How do European states adjust to international markets? Why do French governments of both left and right face a crisis of public confidence? In this book, leading experts on France delineate the dramatic changes that have taken place in its polity, economy and society since the 1980s and develop an analysis of social change relevant to all democracies. Exploring immigration, industrial relations, generational conflict and new forms of governance in the polity and political economy, they find the roots of political discontent in the transformation of a society once thought to exhibit timeless continuities. Bringing a comparative perspective to the French case, they show how the politics of Europe is changing under international pressures. In this book, a new generation of French scholars challenges longstanding views of their nation as exceptional, charting dramatic transformation in all spheres of society that foreshadow the political conflicts of a new Europe.