The French State and the Challenges of the Twenty-First Century

Despite the way in which it is often portrayed by the French, the state has never been the eternal and universal figure embodied in the famous republican synthesis. Historians and political scientists have shown that the state is continually changing. It cannot therefore remain unaffected by the changes ushered in by the new century. In order to examine the way in which the French state is facing up to the challenges of the twenty-first century, we must first look at two crucial — and difficult — issues of definition