France's local elections in March were a débâcle for President François Hollande's socialist government, resulting in a reshuffle and the appointment of a new prime minister, Manuel Valls. But the current disaffection with politics runs even deeper. Both the Left and the Right are divided, high unemployment persists, the economy is flat and the far-right Front National has made electoral gains. How does all this appear from the outside? Mediapart's Joseph Confavreux interviewed American academic Todd Shepard, an expert on modern French history, who believes that France's colonial past is still shaping its present, and not for the better.
In 2006 Todd Shepard, now an associate professor of history at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, published a book in which he developed a theory explaining the roots of contemporary France – The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. His thesis is that France's imperial and colonial history, particularly the conditions under which Algeria wrested its independence from France, shaped the country's modern institutions and continue to affect France today. But Todd Shepard also maintains that the strong presidency and weak parliament that have since characterised the Fifth Republic were not France's only constitutional options. And that the country has turned its back on the distinctive and innovative republican approach to nationality, citizenship and governance seen from 1958 to 1962 during the war of independence. Here he develops his views in an interview with Mediapart.
