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What is the source of legitimacy
of the French government? What makes the system stable?
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How has political socialization affected the
development of political parties in France.
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Describe the structure and broad operation of
French national government. What major structural
and operational differences are there between the
French and British systems?
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Compare the stability of the French political
system with that of the British. Why has the
French system demonstrated so much instability
and suffered from a lack of legitimacy since the
revolution?
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Evaluate this statement: "Charles DeGaulle
was France's third Napoleon".
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What social and economic problems do the French
face today? analyze the strength and importance of the divisions
within French society based on class, religion, ideology, and
geograpy
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Describe the apparent causes and
effects of the instability of French politics during the Third and
Fourth Republics
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Identify which provisions of the
Fifth Republic's constitution were designed to create stability
where instability had been ubiquitous and explain how those
provisions were to work
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Describe the differences in
procedures and results between proportional voting and "first past
the post" plurality voting (And in the context of French government
and politics, identify the immediate and long term effects of such
voting systems and explain the purpose and results of using run off
elections to ensure majority votes for winners.)
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Offer plausible explanations for
the purposeful combination of presidential and parliamentary
political systems created by de Gaulle and his constitutional
engineers and supported since 1969 by de Gaulle's political
successors (i.e. What advantages of each type of system did the
architects of the Fifth Republic expect to make use of? And how have
later politicians continued to make use of those strengths of each
kind of system?)
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Distinguish between the power and
authority exercised by the French President and the power and
authority exercised by the French Premier and the power and
authority exercised by the National Assembly (and explain how this
distribution of powers changes between times of unified government
and times of cohabitation)
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Identify the factors that
integrate the elites of the French state (and the factors that make
the French bureaucratic elite different from other bureaucratic
elites)
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Compare and contrast the
integration of the elites of the French state with the elites of
other states
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explain the factors that account
for the rise of the Socialists and the decline of the Communists in
French politics during the past 20 years
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Explain the factors that account
for the successes of the Socialists and the failures of the center
right parties in French politics during the past 20 years
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Support with examples your
agreement or disagreement with the author's hypotheses about the
resistance of the French economy to change or the author's
hypothesis about the importance of high tech entrepreneurs to the
future of the French economy
