The rise of the Front National is pushing France toward a genuine three-party system

Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP received the largest share of support in the French departmental elections on 22 and 29 March. However the success of Marine Le Pen’s Front National, which polled over 20 per cent in both rounds of voting, was once again one of the key stories to emerge from the vote. Helen Drakewrites on the lessons to be learned for France’s political system ahead of regional elections in December and the next presidential election in 2017. She notes that an emerging tripartite party system is now appearing in France, where the Front National more or less equals the power of the traditionally dominant mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties

May’s ‘Global Britain’: the decline and fall of European Studies

Brexit comes after a decades-long decline in European Studies in British universities. The subject boomed as the UK sought to join the EEC, but has steadily declined and no longer merits a sub-panel in the Research Excellence Framework. Helen Drake asks whether Brexit will lead to a recovery in the field – or whether ‘Brexit studies’ will prove to be as short-lived as the formal exit process itself

Cut off: what leaving the EU would mean for university culture

European Studies may be dying out in the UK, but British universities are culturally embedded in the EU, says Helen Drake. Severing links with Europe that have been built up over decades would have a profound effect on the university landscape

The 2014 Israel-Palestine crisis has uncovered deep divisions within French society

The offensive launched by Israel in Gaza in July prompted a range of diverse responses from states across the world. Helen Drake writes on the reaction within France, which saw a number of domestic protests and disturbances related to the crisis. She notes that France is still digesting the consequences of its colonial past, its post-decolonisation present, and the reality of persistent anti-semitic sentiments. This challenge presents to the world an image of a France ultra-polarised between its pro-Arab and pro-Jewish supporters

A political sociology of the European Union: reassessing constructivism

A political sociology of the European Union: reassessing constructivis

France

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France, Britain and Brexit

France, Britain and Brexi

Is France having a moment? Emmanuel Macron and the politics of disruption

Is France having a moment? Emmanuel Macron and the politics of disruptio

The Legitimation of authority in the European Union

The founding Treaties of the European Union (EU) provide the Commission with bureaucratic structures and functions, and the authority to take a political leadership role in the integration process. However, the legitimacy of the Commission's authority to act either as a bureaucracy or as a political institution is periodically contested, as is the authority and leadership of its President. Max Weber's theory of the legitimation of authority suggests itself in this context as a working tool for assessing the nature of institutional and individual authority and leadership in the Commission and the broader EU context. Weber's typology of authority offers both an understanding of the changes in the Commission's fortunes within the 'would-be polity' of the European institutions, and an appraisal of claims to authority at the individual level by the Commission President. When applied to two contrasting moments in the Commission's life during the presidency of Jacques Delors (the generating of the White Papers of 1985 and 1993), Weber's typology provides an explanation for the evolution of the legitimation of these forms of authority in terms of, first, the Union's imperfect provisions for legitimate claims to leadership authority on 'charismatic' grounds and, second, the absence in the Union of resources for leadership legitimacy based on 'traditional'-type authority, such as explicit, popular, or party political European-wide support for the project of European union. These are resources which, if present in the EU, would legitimise calls to reform the EU's institutions in the direction of more integration and a more federal polity. The case studies offer an appraisal of the functioning and malfunctioning of authority within the Union, as well as a critical assessment of the applicability of the Weberian model to the legitimation of authority in the EU

Macron and the future of the EU

Macron and the future of the E