Contenu du sommaire : Protagonisme et crises politiques

Conceived as an introduction to the thematic dossier, this article reconsiders the notion of « protagonism » developed by the historian Haim Burstin in connection with the French Revolution. The specific features of the notion in question are presented, as well as the way it condenses significant shifts in the analysis of political crises and revolutions. Testing this historically-oriented proposal on various fields and areas of knowledge makes it possible to engage in an original interdisciplinary exercise ; it also enables us to evaluate the fruitfulness of the perspective the notion induces us to adopt on a central issue linked to critical situations : their capacity to transform individuals into agents of History contributing to the dynamics of events. The presentation of contributions provides the opportunity to make a preliminary assessment. The notion appears to enable us to revisit nodal dimensions of critical moments, resulting from the temporalities at stake, the unstable and processual productions of legitimacy, the incidence of affects on behaviors, and the signifying work carried out by organized collectives. However, in order to make the notion even more operative, additional elements seem to be necessary, such as taking account of political regimes, temporal cultures and historical precedents, cycles of repertoires of contention, and forms of collective invisibilization. Beyond that, this experience reminds us of some of the crucial issues facing analysis, such as those related to comparison, and suggests others, such as the occasional blurring of boundaries between the “ordinary” and the “extraordinary.”

The Ukrainian protest movement of winter 2013-2014, known as Maïdan in reference to the occupied main square in the center of Kiev, caused two types of protagonism to emerge among its ordinary participants. On the one hand, ordinary protagonism was displayed in the revolutionary routine, through the multiple activities organized in the public square (cooking, medical aid, safety patrols). It reflected peaceful forms of action that caused personalities to emerge on account of their long commitment, which was highlighted by the media and social networks. On the other hand, rebellious protagonism appeared when the protest became radicalized as a result of repression by the authorities. The opportunities for public recognition were enhanced when images of police violence against protestors were widely aired in the media. This type of protagonism relied on increased defiance toward the political elites, especially after the brutal days of February 18-20, 2014. It then became more of a political resource than synonymous with access to power.

Based on the algerian case in 1988, this paper analyses the process by which riots develop into political crisis through the politicization of multi-sector rallies. This political crisis will produce an unprecedented liberalization of the authoritarian regime. The paper focuses on the political and contentious dimension of these events, showing first that such events, in this case riots, cannot be labeled as « political », as it were “from above”, by the researcher, often on the basis of an ex post analysis. Instead, one has to be attentive to the struggles for a legitimate definition of the event, in situ, and recreate the process by which a definition tends to impose itself on all the protagonists, sweeping all competing categorizations aside. Second, this article shows that articulating a political judgment about an event is not taken for granted, and neither is this political interpretation destined for success. The rioters, a multitude of individuals who, until now, have been outside of public life, certainly open up a realm of possibility ; but it is the previously committed actors who mediatize their action and impose an contentious and political meaning on the event by basing themselves on earlier skills and networks. The very characteristics of a riot—disorganized, without any leadersphip, led by very young people who do not articulate a political speach—authorize the voicing of a sound political judgment from outside.

The application of Burstin's concept of protagonism to the events of 1848 is complicated by the much shorter time frame and equivocal outcome of the February revolution. Not a single one of the principal actors fully corresponds to the model that Burstin has so skillfully described for 1789, in part because the Great Revolution and the decades of social turmoil that followed so dramatically transformed the consciousness of subsequent generations of political activists. The parallel between protagonism and the notion of the “repertoire of contention” is briefly explored, along with reflections on how profoundly and permanently the context for revolutionary action was changed by the experience of 1789.

This paper questions the main elements of the notion of “protagonism” in the light of the French wars of religion : there were, during this period (1562-1598), no revolutions strictly speaking, but it is possible to investigate the numerous critical situations, the seizure of cities and massacres, and the overblown testimonies, in order to examine the participation of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. The article queries what it was—for this is the problem—that prevented the people of the late-nineteenth century from fully making their mark on history and proudly embracing active participation in the multitudinous events of the wars of religion.

How do we explain the dismantling of an administration ? To answer this rarely-asked question, we focus on a governing body in charge of French foreign audiovisual policy, within the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We emphasize three “ideal-types” of bureaucratic entrepreneurship that bear witness both to the story of an administration and the larger background of how the concept of an administration changed between the 1980s and the early years of the twenty-first century. A first heroic figure takes the form of a “Schumpeterian” entrepreneur : Pierre achieved a pioneering “bureaucratic feat” in the early 1980s when, within the world of French cultural diplomacy permeated by the notion of cultural legitimacy, he legitimized the illegitimate cause of television, renaming it a technological innovation, i.e. satellite broadcasting. The second figure is a “manager”, Paul, who took over at the end of the 1990s as the boss of an independent administration and the head of a network. He was an innovator in his recruitment and management methods, which were inspired by the private sector, and expert in the art of politicizing matters through his Minister. The third figure is Jacques, an entrepreneur on the defensive, who, in the years 2000, had to wind up the governing body in charge of foreign audiovisual policy, in a context of harsher competition between administrations, and following the new management reforms that aimed to redesign French foreign cultural policy and competition between administrations.

This article analyses the collective exercise of discretionary power, by studying the implementation of the enforceable right to housing (DALO) by local commissions. These collegial bodies bring together different actors involved in local housing policies, in order to select the “urgent and priority” situations among individuals who instigate an administrative procedure in order to acquire suitable accommodation. The collective interpretation of the DALO Act explicitly gives room for manœuvre. It is embedded in sectorial and localized power relationships on which it, in its turn, has an effect. Studying the social roots and unequal resources of the commission members, according to the organization they represent, enables their operating logic to be better identified. The definition of social housing applicants' situations then appears to be the result of a constantly renewed process of adjusting opposed and unequally represented interests to extra-legal criteria. Although guided by moral and economic considerations which contradict the spirit of the Law, the selection of beneficiaries still has a legal character, which legitimizes an accurate targeting of social housing allocations.