Joseph A. Harriss
France and the U.S. are both undergoing social democratic onslaughts. That only intensified after last year’s elections. The difference, mes amis, is that French conservatives are putting up some surprisingly spunky resistance. The American middle class, by contrast, appears to…
FRANCE’S LATEST BOUT OF JIHAD JITTERS came in September when two small homemade bombs were thrown into a crowded Jewish grocery store in suburban Paris. The attack was largely symbolic—windows were broken, a few patrons injured—but it was yet another…
AS A CORRESPONDENT in Paris in the 1960s, I quickly learned that the surefire way to get the attention of the editors back home was to put “Charles de Gaulle” in the first paragraph. I could just see their eyes…
FRANÇOIS HOLLANDE, new president of France and co-prince of Andorra, has had many grave matters on his mind since taking office in May. They range from how to deal with France’s vertiginous national debt and disastrous unemployment, to his drooping…
WHEN I DISEMBARKED from an Air Algerie flight at Algiers’ Dar el Beida airport long ago as a young newsmagazine correspondent, Algeria was newly independent after 130 years as a French colony. I expected that the recently formed Democratic and…
The good news is that France’s new Socialist government is back from vacation. President François Hollande, known locally as Monsieur Normal, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, and all the many and varied cabinet ministers — strictly 50-50 men-women, conforming to the…
The backstory: Nicolas Sarkozy, the diminutive, energetic son of a Hungarian immigrant to France, works hard, climbs the greasy pole of politics, and is elected president in 2007. He seems to have it all: a bagful of the right conservative…
THE OMENS WERE INAUSPICIOUS. François Hollande celebrated his first day in office, May 15, by riding up the Champs Elysées in an open-top car to predictable cheers. It’s an old and honorable French custom, using the grandiose setting of the…
From the first intelligence surveillance to the final shootout, France’s clumsy handling of its spate of Islamic terrorism in March was a case study in how not to deal with a jihadist. With the largest Muslim community in Europe—nearly 10…
Nothing in his presidency became it like the leaving it. “I take full responsibility for this defeat,” Nicolas Sarkozy declared Sunday evening as results from second-round ballot showed that Socialist François Hollande would be France’s new chief of state. “I…
