two hundred andfifty years of French history, if not
more, and it's very difficult toavoid that. So you're absolutely right.
If you're enjoying this episode of Navigatingthe French, you may also be interested

(13:43):
in our sister podcast, Storytime inParis, where each week host Jennifer interviews
a different author. Navigating the Frenchwill be right back after award from our
sponsors, and now back to Navigatingthe French. I mean, in terms
of left and right this is arelatively simple question to answer. Actually,

(14:05):
until I would say until the ninetysixties, references to l republic and republican
were overwhelmingly associated with the left inFrance. And this goes all the way
back to the French Revolution. Soin this case there's a real sort of

(14:26):
historical legacy here. And what theFrench Revolution does is it sets in a
sense of political parameters of French politicsfor the next one hundred and fifty years.
So if you are on the left, traditionally, as I said,
till about the nineteen sixties, youare in favor of the revolution. You

(14:48):
believe in what the French Revolution represented, and you believe you believe in its
values, and you believe in theprogressive and revolutionary transformative potential of the revolution.
If you're on the right, youdon't like the revolution, and so
that varies from disliking it but sortof tolerating some of its legacies, to
the most extreme men thinking that therevolution was a great godless sin that brought

(15:13):
terror and violence onto France. Sothe extreme right, particularly the Catholic in
extreme right, believe that for avery long time, and in between you
have what you might call French liberalsor French centrists who want to take the
good bits of the revolution but don'twant all the nasty violence and disagreement and
schisms and divisions that came with it. So in the nineteenth century, if

(15:39):
you say you're a publican, it'salmost certainly because you believe in the values
of the revolution and you think thatwhat the revolution would try to achieve in
terms of sovereignty of the people,in terms of opposition to authoritarian monarchical rule,
in terms of political rational political structuresthat would give one person one vote
or one man vote in the nineteenthcenturies since were not able to vote,

(16:03):
if you believed in those principles,you were the factor on the left.
And so to say, in thenineteenth century, anybody who said they were
republica or they believed in they wereannouncing their left wing credentials. And exactly
the same was true on the otherside of the political spectrum. If you're
on the right, you almost certainlydenounced the republic or republican And if you

(16:25):
were in the middle, you wouldsort of try and see both sides and
try and make both sides work.But that was quite difficult because the French
Revolution polarized politics, for I said, for the next one hundred and fifty
years, so it was quite difficultto be in the middle. Now,
what happens after the Second World War, and I think that this is quite
important, is that the Second WorldWar really damages the far right, and

(16:47):
it damages a far right because ofcourse fascism is defeated, not just militarily,
but fascism has also defeated ideologically,and so across Europe you have what
you might call an anti fascist consent. That is, fascism caused the Second
World War. Therefore fascism is bad. And so even conservatives and even right

(17:07):
wing politicians and political leaders found itvery difficult after the Second World War to
be opposed to republican values in anexplicit way, because that's exactly what the
far right were before the Second WorldWar. They were opposed to the republic,
and ultimately, in France the republiccollapse in nineteen forty and so to

(17:29):
be opposed to the republic is inthe nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties essentially to
be opposed to the governing system ofFrance. And so from the end of
the Second World War, untill aboutthe nineteen sixties. What you see is
gradually more and more right wing politiciansand indeed, in some cases right wing
thinkers relax about what it means tobe republican. And they are not going

(17:52):
to go and announce that they arerepublicans, and they're not going to celebrate
Republican values, because that's still verymuch the purview of the left. But
they are no longer or to opposethem as they might have done in the
eighteen twenties or in the eighteen eightiesor in the nineteen thirties. They're not
going to oppose that. And whatdo Gord does? I think, and
this is really interesting. So byreformulating the Constitution in nineteen fifty eight,

(18:12):
inaugurating this Fifth Republic, what deGorde does is he says, you know
what, we on the right.The God very much a man of the
right, comes out of a conservativetradition, born the conservative Catholic family.
What he says is, we onthe right, we have our own vision
of the republic, and the Godis always by himself, so it is
kind of that vision is my vision. So de Gord allows a large swathe

(18:36):
of the French right to reconcile themselvesto the Republic in the form of the
Fifth Republic, leaving only angry farright activists who are still angry about the
deconization of Algeria and still angry aboutcommunism and about the left as sort of
the extreme critics of republicanism. Soin terms of your initial question about left

