Vincent Wright

The Government and Politics of France has been the leading textbook on French politics for over a generation, and continues to provide students with a comprehensive and incisive introduction to the intricacies of French politics and government. This edition updates every chapter, with the addition of a new chapter on France and Europe. Recent events necessitate a new edition, particularly the 2002 elections and the growing interpenetration of France and the EU in student programmes, as well as in the real world. Whether covering the shifting balance within France's two-headed executive, the paradoxes of the French party politics, the power and fragmentation of France's administration, the growing assertiveness of French local government, or the newly visible world of the judiciary, The Government and Politics of France has always sought to confront established paradigms with the complex and untidy reality of French politics at the grass roots.

The Government and Politics of France has been the leading textbook on French politics for over a generation, and continues to provide students with a comprehensive and incisive introduction to the intricacies of French politics and government. This edition updates every chapter, with the addition of a new chapter on France and Europe. Recent events necessitate a new edition, particularly the 2002 elections and the growing interpenetration of France and the EU in student programmes, as well as in the real world. Whether covering the shifting balance within France's two-headed executive, the paradoxes of the French party politics, the power and fragmentation of France's administration, the growing assertiveness of French local government, or the newly visible world of the judiciary, The Government and Politics of France has always sought to confront established paradigms with the complex and untidy reality of French politics at the grass roots.

Two leading authors challenge the assumption that France has a well coordinated government. The constitutional, political,and policy frameworks of coordination are critically assessed in relation to the central actors and spending ministries, as well as the formal and informal mechanisms of coordination. Four case studies are examined; the European Union, budget, privatization and immigration policy processes. The book concludes with forthright findings on a fragment executive struggling to steer a disparate and partially paralyzed institutional structure. The research findings offer precise cautionary recommendations to policy makers against the dangers of overconfident recourse to 'joined up' government. The findings are relevant, not merely to France, but generally to Western states more generally.

This is one of two volumes examining how EU member states co-ordinate their European policies. It examines domestic processes and co-ordination in ten member states, looking at the structures and processes by which policy is made.