Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 23 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines what the international literature tells us about French security and defense policy, but also what the French case teaches us about this literature. French scholarship on security and defense policy has demonstrated three main trends: the legacy of Charles de Gaulle’s vision and policies, a strongly policy-oriented production, and the influence of sociological approaches in French political science more generally. These trends have given the impression that the Fifth Republic’s security and defense was unique among Western democracies. The chapter tries to bring together the main elements of a research agenda that can connect the French case to the international literature, including: expanding the sociology of security and defense policy actors and institutions; analyzing the changing articulation between defense policy and war; and tracking the reaction of the French “strong state” to the the privatization of defense functions, the civilianization of the military, and growing international cooperation.

Keywords: France, security policy, defence policy, strategic studies, international relations, military, Charles de Gaulle

Bastien Irondelle

Bastien Irondelle was Senior Research Fellow at CERI, the Center for International Studies and Research at Sciences Po, Paris. In 2009–10 he was Deakin Fellow at the European Studies Center, St Antony’s College, and Visiting Research Fellow in the Changing Character of War Programme, University of Oxford. His book, entitled La réforme des armées en France. Sociologie de la décision, was published by the Presses de Sciences Po in 2011.

Jean Joana

Jean Joana is a professor of political science at the University of Montpellier. He has written on comparative defense policy and civil–military relations. He is currently working on military procurement policies during wartime and on defense policy reform in Europe and the US. He is the author of Les armées contemporaines (Paris, Presses de Science Po, 2012). He recently published “The Varieties of Liberal Militarism: A Typology,” French Politics, 2014, 12 (2): 177–191 (with F. Mérand).

Frédéric Mérand

Frédéric Mérand is Professor of Political Science and Director of CÉRIUM, the University of Montreal Centre for International Studies. His book European Defence Policy: Beyond the Nation State was published by Oxford University Press in 2008. He has published several articles on European and French defense policy with B. Irondelle, S. Hofmann, J. Joana, M. Foucault, and C. Hoeffler.

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.