(18:56):
and right, the answer is verysimple. Until the nineteen sixties, were
essentially talking about an idea and aset of values and a set of institutions
that are very strongly associated with theleft. That since the ninety sixties has
changed, And now in twenty twentyfour, we are in a very strange
situation for a French historian of hearingand seeing right wing and Indians some cases

(19:22):
far right politicians invoke l republic andLumudel Republican and Levalo republicn and in some
cases saying that actually they are thetrue guardians of those values, and the
left has reneged on those values.So in the last half century there's been
a not a total transformation, butthere's been a total co option of republican

(19:47):
ripublican by the right for its ownpurposes. Absolutely, I mean this and
I think this is something you cansee quite clearly, for example, in
the name of the party Le Republicanto which Nicolas Arcozi belonged belongs. You
know, we see this sort ofshift maybe away from what you were describing

(20:07):
as this sort of revolutionary quite leftistmindset, but we're still seeing on either
side this evocation of val values,which I think is a word that we
see in politics a little bit morein France than I personally see on the
American side of things. I'm notsure in the UK if politicians are quite

(20:30):
so quick to evoke values or youknow, this actual term. And I
think you know one thing that youevoke at several points in your book are
these values and an evolution in thesevalues, some of which remain quite fixed
and some of which change over time. If you had to sort of define
those values today, what do youthink the contemporary Republican values that we're talking

(20:56):
about, whether we're on the leftand the or the right are in France?
Well, I mean I sort ofsay in my book right that there
are a set of core values thatare associated with French Republicanism, and I
think it's worth listing those very briefly, and then maybe talk about how the

(21:17):
left and the right in the contemporarymoment have taken from different bits, if
you like, of those of thatrecipe, that core recipe for republicanism.
So what might be a fairly uncontroversiallist of republican values. Well, we
would first want to mention, asI've already mentioned, in fact, an
opposition to monarchy and a suspicion ofexecutive authority. That's part of the DNA

(21:40):
of French republicanism in a way thateven in the US sort of the ground
republican tradition doesn't have that same suspicionspawn of the experience of the nineteenth century
in France, all that those periodsof authoritarian rule. The other thing which
is central to republicanism and remains thatway, is representative government, so some
form of sensitive government, ideally parliamentarygovernment, but not necessarily. Another key

(22:03):
value is a robust conception of citizenshipand civic participation. Right, So,
French republicanism it's key characteristics is thedemands it places on French citizens to be
active citizens and to conform to aproject of collective citizenship, and that you

(22:25):
see to some extent in the UnitedStates as well. But it's very fame,
very differently, and in Europe thereare very few other places which have
such a strong sense of civic citizenship. Another element of French republicanism, which
is very important is a commitment torationality and the rule of law. But
the rule of law here doesn't meanas it does that's in the American system,
the privacy of the courts. Itmeans the primacy of the legislative body

(22:51):
that is Parliament in making laws.This is a really significant difference in the
US and France, which are bothon paper republics, is that parliament is
sovereign in France and Parliament makes alot of the laws and in the US
end up going through the court systemand sometimes ending up in the Supreme Court.
Right, so there is no equivalentto the judicial branch of the American

(23:14):
political system. In France. Thepower lies with parliament. And that's why
parliamentary legislation is so controversial and complicatedin France, because that is where many
many laws are being created, asit were, and Parliament has the final
say. Lastly, the thing thatwe should talk about and something we might
come back to, is that republicanismin France, and again very strong difference

(23:37):
with the US implies some form ofsecularism, which is often wrapped up in
a strongly anti clerical discourse. Andthis again is tied to the omnipresence of
the Catholic Church in modern French andeven early modern French history, and that
the institutional ideological power of the CatholicChurch, and one of the things that

(24:00):
has united Republicans really since the seventeennineties all the way through to the twenty
first century is a commitment to reduceand minimize the power and presence of religion,
particularly in the public sphere. Sothose, if you like, that's
the kind of list of values,and I'm trying to be as uncontroversial here

(24:21):
as possible. Now, then theleft and the right have done different things
with those values. So to pickthe example of the last thing I was
talking about, which is secularism,what the French call Lacey did in the
twenty first century, there's a lotof talk about Lacey did. That Lacy
did has been one of the big, big, big public debates advanced in
the last I'd say thirty years orso. And the left and the right

