The political society versus the civil society from the 1970s to today. The French democratic paradox

Everywhere man is free, he fells in chains. Such is the democratic paradox which gives the modern individual both a large space of freedom and the feeling to be deprived of any.

On top of the traditional separation of powers or Checks and Balances now lies the one of actors, organized within a Political and Civil Society. It is in the homeland of Enlightenment that these notions are so singular. Historically merged, they progressively broke apart and are now opposed to each other. It is true that the Political Society is going through important jolts, putting it in a difficult situation. However, one needs to specify the nature of these changes in order to determine if they are the symptoms of a crisis or the ones of a transformation. The political recourse to a Civil Society indeed idealized questions the essential link between the State and the individual, in other words citizenship. Combined with the rise of individualism, how can we reinstate the Social Link so essential in every society? The diversity of these questions illustrates the interest of this research. It analyzes both current issues by the light of the sources of our political organization and the stakes of the behavioral changes of our system's protagonists. This research does not aim at building a work plan whose risk would be to result to definite conclusion. Its goal is certainly not to bring objective answers or certitudeto all these issues but to gather the main landmarks and to organize them to subject our problematic to the debate.