Le gaullisme et la crise de l'Etat

The heritage of 1789 left French politicians and political analysts with the complex task of reconciling the two antithetical ideals of the Revolution: the desire to make the nation the sole political arbiter through its representatives with the need to maintain its unity. The history of France from 1789 to de Gaulle reflects France's fearfulness toward a strong executive as well as its fundamental mistrust in the people's capacity to maintain the cohesion of the nation and serve the general will. Here it is argued that de Gaulle overcame these contradictions by retaining French liberalism's emphasis on a dual executive, while the Bonapartist ideal of a strong executive could, erroneously, appear to be de Gaulle's deliberate choice. Finally it is argued that 'cohabitation', the debate surrounding the duration of the presidential mandate and the changing attitude toward France's relationship to the Vichy regime, reveal transformations proper to the French state in the late 20th century as much as a crisis of Gaullism and the loss of its basic meaning.     

Le zervanisme et les manuscrits de la mer morte

Sans résumé     

Environnement et mondialisation: de la confusion à la convergence des discours

Ce texte vise à lever la confusion entourant la rhétorique sur l'environnement et la mondialisation. Il veut rétablir les faits dans une chronologie ou périodicité tels qu'ils se sont produits. Il montre les itinéraires communs des deux concepts d'environnement et de mondialisation, et les temps forts de leur usage. En effet, les discours de l'environnement et de la mondialisation loin d'être indépendants l'un de l'autre, le plus souvent se chevauchent et se côtoient. This text is about the environment and globalization. It is primarily concerned with rhetoric and discourse on the controversial subject of chronology related both to environment and globalization. Is globalization responsible for the new consciousness about the environment or is it a cause of the perception of the world as a whole? It is not primarly viewed as two opposites discourses, but as being mostly parallel and even seen as complementary rhetoric.     

Mobilité de la population et pauvreté dans une vicomté normande de la fin du Moyen-Age

Important in number and spread very evenly throughout the fifteenth century, the Norman rolls of the monnéage are a very important source for statistical study of the population of Normandy. The information about names they provide allows one to grasp the importance of mobility of population in urban and rural areas. Information about the different categories of exempted persons permits a study of the problem of poverty. The region under scrutiny in this article is the vicomté or vice-county of Bayeux and the city of Caen. Documents concerning this region reveal a highly mobile population, a fact which war by itself cannot explain. The highest rates of mobility are to be found among the populations of the different parishes of Bayeux and Caen. As one might expect, the poor are amongst the most mobile of all. Moreover, the persistence of poverty throughout the fifteenth century, as seen in the rolls of the monnéage, raises the problem of the continued stagnation of this part Normandy.