(24:45):
have a different conception of what laceyyactually means and what lies behind it.
But there is enough common ground thatvery often the left and the right,
or members of the left and theright, or those who advocate left or
right we positions end up on thesame side debate. So you can see
on the one hand that for instance, for the right, secularism is a

(25:07):
good way of talking about the presenceof Muslims and the presence of Islam more
broadly as a religion in French society, and the French right is profoundly opposed
in an ideological sense to the presenceof Islam. There are a good number
of politicians and thinkers and intellectuals onthe right who might fairly be described as

(25:29):
or less racist, or or islamophobicsu slightly more controversial term. But rather
than talk about Islam directly, theycan draw on this republican tradition of secularism
to say, you know what,we're not actually racist. We are simply
defending France's republican values against the threatof Islam and the threat of this religion.

(25:52):
What they see as a threat ofthis religion in the public sphere.
People on the left in France believeyou should, for the most part,
actually believe also that the religion shouldbe as much as possible evacuated from the
public sphere. But for their ownreasons, they are wary of talking about

(26:12):
this too much now in the twentyfirst century, because they are they're scared
of sounding too much like they areopposed to Muslims specifically, or that they
have some vendetta against Islam. Sowhat's happened in the last twenty thirty years
is it actually lazy deer, whichused to be a really core value of

(26:33):
the French left because it was allabout reducing the power of the Catholic Church,
has ended up being co opted increasinglyby the right and indeed the far
rye. And so you have asort of shift where that people on the
left are saying, we still believein lazy den We still but our lacyd
is different to their lazyd And ofcourse that level of complexity is often inaudible

(26:53):
in the public space. What youactually end up hearing is right with politicians
saying we need more lazy deer becausewe want to stop women wearing the hijab,
or we want we want to stopwomen bathing in pools in more distress,
or we want to limit the numberof mosques in a particular neighborhood or
town and so on. So that'show you kind of see at least of

(27:15):
values can get used and manipulated indifferent context by different political groups. Absolutely,
and anyone who's interested in learning evenmore about the laisi te question should
definitely check out the episode we didin the first season with Lindsay Trmuda.
I'll put a link to that inthe show notes, because it's such a

(27:36):
complex issue that we're talking about moreand more today for all of the reasons
that you just cited. If you'reenjoying this episode of Navigating the French,
you may also be interested in oursister podcast, Paris a State of Mind,
where real estate experts Gail and Mariegive you all the tips and tricks
you need about renting and buying apartmentsin Paris and beyond Navigating the French.

(27:59):
Will be right back after a wordfrom our sponsors, and now back to
Navigating the French. Another one ofthe values that you mentioned in your book
that I found quite interesting and Iwould love to kind of unpack with you
is the republican and I quote hostilityto intermediary bodies so could you tell us

(28:19):
a little bit more about sort ofwhere this comes from and how it's felt
on the French landscape today. Forsure, I actually think this is a
really useful topic to think about foroutsiders, particularly the speaking world, because
it runs counter to the way there'skind of dominant political values in certainly in

(28:42):
the UK and in the US aswell. So suspicion of intermediate bodies,
this body sounds very abstract, right, It sounds like we're talking, we're
talking about political theory. But whatdoes this mean? Well, again,
as with so many other things,that the origins of this fear go back
to the French Revolution and to simplifyradically the extraordinarily complex revolutionary moment, many

(29:07):
of those who were advocates of therevolution believed that the relationship between the state
and government and citizens should be adirect and unmediated relationship. That is,
that individual citizens should have an individualrelationship with the state, or with the

(29:30):
state and government in this case arekind of conflicted. And so this has
the idea of this sort of individualizedcitizenships has long routes in Enlightenment and only
modern political thought which were going togo into but the French Revolution goes further
than any other revolution in the eighteenthcentury in terms of trying to implement this.
So in the American Revolution, theprimacy of states remains a central plank

(29:56):
of the revolutionary So in a sensethey accept the primacy of indi vidual states
within the broader republican system that emergesout of the War independence, right when
in France there are no such intermediarybodies, because all such intermediary bodies pose
a threat to the revolution as it'sdeveloping. And the obvious example of this,

(30:18):
and I mentioned this earlier as aCatholic Church. The Catholic Church in
the late eighteenth century is an extremelypowerful institution that acts and that could act
like an intermediary body to in asense ciphon away the allegiance of individual citizens
from their states. So rather thanbeing French above all and French citizens,

(30:41):
the revolutionies are scared that the CatholicChurch will in a sense undercut the influence
of the revolution. The institutional andideological power of the Church will will take
away what the revolutions are trying tocreate, which is a nation in which
all citizens are equal and they allhave this equal and individual relationships to state.

