Political Participation in France

Abstract

To start on a journey to study the relevance of political activism in France, the reader will need to review a large legacy of knowledge and research on this very topic. Fortunately, Chapter 2 is a bridge between the general research paradigm in this book and the vast amount of information available already. As an essential step to understanding and following the development of the hypotheses in later chapters, the sections that follow will briefly highlight the literature’s position on France’s historical activism and the problems of terminology when someone refers to political participation and its presumed meanings. Once the different terms used to address the study of political action are clear, the last section in the chapter will introduce the first data on political participation in France. As a conclusion this chapter underlines the most important elements that have been accounted for as responsible for political action. The variables presented are a further link between the general findings of political participation research and the more specific French works on the same subject. The gradual shift from the general literature to the more specific variables of analysis allows an easier transition to the technicalities of the index construction section in Chapter 5. The essence of political activism among the French will appear very clearly.