Policy & Politics France

Under the new socialist regime of Francois Mitterand, how much will French policymaking change? How has it functioned under previous regimes? How does the French process compare with policymaking in other industrial states? These are some of the questions Douglas E. Ashford considers in analyzing six major areas of domestic policymaking in France administrative reform, local and regional reform, economic policy, industrial relations, social security, and immigration. Each case is accompanied by selected readings translated from official government documents and the writings of critics of official policy, including readings from the Mitterand period.The book offers an unusually strong point of view, one that differs from the standard interpretations of French Politics. "Policy and Politics in France" is the third volume in the series, "Policy and Politics in Industrial States", edited by Douglas E. Ashford, Peter J. Katzenstein, and T. J. Pempel. Each volume consists of a balance of provocative analysis and documents for six issues. Four topics - economic policy, labor relations, social welfare, and the internal organization of the state - are common to all volumes; the remaining two are reserved for policy problems peculiar to the individual country. Douglas E. Ashford is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Pittsburgh. He was formerly Director of the Western Societies Program at Cornell University. He is author of "Policy and Politics in Britain: The Limits of Consensus", also in this series.