Lawyers, judges, and the obstinate state: The French case and an agenda for comparative politics
- PDF / 521,800 Bytes
- 17 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 43 Downloads / 183 Views
Lawyers, judges, and the obstinate state: The French case and an agenda for comparative politics Tommaso Pavone1 Accepted: 1 October 2020 / Published online: 15 October 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract In the field of comparative politics, France is often taken to exemplify the resilience of the centralized modern state. Stanley Hoffmann popularized this thesis by highlighting the French state’s “obstinacy” despite post-war reform efforts. This article revisits Hoffmann’s obstinate state thesis by tracing how lawyers and judges shaped French political development. I demonstrate that continuity in French officials’ claims to centralized power belie a deeper story of how legal actors catalyze institutional change in unlikely places: in civil law countries without a history of judicial review, in authoritarian regimes without regard for judicial independence, and in seemingly monolithic states without much room for democratic self-governance. These findings compel a comparative research agenda placing lawyers and judges at the center of the study of political development. Keywords Political development · Governance · Political liberalism · Judicial politics · Legal mobilization · European integration · Institutional change
Revisiting the “obstinate state” in France—and beyond In 1966, Stanley Hoffmann posed perhaps the most fertile question of his long career as a leading political scientist and public intellectual: Was the modern state generally—and in Europe specifically—”obstinate or obsolete?” Two biographical factors made this the “critical issue for every student of world order” (Hoffmann 1966, 862). The first was Hoffmann’s survival of state-perpetrated violence during WWII, which forced him and his mother to flee the French capital in May 1940 “2 days before the Germans entered Paris.” “World politics forced themselves on me,” Hoffmann recalled, hence he looked to efforts to create a supranational polity in Europe with skeptical anticipation (Hoffmann 1991, 3–4, 1966, 863). The second was Hoffmann’s belief that France is a prism to make sense of world politics. When * Tommaso Pavone [email protected] 1
PluriCourts Centre, The University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Vol:.(1234567890)
Lawyers, judges, and the obstinate state: The French case and…
417
a festschrift was organized in his honor, Hoffmann “insisted” that at least “half of the essays concentrate on France” (Miller and Smith 1991, xi). Hoffmann’s devotion to French politics focused his gaze on the state, that “inchoate, economically absurd, administratively ramshackle, and impotent yet dangerous” object (Miller and Smith 1991, xi). It also nurtured a “less optimistic” view of efforts to transform it or move “beyond the nation-state” (Hoffmann 1966, 863). For as Hoffmann was putting pen to paper, the “force of General de Gaulle” was imposing “a change in French policy from ambivalence toward [European] integration to outright hostility” (Hoffman 1966, 872, 895). Charles de Gaulle’s France exemplified the obstinate state, warts and
Data Loading...
