Contenu du sommaire

Municipal election turnout in French cities An interpretive model of territorial variations in turnout applied to the 1983 municipal election in all French cities of more than 20,000 inhabitants makes it possible to test the validity of six central hypotheses. Based on ecological data, this multi-varied analysis contributes to drawing the profile of the most and the least voting cities, taking into account their social and political characteristics. The method used, building on research on electoral participation in France and abroad since Merriam and Gosnell, attempts to combine quantitative analysis and an understanding of local specificities.

Regional leagues in Italy : the emergence of regional representation outside of traditional party politics The recent emergence of regional leagues in Italian politics is a reflection of the rise of populism in several Western European states. The spread of populist politics is linked to the crisis of their party Systems. In Italy, the recent emergence of regional populist leagues is reflective of the differentiation of Italian civil society from a centralized political authority mediated through parties and the development of regional and local units as centers of economic and political legitimacy and representation.

A look at Chinese salons. Embryos of civil society and public sphere in China (1978-1989) During 1978-1989, the decade of reforms, semi-autonomous or autonomous institutions (embryos of civil society) appeared in China. They owed their birth to the development of horizontal links which escaped the control of the party state during the Cultural Revolution and asserted themselves starting in 1985. These embryos took varions forms : autonomous journals and research institutes, salons, editorial boards of sérial publications, associations parallel to official ones. The links between these institutions and the reforming faction of the party were also diverse. The analysis is based on information provided by the leaders of these institutions who took refuge in France following the repression of the democratic movement of 1989.

Thinking about modern democracy with, and against, Carl Schmitt Carl Schmitt is here viewed as a " revealer " who helps to highlight the constitutive role that pluralism plays in modem democracy, understood as a new political form of society. Schmitt's criticism of liberalism enables us to recognize the shortcomings of liberal democracy as well as the means to overcome them. But unlike Schmitt, who sees in the conflict between the democratic logic of identity and the liberal logic of pluralism the proof of the unviable character of liberal democracy, one can consider that this is not a contradiction but a tension specific to modem democracy, and to see in it the enabling condition for democratie pluralism.