Europe’s political earthquakes since 1989 have posed a formidable challenge for European Studies at SAIS. These essays on France are part of a continuing set of projects – “Discovering the New Europe” – whereby we have tried to rise to the occassion.
The authors come to SAIS, revise their lectures and seminars, and we publish the results. The whole process has been a wonderful tonic for our program and for SAIS as a whole, and helped us greatly to adapt our curriculum and scholarship to the new European situation. Of the six principal authors presented here, one is Patrick McCarthy, Professor of European Studies at the SAIS Bologna Center, and a frequent writer on French political economy and culture. Of the remaining five, two are French academics analysts – Jean-Claude Chesnais and Yves Boyer. The three others, Benoît d’Aboville, Raphaël Hadas-Lebel and Jean-Pierre Landau, are senior French civil servants with strong academic connections.