Roundtable 3 – State-society relations and republican ideology

Abstract

The study of state-society relations and republican ideology really gets to the heart of French exceptionalism because it addresses the notion of the state: the French state as a dirigiste state and the way in which state-ideology and policies and political elites in general have promoted this notion of republican universalism. It also gets to the heart of French exceptionalism in terms of the analytical use of exceptionalism. Of course, on the one hand, there is a version of French universalism that came out of the French Revolution: how it promoted the state -a strong state -how individual identities were not important, how interest groups were bad and how everyone needed to look at France as a cas a`part. However, when this hypothesis is put to the test, we find that the state is not so different: maybe it is not so e´tatiste, maybe it is not so dirigiste and maybe other countries have universalist aspirations.I wanted to address this issue in terms of my own research area. I wanted to look at the problem of universalism as an important variable, as a driving force in gender politics. When considering gender politics in France (and the same is also true up to a certain point with ethnic politics), when issues relating to women's participation, women's movements and the sex distribution of power or gender roles are considered, republican universalism is a major explanatory factor in understanding the low level of women's representation, the poor performance in feminist policies outcomes. I have written about symbolic reforms in France (Mazur, 1995). This is a concept that has been developed by both non-French and French people who work on gender; I call it gender-biased universalism, which is that, on the one hand, there is a rhetoric about equality (there cannot be individual groups and gender differences) but, on the other hand, the state is extremely gendered. There is a social policy that is based on the notion that women are going to work part-time or stay at home and that men are going to be the breadwinners. In fact, this very gendered r