(31:03):
So the question of religion looms reallylarge for French revolutionaries the late eighteenth
century, and they deal with inthe whole variety of ways. They also
address minority religions, particularly Judaism,and what relationship Jews should have to France.
And there's a very famous debate inthe French National Assembly in which the
revolutionaries essentially decide that everything can begiven to Jews as French people, but

(31:27):
they can be given nothing as Jews. Right, so they will be emancipated
and they will have equal rights,but they will have those equal rights as
French citizens, not as Jews.So this anxiety about the power of intermediate
bodies is born in the French Revolution, and of course the nineteenth century doesn't
do much share dispelled this fhere rightbecause the Catholic Church comes back to prominence

(31:52):
during periods of authoritarian rule. Andso when the Third Republic's inaugurated in eineteen
seventy, those who call themselves apublic are very wary of any organization or
any group that might mediate or getin the way of, or even try
to represent citizens that doesn't involve thisdirect relationship with the state. Now again

(32:16):
sounding very abstract, but let mebring it into the very contemporary moment and
give you a really good example ofone of the consequences of this. You
and your listeners may have noticed thatFrench political parties are very weak. They
fall apart, they change their nameall the time. None of them are,
with the exception of the French CommunistParty more than fifty years old.

(32:39):
There is nothing like the Labor Partyand the Conservative Party in the UK,
or the Democrats of the Public inthe US that have it very long histories.
None of that. Why is this, Well, that's because within the
structure of all of the French republicsand even the Fifth Republic, parties are

(33:00):
seen to be a potential intermediary bodybetween citizens and the state, and therefore
political parties have never really been verywell developed, except in the case of
the French Communist Party, which drawa different whole different tradition on the left.
But all political parties in France aresubject to renegotiation because the structures of

(33:22):
those political parties are weak and havebeen weak for a very long time.
Another good example of this is thetrade union movement in France. So this
is a real contrast with let's sayGermany, or the UK, where in
the mid to late nineteenth century thetrade union movement becomes a really important part
of politics in those countries. Inthe case of the UK, the trade
union movement supports the emerging Labor Partyand becomes more or less a party to

(33:46):
itself. In France, trade unionsare not recognized until the eighteen eighties,
much later than in other parts ofEurope, and trade unions remain really quite
weak. We come back to thislater because your listeners think, oh,
French always on strike, and soyou know the trade unions strong, But
actually trade unions are not strong inFrance, and they represent a relatively small

(34:07):
proportion of the workforce. And again, the problem for trade unionists has always
been that they are viewed with suspicionby governments or by presidents because they are,
in some census intermediary bodies that seekto represent a particular group of the
population on their behalf. So thisfear of intermediate bodies has really really important

(34:28):
consequences. Sounds very abstract, butit has incredibly important consequences for the way
French politics works. And it's totallydifferent to somewhere like the US, where
on the contrary, the notion ofcivil society is absolutely central to the way
that the American politics functions, fromthe role of churches, to the role
of labor unions, to the roleof political parties, all of which in

(34:49):
a sense mediate and manage the representationof specific specific political groups in American society.
All of those structures kind of existin France, but they are much
weaker, and so the state andgovernment and parliament is much stronger and has
much greater authority in France than certainlyin the US. And I wonder if

(35:10):
that's something where what you touched onearlier about the changes in the late eighties
to the way the republic functions inFrance. Is there a link to that,
to the sort of dissemination of morepower on a regional sphere, or
is that does that run counter toyour mind to the way that republican values
have been championed over the course ofthe last over one hundred years. Yeah,

