The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization

Rating:
Summary: A "must"!
Review: "The French Challenge" is a MUST for anybody who wants to understand contemporary France. This is provocative book which has many insights into the love/hate relationship of the French with globalization. A very solid piece of work and a great read.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial scholarship
Review: The central claim of this book--that France is actually adapting to globalization (whatever that means) better than the political rhetoric might suggest--is counter-intuitive and interesting. However, it is superficially researched and lumps together public opinion, social movements, interest groups, trade policy, etc., as if they were acting in the same field and part of a single, homogeneous phenomenon. Although the overview of trade debates in several sectors is interesting, the authors reduce antiglobalization politics in France to a nostalgic longing for French 'grandeur'. Such a label is perhaps applicable to some sectors of the French elite (Chevenement, Seguin, Pasqua) but certainly not to the wide variety of social movements and associations that focus on the democratic deficit and the increase of inequalities.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book
Review: This is a wonderful book, thoroughly researched and very well written, which should satisfy both Francophiles and Francophobes alike! Gordon and Meunier offer a balanced account of a contemporary France that adapts remarkably well to globalization but hides this adaptation under a cloud of anti-globalization and anti-Americanization rhetoric.