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This article examines how police undercover techniques dealing with drug-trafficking were put on the agenda and legalised in France. Occurring in 1991, after Customs officers were imprisoned for an illegal sting operation, this first step was followed in 2004 by a further extension of proactive police powers. The 1991 law was enacted in an emergency situation, but it must be set in the context of a restructuring of Custom's interventions, as a consequence of European unification and the abolition of “inner borders”. At the time, this matter provoked a trial of strength between the various ministries involved (Budget, Interior and Justice). Retracing step by step the discussions between these stakeholders, the author shows that the ministry of Justice was able to use a window of opportunity to further its own objectives, to the great displeasure of the ministry of Interior which was unable to prevent it. Despite having to accept a compromise, however, the Customs managed to legitimise its future undercover operations.

Literature on municipal cooperation tends to oppose, in accordance with centre/periphery distinction, the urge for reform by the central State and the capacities of resistance of local governments, thus concluding that there has been a loss of power of the French State over the latter. This article contributes to rethink the political role of central State in intermunicipal institutions. Based on a long-term study of the French agglomeration of Chambéry, it focuses on the social and political effects of institutions. In particular, it analyses how State representatives originally played a key role in institutional design, giving local cooperation a decisive and sustainable orientation. In such a perspective, municipal cooperation appears to be a creature of the State' which, while escaping its initial purposes, works as a particularly effective mechanism of political integration.

This article focuses on how the movement of “informal” political clubs in Moscow suddenly turns to radical opposition during Perestroika (1986-1991). Depending on the periods they joined the clubs, their members tended to behave differently, and these time-lags between entry periods, however short they were, may account for the radicalisation of the movement. Though created by long-standing oppositionists, the first clubs took a moderate stand towards Party “reformers”. However, as the regime was losing its solidity, the movement swung to overt opposition with the entry of latecomers who had never been opposition-minded before but unexpectedly turned radical. This difference in positions can be accounted for by the actors' predispositions, the opportunities they had in their past trajectories, and the structure of political competition peculiar to the periods of their involvement in the movement.

The aim of this paper is to test some of the consequences of the second-order elections theory at the individual level. The main hypothesis tested is that the more distant people are from a first order election (national) the less they like their government. An individual research allows to determinate for what kind of people this theory works. The idea is to make temporal inferences using simultaneous individual data. We use the 2004 Eurobarometer data : it covers 15 countries and approximately 16 000 individuals. Our results confirm the second-order election theory at the individual level. They show also that both the differential volatility and the differential abstention explain the electoral defeat of the governmental party. Particularly, education is the principal variable to identify the people accountable of this defeat.

The two disciplines of political science and science studies both use the words “politics” and “science”, and yet their meaning are so different that they seem incommensurable : an effort is made to explain to political scientists the various uses of those words as it is used by the science studies practitioners and how they could relate to political science properly speaking. The paper shows that only one meaning (out of four) of the word “science” does actually distinguish it in a radical way from “politics” (which may take six different meanings). Once those meanings have been circumscribed, instead of defining distinct domains of science and politics, a more fruitful collaboration between science studies and political science could be developed around the following of issues.