Contenu du sommaire

While French political science did not succeed, at the end of the 19th century, in forging an acknowledged specificity among competing approaches (see Part I, April 1983, p. 181-219), it found its originality in its manner of dealing with «political issues » that history brings to the forefront. In order to reform, one needs to know; and the need for knowledge was often overriding. A genuine « science of political topics » emerged which studied, among other things, the functioning of republican institutions, the «social question» and socialism and colonial problems. Varions newer problems remained outside its scope (anarchism, thé Dreyfus affair, etc.). Research based on this problematique allowed some major epistemological obstacles to be removed, but proved unable to impose a new scientificity which would have favored the discipline's development in France.

This survey of the new approaches used by specialiste of thé new discipline of international relations starts from the observations in the Godelier Report, concerning the absence of a problematique, from which the study of international relations supposedly suffers in France. Very different conceptions of the study of international relations are already hiding behind the frequent invocation of «realism» or «empiricism». Although subject to discussion, the approaches inspired by marxism or the sociological method offer new research prospects. The problem lies less, in the end, in the absence of a problematique than in the juxtaposition of several problematiques. Because they are not correctly mode explicit, they tend to remain isolated and exclusive. Their points of convergence, indispensable to the consolidation of a discipline which too often seems to be looking for ils topic and its scope, should be found through a common effort.

La stabilité remarquable des équipes dirigeantes, la rareté des conflits entre la municipalité et le pouvoir central, la progression de la participation aux élections locales jusqu'en 1935 puis après la seconde guerre, l'accroissement de l'abstentionnisme, d'une part, et, d'autre part, l'élargissement de l'interventionnisme municipal, constituent quelques-unes des principales tendances de l'évolution du pouvoir municipal à Toulouse depuis 1884. On peut dégager trois modèles de démocratie communale : la démocratie clientéliste radicale (1888-1912), la machine politico-administrative du socialisme munici­pal (1925-1940), la technostructure locale périphérique (1959-1971). Ces modèles représentent à la fois des stades historiques d'un processus général de changement de l'institution municipale et des formes de gouvernement local liées aux objectifs et aux pratiques politiques spécifiques des équipes municipales. The remarkable stability of the ruling teams the paucity of conflicts between the municipality and central power, the progression of participation in local elections until 1935 and then, after World War II, the increase of abstentionism on the one hand, and on the other, the growth of municipal intervention, are examples of some of the major trends in the evolution of municipal power in Toulouse since 1884. Three patterns of municipal democracy can be observed: radical clientelisi democracy (1888-1912), the political-administrative machine of municipal socialism (1925-1940), the local peripheric technostructure (1959-1971). These patterns represent both historic stages of a general process of change in the municipal institution, and forms of local government linked to the objectives and to the specific political practices of municipal teams.

Starting from empirical data, the elite of French joumalists is subjected to an analysis which reveals the difficulty of defining it, focuses on the legitimization process of this elite, and concludes that there is a congruence between journalists and the ruling class and society in general. Using a method combining both a logic of dispositions (P. Bourdieu) and a logic of situations (R. Boudon), Le. both a sociology of action determinism and a sociology of actors' autonomy, this is an attempt to rehabilitate an approach conceived in terms of «methodological determinism» and to illustrate its productiveness.

Failing pluralism, Poland has a plurality of political parties. Its three-party System, which associates the democrats (SD) and the farmers (PPU) to the power of the Communist party (POUP) has withstood the political effervescence of the 1980s as well as the introduction of the state of war. The very existence of the three-party System corresponds to the weight of social classes which are not very open to socialism (farmers, traders, certain parts of the intelligentsia). The permanence of the Polish three-party System shows that it is in itself an institutional System, governed by its own rules of conduct, and that it constitutes a System of ideology and action directed at the varions strata of Polish society. The aim of the «other» parties is to take into account a certain social specificity by managing the interests of the « middle classes » and by trying to spread and maintain the socialist ideology. They are a link between the hard core represented by the POUP and a social nebula always tempted to drift away. The institutional three-party System is thus based on a fragile dialectic of ideological necessity and the need for a certain autonomy favoring the allied parties.