The French Review

The author argues that rebuilding France's political system and institutions after several years of Nazi occupation stretched far beyond the initial period of reconstruction that directly followed World War II and the replacement of the Vichy collaborationist regime. He then makes the remarkable claim that at the political level, the process he calls "the long reconstruction" (4) of France was actually not complete until the end of the Algerian war, or not before 1962. He thus argues that, contrary to widespread belief, France's post war political reconstruction did not end in 1958 with General de Gaulle's second rise to executive power, the ensuing start of the Fifth French Republic, and the writing of a new Constitution. To shore up his extensive argumentation (the book is over 400 pages long), the author goes as far back as the 1930s and the period of Nazi occupation itself to cast a light on how developments during these earlier intervals influenced what happened in France after the war in terms of political reconstruction. Making his point through a multi-pronged approach, the author focuses his research and narrative on so-called "policy domains," such as taxation or family matters, in order to analyze France's political reconstruction. Five of the seven chapters in the book deal with various policy domains. This original approach yields a myriad of enlightening information on the topic. For example, as part of his chapter on taxation, the author revisits the little-known history of Poujadisme, a failed populist movement that is particularly interesting to rediscover in the current age of Trump and Brexit. In addition to policy domains, the first chapter deals with the liberation of France and the re-establishment of the government in the wake of the Nazi retreat. In the last chapter, the author explains how, in his opinion, the Algerian war constitutes the last step of that very long reconstruction. It is abundantly evident that this book is thoroughly researched and well written. That said, the book was not crafted with a [End Page 217] non-specialist audience in mind. For all its scholarly merits, the narrative is rather dry and not always engaging.