Une certaine idée du politique

Taking stock of three decades of major historiographical developments, this collective work defends a certain vision of political history. Interdisciplinary, attentive to the practices of actors as well as to the creation and uses of knowledge, it must also be conscious of its role in society. Through some thirty contributions, historians, lawyers, political scientists, and sociologists show, without claiming to be exhaustive, how much the playing field of political history has expanded over the past thirty years. Four major areas are explored from the 19th century to the present day: the state and its administration; authoritarian regimes and democracy; the importance of dialogue between history and law in understanding politics; and political history outside the university walls. Each chapter presents an approach, a method, and an interpretation of politics to illustrate the undeniable vitality of a pluralistic historiography always in motion.