Le Modèle politique français : La société civile contre le jacobinisme de 1789 à nos jours

by Pierre Rosanvallon

À l''aube du XXIe siècle, la démocratie est à la fois triomphante et incertaine. L''évidence désormais universellement revendiquée de ses principes s''accompagne en effet d''une perplexité croissante sur les formes de son accomplissement. D''un côté, on en appelle à davantage de pluralisme et de décentralisation, à l''extension des contre-pouvoirs ; de l''autre, on demande plus de politique et on souhaite l''instauration d''un lieu central où prendrait forme une volonté commune efficace.Si le procès de la centralisation et du jacobinisme a mille fois été instruit depuis Tocqueville, une autre histoire reste encore à prendre en compte : celle des fortes résistances à ce jacobinisme. Car ce « modèle » n''a pas cessé d''être massivement dénoncé en même temps qu''il était généralement décrit comme dominant : il n''est donc pas figé mais s''est largement amendé.Pierre Rosanvallon est ainsi conduit à proposer une nouvelle interprétation d''ensemble du système politique français.

464 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Pierre Rosanvallon (b. 1948, Blois) is a French intellectual and historian, named professor at the Collège de France in 2001. He holds there the chair in the modern and contemporary history of the political. His works are dedicated to the history of democracy, French political history, the role of the state and the question of social justice in contemporary societies. He is also director of studies at the EHESS, where he leads the Raymond Aron Centre of Political Researches. Rosanvallon was in the 1970s one of the primary theoreticians of workers' self-management in the CFDT trade union.

He is diplomed from the HEC management school. In 1982, he created the Fondation Saint-Simon think-tank, along with François Furet. The Fondation dissolved in December 1999. Since 2002, Rosanvallon is member of the Scientific Counsel of the French National Library, and has the same functions, since 2004, at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris.

Rosanvallon created in 2002 La République des Idées, an "intellectual workshop" which he presides. The group publishes a review and books.

Reviews

[angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but found it incredibly dissatisfying for my purposes. Rosanvallon paints a detailed historical picture of the evolution of the French political model when it comes to conflicts between centralization and decentralization, generality and plurality, republicanism and liberalism, etc. but I found it really lacking in its account of civil society. It describes the situation with incredible depth, but there is little attention paid to how the lack of civil society has impacted the political model (the feedback mechanism is largely missing) or how the unique French civil society effects citizens. In addition, the book is left open-ended on all accounts and was quite dissatisifying on that account as well.