Publications

This paper analyzes European discourses and practices concerning the use of digital tools in the legal framework of participatory democracy, focusing specifically on the French case. If a legal framework is currently developing in France about participatory democracy, it is not really specific to the "local" field, nor is it specific to the use of digital tools. Use of new technologies in local participatory democracy takes place in the general legal framework. Nevertheless, this framework inevitably influences local French practices. In particular, it orientates participative processes towards principles of sincerity, equality, transparence and regularity, even if those principles need to be clarified. These principles are of even more importance ever since the Covid-19 crisis intensified recourse to digital tools. This is notably the case in environmental participation, where these digital tools question the enforcement of the right to take part in environmental decision processes protected by article 7 of the Charter for the Environment.

Despite the almost unanimous observation that democracy is in decline in Central and Eastern Europe, the countries in this part of the world form a highly heterogeneous democratic landscape, ranging from electoral authoritarianism to stable democracies, via forms of regression or democratic malaise. A comparative analysis of these countries shows that semi-presidentialism, through its formal rules and their effective exercise, accentuates the process of democratic erosion.

Putin's Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has resurrected a type of conventional warfare in Europe that was thought to have disappeared. A majority of the world's states, including those mobilized within the UN General Assembly, condemned it as a war of aggression. Russia is paying the price in a certain isolation and exclusion from many international organizations. And yet, two years after the start of the war, the prospects of a negotiated peace seem unlikely.

Changes in public opinion and civil society over the last decade have shown that citizens, particularly in old EU Member States, have developed more complex attitudes towards European integration. While the European project was previously generally described as a teleological depoliticized project, aiming at building peace and comforting growth, different competing visions of the European project are nowadays acknowledged and surface among the public on occasions, like referendums or treaty negotiations. While EU official narratives are documented by studies on the European institutions or the visions of leaders and parties, their empirical analysis at the citizens' level is still fragmented. Using focus group data in four countries (France, Portugal, Italy and Belgium) and three social groups (21 group interviews), we provide a comparative qualitative answer to how citizens envision European integration. Our results show that, first, official narratives do not fail to reach citizens, but they are also loosened, contested, and do not systematically produce a sense of common belonging. Second, they highlight the importance of socio-economic contexts, as well as national and personal experience in the re-appropriation of these narratives.

This paper analyzes European discourses and practices concerning the use of digital tools in the legal framework of participatory democracy, focusing specifically on the French case.If a legal framework is currently developing in France about participatory democracy, it is not really specific to the "local" field, nor is it specific to the use of digital tools. Use of new technologies in local participatory democracy takes place in the general legal framework. Nevertheless, this framework inevitably influences local French practices. In particular, it orientates participative processes towards principles of sincerity, equality, transparence and regularity, even if those principles need to be clarified. These principles are of even more importance ever since the Covid-19 crisis intensified recourse to digital tools. This is notably the case in environmental participation, where these digital tools question the enforcement of the right to take part in environmental decision processes protected by article 7 of the Charter for the Environment.

Vegetarian, faith-based, local and/or organic meals, flexible pricing, enrolment of unemployed children... Since the end of the 1990s, the issues associated with school catering have become contentious, in line with the more general politicization of food issues. This article examines the politicization of school canteens, based on two main hypotheses. Firstly, school canteen issues have become more visible and conflictual on a national scale because they are part of the two new cleavages that have developed within Western European political systems, between identity and cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and between ecology and productivism on the other. Secondly, the autonomy and diversity of local actors in implementation would explain the limited and differentiated influence of this national partisan politicization on the public debate concerning school catering at local level. To confirm these hypotheses, we analyze quantitatively (classification) and qualitatively two corpuses of over 10,000 press articles devoted to this subject, which allow us to distinguish between national and regional arenas of politicization; we also rely on five case studies in rural communes in the two départements, based on interview and observation material. These data confirm the hypothesis of national politicization through increased visibility and conflict, as well as association with new cleavages, but indicate that the effects of this politicization remain limited and differentiated at the local level.

Despite the flourishing of Buddhism in the Āndhra region of Eastern Deccan between the 1st century BCE and the 2nd century CE, our knowledge of the role of political power in facilitating its institutional development remains very fragmentary. This article surveys evidence of the involvement of rulers of the Sada dynasty (r. late 1st century BCE-late 1st century CE) in the establishment of monasteries and stūpas in the Krishna and Godavari river valleys. In particular, it discusses an exceptional relief on a coping stone from Amaravati stūpa preserved at the British Museum, whose accompanying inscription has thus far been neglected. A close reading of the iconography of this exceptional piece, in the light of the study of its inscription, shows how the visual narrative is highly relevant to the issue of royal patronage in Āndhra during the period of the Sada rule. Indeed, I argue that the relief showcases the royal establishment of the monastic complex of Rājagiri. In fact, members of the lineage stemming from this monastery played a very important role in the development of the Amaravati stūpa, and endeavored to stress, visually and epigraphically, their proximity to the royal power.

This article studies how social epidemiologists get involved in research carried out on rodent models to explore the biological pathways underpinning exposure to social adversity in early life. We analyze their interdisciplinary exchanges with biologists in a social epigenetics project-i.e., in the experimental study of molecular alterations following social exposures. We argue that social epidemiologists are ambivalent regarding the use of non-human animal models on two levels: first, in terms of whether such models provide scientific evidence useful to social epidemiology, and second, regarding whether such models help promote their conception of public health. While they maintain expectations towards rodent experiments by elevating their functional value over their representational potential, they fear that their research will contribute to a public health approach that focuses on individual responsibility rather than the social causes of health inequalities. This interdisciplinary project demonstrates the difficulties encountered when research in social epigenetics engages with the complexities of laboratory experiments and social environments, as well as the conflicting sociopolitical projects stemming from such research.