The situation of the French right during the Third Republic (1870–1940) has been characterised as one of weak mobilising capacity and precarious institutionalisation. This situation is remarkable, given the duration of the Third Republic and the strength of political cleavages in France. In this paper, we aim to shed light on this topic by conducting multilevel analyses on the electoral performance of the right in the critical 1936 elections, in a context marked by the rise of authoritarianism in Europe. More specifically, our paper examines the role played by Lipset and Rokkan’s main cleavages in the electoral support for the right at the commune-level. Our analyses reveal the extraordinary importance of the religious cleavage for conservative support. We also find clear evidence of the importance of social class and urban–rural cleavages. Finally, and more surprisingly, our analyses show that the right was weaker in linguistically distinctive territories. These findings make a substantive contribution to contemporary debates on the role of cultural and socioeconomic factors in French electoral behaviour. They are also relevant to our understanding of the social basis of conservative support in a period that proved critical for the survival of democratic regimes.
The Tocquevillian tradition holds that voluntary associations sustain democratic participation by building civic skills, trust, and mobilization networks. Whether this mechanism operates at the territorial level has rarely been tested systematically. Using 35 French core cities across seven elections (2019–2024) and a temporally precise measure of associational density, this article shows that the bivariate correlation between density and voter turnout is nil across all specifications at the inter-city scale. A single control—the share of higher-education graduates—explains 23.8
This article examines Franco–American relations in the Middle East through the lens of France’s enduring pursuit of grandeur and the United States’ shifting strategic priorities, with particular attention to the first presidential term of Donald Trump. While France has historically sought to preserve strategic autonomy and global influence despite relative material decline following the Second World War and decolonization, the United States has consolidated a hegemonic position that increasingly constrains allied middle powers. From Charles de Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron, French foreign policy has consistently aimed to assert France’s status as a global actor through diplomatic, military, and symbolic engagement, notably in strategically salient regions such as the Middle East. The Middle East represents a core arena of Franco–American interaction due to its energy resources, persistent conflicts, and security implications. However, the adoption of the America First doctrine under President Trump marked a critical rupture in alliance dynamics, privileging unilateral action and domestic political imperatives over multilateral coordination. This shift generated pronounced policy divergences between the United States and France, particularly regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, U.S. engagement in Syria, and the withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program. Drawing on neoclassical realism (Rose) and alliance theory (Snyder), this study argues that these divergences cannot be fully explained by systemic factors alone. Instead, domestic-level drivers – such as electoral considerations, nationalist framing, and the repudiation of the Obama’s foreign policy legacy—played a decisive role in shaping U.S. behavior. Based on qualitative analysis of policy decisions and official discourse, the article demonstrates that these dynamics weakened France’s ability, as a middle power, to advance its interests and assert grandeur in the Middle East, resulting in both commercial losses and reputational costs. The findings contribute to debates on alliance cohesion, middle power diplomacy, and the constraints imposed by asymmetric alliances in an increasingly unilateral international order.
Between 2019 and 2023, France moved from vetoing the opening of Albania’s EU accession negotiations to becoming the most visible presidential sponsor of its candidacy. Combining liberal intergovernmentalism, the External Incentives Model, and Balkans-specific scholarship on conditionality and stabilitocracy, the analysis argues that this reversal reflects credibility gains from the EU’s reformed 2020 methodology and a geopolitical reassessment following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rather than a normative conversion in French policy. President Macron’s own retrospective account of the veto corroborates this reading. Drawing on French and Albanian primary sources, the analysis distinguishes an external, France-driven causal chain from a domestic, Albania-driven compliance chain. The two chains interact without moving in lockstep. Accession negotiations that appear, from the outside, unified and continuous in fact combine an externally driven credibility mechanism with a domestic compliance process only partially responsive to it.
Do politicians influence media coverage of political issues? This paper explores this question by building a comprehensive dataset of tweets, newspaper articles, and press releases related to the 2022 Quebec provincial election. Specifically, over 4000 tweets from political leaders and parties were collected during the 36-day election campaign. The texts—from tweets, newspapers and press releases—were classified using automated topic dictionaries. A series of regressions was estimated to determine the association between Twitter use by politicians and media coverage. The findings reveal that tweets on certain issues, such as immigration and energy, boost the importance of these issues in news coverage on the same day, with little to no persistence across time. The association is stronger for tweets from the incumbent leader and party, though opposition parties also have an impact on a select set of issues. Crucially, these results are robust to controlling for official press releases, past tweets, and past media coverage. Thus, the study establishes a link between Twitter activity and media coverage, indicating that Twitter serves as a tool for politicians to shape the media agenda by attracting traditional media attention. Overall, the results suggest that political actors can find ways to gain some control over the media agenda during an electoral campaign.
