ABSTRACT
The rise of international political, economic, and demographic interdependence, along with the collapse of the Soviet empire and of the Soviet Union, has dramatically changed the problematic of European order. The first is the obsolescence of the Republican conception of politics, which has come at the precise time that the main goals of the founders of the French Republic looked to be uncontested. The second element is the explosion of corporatist, community and differentialist claims, and even of racism and the replacement of political representatives by a new generation of technocrats, "experts" and "specialists" who undermine the sense of personal involvement essential to citizenship. Since the French Revolution, the classic cleavage in the country's political and social life has been the battle over the Republican model. A small fringe of elites never accepted the demise of the Ancien Regime and other groups argued that the institutions of the Republic simply replaced one ruling class with another.