(35:36):
I think it does. I thinkit does, and I think many
Actually, if you step back fromsome of the polemics and the controversies around
the world, they could be carefullypublic in the twenty first centuries, In
the last twenty to twenty five years. A lot of them have to do
with, shall we say, thegap between the way things are done locally
and the message is coming down fromthe top. The top could be the

(35:58):
Ministry of the Interior. The topcould be President, at the top could
be the priffi, who are thekind of representatives of the state at the
local level. But all those peoplehave particular agendas that are governed very often
by an interpretation of the republics asa unified, indivisible political entity. And
then local actors who are just tryingto kind of make solve particular problems that

(36:22):
are taking place. So a reallygood example of this is in the late
eighties, late nineteen eighties, apolemic emerges around the decision on the part
of a head teacher, you know, a school in the outskirts of Paris,
to ban or to suspend a groupof female students wearing the hijab the
headscarf, and the head teacher decideson this, and the head teacher says,

(36:43):
I'm doing this in them of Republicanvalues, because the French public school
is and should be a neutral,non religious space, and I consider the
hijab to be a sign of religiousaffiliation. And therefore I am suspending these
students on the grounds that they arenot forming to the rules. So there's
there's a long history of this,and I'm sure you covered it in your

(37:05):
segment on Lazy's the But what's interestingis that that was a lowcal decision made
by one head teacher. Other headteachers who faced similar problems made different decisions.
And what happened was that this particulardecision on the part of this particular
headteacher became very politicized, and atthis point the government of the time had

(37:25):
to respond and had to try andfind some sort of solution to this problem,
and for many years tried not tolegislate and provide a kind of firm
directing line on this issue, allowinga lot of leeway to schools until the
early two thousands, when in twothousand and four finally the French Parliament voted

(37:46):
a law that prohibited ostentatious religious symbolswhat they called ostentatious religous symbols in public
schools. And that has kind ofnow said, since then, has set
the parameters with a debate where thereis now a law and so then is
a question of schools at the locallevel trying to work out what that law
means and how to implement it.But that's a really good example. I

(38:06):
think of what you were talking about, which is the problems when this very
abstract idea of French republicanism, ofle val French comes into contact with the
every day, messy realities of administeringthe school, or administering the neighborhood,
or managing particular social conflicts and someone. And we've touched on so many great

(38:29):
topics. I'm sorry that i can'tkeep you here for another hour, but
I'm going to ask you one lastquestion. And I know that you're not
in the business of predicting the future, But as you've sort of examined the
evolution of this idea of republic andrepublican values and sort of watched this shift
occur from left to right in sortof who is laying claim to these values,

(38:53):
do you have any idea or anyexpectations regarding how these values are going
to continue to be espoused and sortof venerated by the French moving forward as
sort of society continues to evolve.That's a very good question. Historians traditionally
make really bad predictors of the future. We find the past so complicated that

(39:15):
we can better get ahead around thefuture, I think. But I think
that actually here we're at a quiteinteresting critical juncture. And I say that
because, on the one hand,France is both institutionally and in terms of
its values, a profoundly republican society, more than it has ever been I

(39:40):
think since the French Revolution. Right, So really, until the you know,
the nineteen sixties, a lot ofpeople in France simply didn't believe in
the idea of republic and van republicand there were huge sways of the electorate,
particularly on the right, who justthought this was all left with clacktrap
and nonsense. And so, youknow, until the nineteen sixties, no

(40:02):
one could say that that republicanism asa set of values was dominant in French
society. Since then, and sincethe inauguration of the Fifth of public I
think most people would agree, Ithink was the stories would agree that we've
entered the kind of golden age ofrepublicanism. But of course what comes with

(40:22):
ubiquity is also contestation. Right,So as France has become more and more
of a republican society in its organizationand its values. More and more people
in France have begun to fight aboutthose values and about those principles, and
I think we've reached a stage nowwhere there are a number of really glaring

(40:45):
issues that refuse to go away,and certainly haven't gone away in the time
that I've been working on France orwhat twenty plus years now. One has
to do with the question of differenceand how the French are going to try
and conceptualize the reality of very selfconsciously multi ethnic and diverse societies, how

(41:07):
they're going to reconcile that with thevery unitary, top down values that are
implicit or explicit in French republicanism,and the other thing that's on the value
side and the other things on theinstitutional side. There is a growing criticism
of the institutional structures of the FifthRepublic, and particularly of its heavy presidentialism.

