Investigating Forty Years of French Politics Through Value Changes

This book argues for an approach based on values when trying to make sense of shifts and changes that occurred in French politics during the last four decades. Values play a pivotal role in structuring political views and policy preferences. They influence citizens’ attitudes and behaviours as well as reflect long-lasting political cultures and cleavages. After presenting the data collected within the European values studies, on which the six contributions included in this book build, we explain how these contributions highlight some major French political dynamics by scrutinizing key driving forces such as the individualization process, generational replacement or ideological consistency in economic and cultural beliefs, and by re-assessing how attitudes toward democracy, religiosity and nationalism shape political attitudes. Challenging dominant narratives of value crisis, this book sets up an agenda for future research on French politics through the lens of value change.

Céline Belot is Researcher at the University of Grenoble, France.