[LINK] French Power

[rfmcdonald]

John Quiggin has started an interesting thread on Crooked Timber about French pol;itical culture and the Chirac government. He starts the discussion off with the below astute remark.

Much of the reason why French Gaullists annoy US Republicans is that they have so much in common. There’s little doubt that, if Chirac had the kind of global power that Bush does, he’d abuse it in exactly the same way. Australians and New Zealanders, who’ve seen Chirac and his predecessors throwing their weight around in the South Pacific (long used as the site for French nuclear tests), are well aware of this. The same kind of heavy-handedness is evident in domestic policy and seems to have contributed to the riots.