The French State in Question

The French State in Question places the idea of the state back at the heart of our understanding of modern French history and political culture, and challenges accepted views of the Third Republic as a “weak” state. At its core is an examination of a central problem in French politics of the belle epoque: Should the employees of the state have the right to unionize, and to strike? The book examines this as a problem of intellectual history: it seeks to explain why this was such an intractable question, and does so by demonstrating the importance of legal theory and the idea of the state in French political culture.

Author Biography

Stuart Jones is Reader in Intellectual History at the University of Manchester. He has written widely on British and French intellectual history and political thought, chiefly of the nineteenth century. His books include The French State in Question (CUP, 1993), Victorian Political Thought (Palgrave, 2000), and Intellect and Character in Victorian England: Mark Pattison and the Invention of the Don (CUP, 2007). He also edited Comte’s Early Political Writings for the Cambridge Texts in Political Thought series (CUP, 1998).