As Hollande marks one year in office, would Dominique Strauss-Kahn have been better for France?

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Today is the one-year anniversary of François Hollande’s inauguration as the new president of France, having swept to the Elysée Palace with a mandate for a more subdued presidential administration and a leftward turn after the ‘bling bling’ administration of center-right president Nicolas Sarkozy. Hollande won’t face voters again for four more years, and by 2017, [...]

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What Iceland’s election tells us about post-crisis European politics

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Iceland was supposed to be different. In allowing its banks to fail, neo-Keynesian economists have argued, Iceland avoided the fate of Ireland, which nationalized its banks and now faces a future with a very large public debt.  By devaluing its currency, the krónur, Iceland avoided the fate of countries like Estonia and others in southern Europe [...]

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Why is the opposition to same-sex marriage so strong in France?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Kevin Lees

To the rest of the world, France is a virtual billboard for sexual freedom and sophistication. Sex, of course, made an entire generation or two of French and European cinema — from Les enfants terribles to Jules et Jim to Last Tango in Paris.  Paris, for nearly a century, has been the world’s premier city of romance, and its [...]

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M. Hollande’s little war — and what it means for French-African politics

Posted on January 15, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Over the weekend, France found itself engaged in a new, if limited, war — and a new theater of Western intervention against radical Islam. French president François Hollande confirmed that French troops had assisted Mali’s army in liberating the city of Konna — in recent weeks, Islamist-backed rebels that control the northern two-thirds of the country [...]

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Four reasons why Cope’s narrow Sunday win of France’s UMP leadership could be ruinous

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Kevin Lees

After a tense Monday during which both candidates declared victory and accused the other of fraud, it appears that Jean-François Copé (pictured above) has emerged as the presumptive leader of the French right. With just a 98-vote margin, Copé won the election for general secretary of the center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for [...]

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The French right prepares to choose Sarkozy’s successor (maybe)

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Kevin Lees

France’s center-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP, Union for a popular movement) will vote on Sunday, November 18 to choose its next general secretary in what’s widely seen as a fight to get the upper hand on the UMP’s presidential nomination in 2017.  The UMP will choose between two key figures — former prime minister François [...]

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Who is Jean-Marc Ayrault?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Kevin Lees

On a day that François Hollande was inaugurated and held his first meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel, his appointment of a new prime minister in Jean-Marc Ayrault may be the third-most important news of day in French politics. Nonetheless, Ayrault’s appointment to lead Hollande’s government is the first clear sign we have of how [...]

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Could François Fillon have won Sunday’s French presidential election?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Kevin Lees

When I look at the final tally of votes in Sunday’s French presidential election – François Hollande took nearly 52% of the vote against incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy’s 48% — I cannot help but note that the margin is actually lower than in 2007, when Sarkozy beat Ségolène Royal with 53% of the vote. It’s quite stunning — [...]

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Three elections — and three defeats — for EU-wide austerity

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Kevin Lees

The concept of a ‘democratic deficit’ has long plagued the European Union — the EU’s history is littered with grand, transformative schemes planned by EU leaders that voters have ultimately rejected as too sweeping.  As recently as 2005, French and Dutch voters rejected the proposed EU constitution, smacking the EU elite for getting out too far [...]

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Hollande wins French presidential election

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Kevin Lees

François Hollande has been elected the president of France — the first such victory for a Parti socialiste candidate — or any center-left candidate in France — since François Mitterand’s reelection in 1988.  Exit polls show that Hollande has defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy with a vote of 52% to Sarkozy’s 48%.  If true, it would indicate [...]

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Hollande and Sarkozy move beyond debate: motion without movement

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Kevin Lees

French presidential finalists — incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Parti socialiste candidate François Hollande — faced off Wednesday night in what commentators are calling the most animated debate in the history of French presidential debates. In short, Sarkozy jumped into the arena as attack dog on any number of issues – defending his record on the economy in [...]

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French first-round presidential election results

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Kevin Lees

  The first round of France’s presidential election is now over, and the two leaders, incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Parti socialiste candidate François Hollande are both running hard for the runoff election on May 6 — just nine days away. The big story out of Sunday’s vote — the strong third-place finish of Front national candidate [...]

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France presidential first-round campaign comes to an end

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Kevin Lees

French voters go to the polls on Sunday for the first round of the presidential election. While the French media has been fixated on rules that would prohibit the early publishing of exit poll data on Sunday, and each candidate has been making a final push for votes, there’s not so much to analyze in [...]

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Marine Le Pen and the youth vote

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Kevin Lees

With 10 days to go until the French election, and with presumably more pressing topics to discuss, the campaign’s narrative has turned once again to Front national candidate Marine Le Pen — and her surprisingly strong support among the youngest voters. According to a poll published in Le Monde earlier this week, Le Pen wins [...]

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‘Hollande will destroy the French economy in two days’

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Kevin Lees

That blunt messaging is one of the reasons why Nicolas Sarkozy still has a shot to win reelection. He also claimed that, if elected, Parti socialiste candidate François Hollande would turn France into another Greece. All of this would be fabulously amazing positioning for a president whose record on balancing the budget is not stellar — public [...]

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