Concentration or representation : the struggle for popular sovereignty

There is a tension in the notion of popular sovereignty, and the notion of democracy associated with it, that is both older than our terms for these notions themselves and more fundamental than the apparently consensual way we tend to use them today. After a review of the competing conceptions of 'the people' that underlie two very different understandings of democracy, this article will defend what might be called a 'neo-Jacobin' commitment to popular sovereignty, understood as the formulation and imposition of a shared political will. A people's egalitarian capacity to concentrate both its collective intelligence and force, from this perspective, takes priority over concerns about how best to represent the full variety of positions and interests that differentiate and divide a community

Governing immigrants and citizenship regimes: the case of France, 1950s–1990s

Does sustained and increasingly transnational immigration weaken the national character of citizenship regimes? This paper addresses this issue by examining French responses to immigration over a 40-year period. In spite of the changing character of immigration and changing state strategies, all governments throughout this period have sought to maintain the national character by making full access to rights contingent on one's conformity to national values and moralities. As the government made accessing rights dependent on conformity to national norms, the legitimacy of immigrant activists seeking to expand their rights has depended on their abilities to conform to the rules of the national political game. Resisting marginalization therefore requires the assimilation of the immigrants into nationally specific political cultures, which contributes to reinforcing the national character of citizenship regimes. By examining the particular case of France, the paper aims to show how top-down and bottom-up processes by states and activists work in different ways to keep the nation at the center of citizenship regimes in spite of the ongoing and very real challenges presented by transnationalism and globalization

Recherche participative sur l'usage et l'impact des modèles de flux de matière pour la prospective face aux enjeux de transition dans les territoires

International audienc

Interview

This year is the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Emancipatory thinkers, regardless if Leftists, Marxists, or Communists felt for a long time - and still seem to feel - the pressure of the Bolshevik past weighing upon them, demanding that political methods, tactics, means and achievements have to be constantly measured against the successes and related to the atrocities of the Soviet experience. What is the relevance and the actuality of the 1917 revolution for you (if there is any)