Toward a Comparative Politics of France

This chapter returns to the questions that were introduced in the Handbook’s Introduction. The first section identifies four distinct periods in the study of French politics, revisiting the outside-in/inside-out themes of the Handbook. The second section focuses on the individual chapters in more detail and classifies them in terms of what they tell us about the study of French politics and whether there has been convergence or divergence between the study of French politics in France and comparative work outside France. In the third section, potential explanations for trends across the chapters are explored in terms of three patterns: convergence, asymmetry, and divergence. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the future for a comparative politics of France.