Contenu du sommaire

The Constitutional Council conquered, during the last 30 years, a leading place among the French institutions. Its visibility grew significantly, arousing spontaneous interpellations from common citizens. From a sample of mails sent to the judges of the Constitutional Council during the 1990s, this article draws up a first listing of the ordinary manners of how the institution is used. Via the categories of the expert, of the citizen confronting Justice, and the citizen taking the initiative of writing, it shows that at least three well differentiated types are implemented, which can be understood in reference to the perceptions of the nine wise men that the authors have, to the resources which they invest by writing, and to the retributionexpected from their initiative.

Trying to study collective action as a part of political participation, this article intents to deal with the voting behaviour of French radical left activists characterised by their “libertarian”criticism of the political system and the institutions of representative democracy. We seek toshow that despite their strong distrust of institutional politics, the activists maintain a high level of electoral turnout. This behaviour is the outcome of ambiguous relations to the electoral norm. As they face a tension between their socialization, which makes them value the right to vote, and their experience in radical protest movements, which makes them favour alternative forms of participation, they try to reconcile opposite ends through the use of political as well as symbolic justifications. Some however fail to justify discursively their electoral conformism, and the electoral act is for them somewhat automatic. As the vote is less politically invested, the temptation to withdraw from electoral participation grows.

The article deals with the role of local referenda in the transformation of local democracy in France and Germany. Depending on its status (consultative or binding), the referendum has a different influence on the time process of local decisions. Comparing a weak case where it is merely consultative such as France with a strong case where it is binding like in Germany enlightens the way the actors see the procedure and set new topics on the agenda of local authorities. The article analyzes the results of local referenda with an objective variable(juridical validity according to the legislation) and also with a subjective variable (satisfaction of the initiators' point of view) in order to understand the goal of the actors who use this procedure.

The data of the European Values Survey allow to show that French people claim for both equality and liberty. The wide consensus that surrounds these two values can be analysed with two sociological models. The first model establishes that the affirmation of equality and the affirmation of liberty can be cumulated. The second model gives a priority to the social norms of autonomy and merit on the social norms of need and equality.

Mediation is increasingly mobilized for the regulation of violent political conflicts. However, it has yet to arouse the interest of French political science. Essentially North-American, existing researches tend, in a realistic and often quantitative perspective, to over-estimate the role of the 'mediations' carried out by governments, diplomats or international institutions. After making a critical inventory of these publications, this article evokes the much less visible mediations carried out by actors as varied as NGOs, moral and religious authorities, foundations and academics. It attempts to analyze the political issues behind their actions and raises the question of whether these mobilizations are in keeping with a strategy of dissimulation and depoliticization typical of diplomatic State action, or if they constitute a more fundamental ethical rupture in methods of peacemaking.