Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [18]
President Charles de Gaulle resigned in 1969 and was succeeded by the Gaullist leader Georges Pompidou, who was in turn replaced by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1974. François Mitterrand, long-time head of the Partie Socialiste (PS), was elected president in 1981 and, as the business community had feared, immediately set out to nationalise privately owned banks, large industrial groups and various other parts of the economy. However, during the mid-1980s Mitterrand followed a generally moderate economic policy and in 1988, aged 69, he was re-elected for a second seven-year term.
In the 1986 parliamentary elections the right-wing opposition led by Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris since 1977, received a majority in the National Assembly; for the next two years Mitterrand was forced to work with a prime minister and cabinet from the opposition, an unprecedented arrangement in French governance known as cohabitation.
In the May 1995 presidential elections Chirac enjoyed a comfortable victory (Mitterrand, who would die in January 1996, decided not to run again because of failing health). In his first few months in office Chirac received high marks for his direct words and actions in matters relating to the EU and the war in Bosnia. His cabinet choices, including the selection of ‘whiz kid’ foreign minister Alain Juppé as prime minister, were well received. But Chirac’s decision to resume nuclear testing on the French Polynesian island of Mururoa and a nearby atoll was met with outrage in France and abroad. On the home front, Chirac’s moves to restrict welfare payments (designed to bring France closer to meeting the criteria for the European Monetary Union; EMU) led to the largest protests since 1968. For three weeks in late 1995 Paris was crippled by public-sector strikes, battering the economy.
In 1997 Chirac took a big gamble and called an early parliamentary election for June. The move backfired. Chirac remained president but his party, the Rassemblement Pour la République (RPR; Rally for the Republic), lost support, and a coalition of Socialists, Communists and Greens came to power. Lionel Jospin, a former minister of education in the Mitterrand government (who, most notably, promised the French people a shorter working week for the same pay), became prime minister. France had once again entered into a period of cohabitation – with Chirac on the other side of the table this time around.
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top picks
HISTORICAL READS
Paris: The Secret History, Andrew Hussey (2006) – a book not unlike Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography, this colourful historical tour of Paris opens the door to (but does not solve) many of the city’s mysteries.
Paris Changing, Christopher Rauschenberg (2007) – modern-day photographer follows in the footsteps of early-20th-century snapper Eugène Atget in this ‘spot the difference’ album of before-and-after photos.
The Flâneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris, Edmund White (2001) – doyen of American literature and long-term resident (and flâneur – ‘stroller’) of Paris, White notices things rarely noticed by others – veritable footnotes of footnotes – in this loving portrait of his adopted city.
The Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City, Alistair Horne (2002) – this superb, very idiosyncratic ‘biography’ of Paris divides the city’s history into seven ages – from the 13th-century reign of Philippe-Auguste to President Charles de Gaulle’s retirement in 1969.
Is Paris Burning? Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre (1965) – this is a tense and very intelligent reportage of the last days of the Nazi occupation of Paris.
Paris: The Biography of a