Les renouveaux de l'histoire politique française du contemporain

Abstract

The Modern French Political History has been significantly transformed over the last twenty years. Apart from the pluralism of disciplinary approaches -law, political science, history- Pierre Rosanvallon's seminal work represents a landmark for the specialists of the political period inaugurated by the French Revolution. After presenting this historiography, we take a precise example in order to show the interest of these new approaches. Even though the history of the Conseil économique et social has been relatively neglected by scholars, it remains the third French constitutional assembly of the twentieth century. It held a specific position within the institutional framework in that it was not elected by universal suffrage but was considered by its members to be one of the rare "institutional representations of civil society". The successive attempts to create the Conseil économique et social during three different republics -in 1925, 1946 and 1958- offer an opportunity to connect the theoretical debates on the competing forms of democracy and the specific institutional experiences. By focusing on the composition, responsibilities and functioning of the different councils as well as on the debates which consistently accompanied their establishment, a series of questions emerge about elections, notions of representation, and sovereignty in modern political regimes. Inspired by Pierre Rosanvallon's political historical perspective, this study offers a new approach on the institutions, "corporate" tendencies, and interest groups of the French republican model.