(41:30):
The French are more and more skepticalof the single male figure who will
dominate French politics. So there arecalls which have come and gone at different
points for a kind of change inthe institutional regime. One example of that
is introducing proportional representation into or backinto French elections. So having elections that

(41:53):
would be based much more strictly onthe number of votes cast, rather than
as the case right now, electionsare are mostly on a two round system,
where a certain number of candidates eliminatedand then there's usually a run off
between two or more candidates in thesecond round. Both the criticism of the
values of French Republicans and the insof French Republicism could have some quite serious

(42:17):
consequences in years to come, especiallyI think if the French left, who
are traditionally the guardians of French Republicanism, turn their back on it and say,
you know what, this is nolonger. This is just now,
it's just become a tool for theright to say whatever they want and actually
we have other ideas. So it'spossible that there could be the emergence of

(42:42):
some kind of very strong contestation ofthe kind of core institutional or political values
of French Republicanism. Having said that, it's really difficult to imagine that Franc's
whole political system will change overnight.If you've ever been into into a miri
in France, if you've ever talkedto a local politician or local councilor or

(43:06):
if you've ever had anything to dowith the French state or with French schools,
or you will know that the valuesof republicanism, which are now supported
by these really powerful institutions and byindeed by the state itself, are embedded
in everyday life in France. Andso the idea that suddenly all of this
might be tossed to one side andthere might be some new vision of secularism

(43:28):
or some new vision of how itto meet your bodies function in France,
that seems really unlikely to me.So it's a kind of mixed back.
I think that there might be significantchange coming up, but I don't think
we're going to see at the endof republic or of le val republic anny
typesin amazing. Well, thank youso very much for joining me today.

(43:50):
It has been illuminating. I'm goingto share a link to this book we
keep referencing in the show notes.I highly recommend anybody who's interested in French
culture, politics, society pick itup. Is there anything else that you're
working on right now that you're excitedabout right now? What is your current
sort of focus and where can peoplefind more of your writing? Well,

(44:12):
the best place to find more ofmy writing is on my website where I
have more or less collated everything I'vewritten so on a variety of different issues,
not just on France. So that'sthe easiest one stop shop. There
are two projects which I might mention. The first is a book that just
came out on the governing of irregularmigration in Western Europe since the end of

(44:34):
the Second World War, and it'sa collaborative book project where a team of
us have worked on this really reallyinteresting question of how European states deal and
have dealt with what's often known asillegal migration, because of course something that's
illegal, something that's irregularly is bydefinition invisible or shouldn't be visible, and
yet states have still had to tryand deal with this in really interesting ways.

(45:00):
So the book which came out,which is full of really interesting chapters
about different episodes in the history ofmigration Germany, in France and the UK,
one of the big lessons is that, believe it or not, irregular
or illegal migration was not really anissue before until the nineteen sixties and nineteen
seventies, and so one of thebiggest topics in contemporary European politics, which

(45:20):
is illegal migration, was really anon issue not that long ago, and
I think how it's become an issueis fascinating. So that's the first thing
I want to mention. The secondthing is that I'm writing, and this
is what I'm doing right now,is I'm writing a big intellectual biography of
the Marxist historian Eric Hobsborn, whomany people know as somebody who are lots
of textbooks at students I made toread in colleage or university, and that's

(45:44):
been really really interesting. But thebook, because that is not out yet,
so I'm just finishing that and hopefullyit'll be out in the next few
years. Amazing. Well, welook forward to the release of that,
and I'll be sure and put alink to your website and to your new
book in the show notes as well, so anybody who's interested in reading more
on those topics should definitely take alook. Thank you so very much for
joining me. I've really appreciated allof your insight, and I'm sure our

(46:07):
listeners have as well. Thank youso much. It's been a real pleasure
this has been navigating the French.You can find more from me Emily Monico
at Emily Underscore in Underscore France onTwitter and Instagram. This podcast is produced
by Paris Underground Radio. To listento other episodes of this podcast, or
to discover more podcasts like it,please visit Paris Underground radio dot com.

(46:30):
Thanks for listening and abjentu. Thisepisode of Navigating the French was produced by
Jennifer Garrity for Paris Underground Radio.For more great content, join us on
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