“You can’t police yourself into social cohesion. You can’t police yourself into a political future,” explains Andrew Smith, historian of modern France at Queen Mary University of London. He identifies a central paradox confronting the French Republic: the state may possess the means to impose public order, yet lack the political capacity to address the demands and grievances driving mass mobilisation. Smith examines the tensions between social protest, presidential authority and democratic legitimacy amid renewed unrest in France: “500,000 people on the streets of France doesn’t happen by chance.”
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