Arthur Goldhammer
Arthur Goldhammer is a writer, translator, and Affiliate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard. He blogs at French Politics. Follow him on Twitter: @artgoldhammer.
Recent Articles
The EU's Future in the Wake of the Greek Crisis
This weekend may mark a turning point for Greece's debt crisis, but Europe's problems don't stop there.
Jul 02, 2015
The endgame in the Greek crisis remains murky at this hour despite Alexis Tsipras’s apparent capitulation to the demands of Greece’s creditors: the so-called Troika or “Institutions” consisting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (EC), and the European Central Bank (ECB). With surprise developments occurring daily if not hourly, it is difficult to stand back from what has transpired to date in order to assess the implications for the future of the European Union and the Eurozone. Still, the exercise is worth attempting. A number of depressing conclusions emerge. No matter how the saga ends—whether in “Grexit” (Greek abandonment of the euro) and the self-imposed austerity that must inevitably follow, or in an agreement with the creditors to accept austerity on their terms, or in some intermediate and almost unimaginable limbo in which Greece remains in the Eurozone but without external financial support, which...
The Politics of Terrorism Lead Desperate Hollande to Embrace Sarkozy
In an effort to marginalize his nation's large far-right party in the wake of attacks by Islamist radicals, the president of France teams up with an old foe.
Jan 09, 2015
In recent days France has seen 13 people killed in 2 terrorist attacks. A third attack is underway as I write. What will be the political fallout from these events? Because the alleged attackers have been linked in press reports to a jihadi recruitment organization known as the Buttes-Chaumont network, it is natural to assume that the Front National (FN), a party of the extreme right noted for its hostility to what it sees as growing Islamist influence in the French suburbs, will be the primary beneficiary. Even before the attacks, some polls indicated that the FN, led by Marine Le Pen, is now the largest party in France. Le Pen’s party will thus likely receive a boost in municipal and regional elections scheduled for later this year. The Front National therefore threatens the two parties that have dominated the French political scene for 40 years: the currently ruling Socialist Party (PS) and the center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). Racked by a recent scandal that...
François Hollande’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
When the Socialist president of France threw in with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her austerity agenda, his own government was thrown into turmoil. The backstory involves ambitious rivals.
Aug 25, 2014
It began last Wednesday, when French President François Hollande gave Le Monde an interview in which he insisted he would stay the course with an economic policy that has seen his approval rating plummet from 60 percent, just after his election in 2012, to 17 percent this week. Hollande’s domestic strategy is part of his close and somewhat baffling alliance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the enforcer of European austerity. At the center of Hollande’s domestic policy is the so-called Responsibility Pact , which proposes shifting employer-paid payroll taxes to individual taxpayers, coupled with unspecified cuts in government spending. The measure is deeply unpopular, especially on the Left, so much so that it triggered a fronde , or insurrection, in the ranks of the president’s own Socialist Party. Prime Minister Manuel Valls nevertheless succeeded in mollifying the hundred or so dissident deputies, only to see the provisions of the Pact that were...
