Result: The Globalization Debate in France: The Attitudes of Political Leaders

This chapter focuses on the social use of the term “globalization” by a special type of social actor in a specific country. Most French analysts describe globalization as a process that weakens political power. As long as globalization becomes, at least in discourse, an object of political action, the leader re-projects his traditional face in front of his audience: a person capable of understanding and ruling reality, who can create norms and identities, and who is legitimized to do so. Even at the national level, people could have doubts about the ability of leaders of a middle-sized nation like France to control or rule an international and powerful international trend. Political responses to globalization can be in the form of advocacy of a new form of international governance. Some leaders like A. Madelin construct and project a new and modest political face through their globalized frames.