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Since the 1980s, when Marxist and revolutionary projects were bowing out, a new, typically French ideology has arrived on the scene: republicanism. Everyone started claiming allegiance to the Republic and its values; no single word enjoys more support on either side of the political divide. The “republican model” has now become the French model. Identifying with the Republic has become the backbone of French identity. Broadly speaking, this republicanism embraces the French people’s concept of the state of law, their understanding of secularity and of the separation of the Church and the state, their concept of meritocracy, etc. And also how they settle specific scores from regional issues to the fraught question of the Muslim veil and, latterly, the burqa.

A glance at what is happening to their European neighbours will help them understand that there are different ways of implementing the ideals to which they adhere. Not only is this Republic not a privilege exclusive to France, but its principles should allow individual identities and communal life to work together, leaving each individual with a maximum freedom of choice and opportunities to express his or her convictions. Even if only in the way it handles claims of identity. Even, also, if only how it tackles the question of religion and its expression in politics. The French need to take a fresh look at their concept of the Republic in the hopes that they can then make it less arrogant, less narrow-mindedly French, in the hopes also that their current republicanism will stop being a form of authoritarianism that contradicts the principles of a democratic society.


A former pupil of the Ecole Normale Supérieur, Béatrice Durand has lived in Berlin for twenty years. She teaches at the French Lycée and the Freie Universität. She has lived with two cultures which gives her and ideal perspective to evaluate our republicanism and to compare it to what goes on over the Rhine. Her most noted work is Cousins par alliance. Les Allemands en notre miroir (Autrement, 2002).