THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY: CONCEPTUALIZING PRESIDENTIAL POWER IN THE FIFTH REPUBLIC

One of the main tasks of those who study French politics is to explain the source of presidential power in the Fifth Republic. In French, two rival explanations have emerged: the state power thesis and the majority power thesis. For the former, presidential power is structural, being derived from the organization of the state. For the latter, it is conjunctural, being dependent on the nature of the parliamentary majority. The aim of this article is twofold. It introduces an English-speaking audience to the two existing explanations of presidential power. It also proposes an alternative explanation drawn from the recent literature of new institutionalism. An institutional explanation combines the strengths of the two existing approaches and provides a future research agenda for the study of presidential power in France.     

DISARMING SOMALIA: THE CONTRASTING FORTUNES OF UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIAN PEACEKEEPERS DURING UNITED NATIONS INTERVENTION, 1992-1993

This article examines the impact of ‘micro disarmament’during the United States/United Nations humanitarian interventionin Somalia, 1992–93. To this end, it considers the controversialnature of the UNITAF mandate, the disarmament experiences ofAmerican and Australian peacekeepers in Mogadishu and Baidoaand the lessons yielded from a comparative analysis. The argumentthat emerges is that the absence of a consistent strategy linkingdisarmament and political reconciliation, not peace enforcementper se, largely condemned the UN operation to failure. If theUS had positioned itself, like the Australians in Baidoa, abovethe warlords instead of between them, the picture for UN interventionin Somalia may have looked quite different. The integrated Australianapproach revealed that the international community, confrontedwith other Somalias, may yet have a wider choice than impotenceor muscular peace-enforcement.     

Notes on the empirical analysis of cyclical processes

Abstract. This short note discusses a few general data-related problems which occur in analyses of cyclical processes, and offers a brief overview of the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches and techniques that can be employed. The conclusion is that one should be flexible in approach; it is always possible to model data in more than one way. A prudent strategy will always include the specification and testing of various models.     

A Letter from French Cameroun

This letter has been extracted, by permission of M. Grandidier,from the proceedings of the Académie des Sciences Colonialesfor the 20th December, 1946. It gives a remarkably lucid pictureof the problems common to all parts of Africa, seen throughthe eyes of Government, and it loses none of its interest fromthe fact that M. Delavignette has now succeeded M. Laurentieas Political Director at the Ministère de la France d'Outremer.     

DOES MARRIAGE REDUCE CRIME? A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH TO WITHIN‐INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL EFFECTS*

Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The data consist of criminal histories and death records for all 500 men plus personal interviews, using a life‐history calendar, with a stratified subsample of 52 men followed to age 70. These data are linked to an extensive battery of individual and family background measures gathered from childhood to age 17 — before entry into marriage. Applying IPTW to multiple specifications that also incorporate extensive time‐varying covariates in adulthood, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course.