Schmidt in WaPo on Macron’s Landslide Victory

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Vivien SchmidtProfessor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was recently interviewed on the landslide victory of centrist Emmanuel Macron over far-right Marine Le Pen in the 2017 French presidential election. 

Schmidt was quoted extensively in The Washington Post on May 8, 2017 in an article entitled “Why the Populists Didn’t Win France’s Presidential Election.

From the text of the article:

“The rejection of Le Pen was a basic rejection of the extreme right and its racist, anti-Muslim sentiment,” said Vivien Schmidt, an expert in French and European politics at Boston University. “In a country that’s already experienced the extreme right in power before, you can put the rejection of Le Pen in a direct line with the rejection of Vichy.”

“It may be no surprise that we see this populist backlash against globalization and immigration in the U.K. and the U.S., because these were the countries where Thatcher and Reagan introduced the most radical neoliberal policies,” said Schmidt. “You had them in France to some degree, but never to the same extent.”

“People may be feeling insecure and left behind, but the situation is not nearly as bad” as in other countries, Schmidt said.

Prof. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. She has published ten books, over 100 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis.  Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). You can learn more about her here