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Jacques Foccart
Jacques Foccart (31 August 1913 – 19 March 1997) was a French businessman and politician, best known as a chief adviser to French presidents on African affairs. He also co-founded in 1959 with Charles Pasqua the Gaullist Service d'Action Civique (SAC), which specialized in covert operations in Africa. His influence over French policy in Africa was so direct that Charles de Gaulle christened him with the nickname ''Monsieur Afrique'' ("Mister Africa"). From 1960 to 1974, Foccart was Secretary-General for African and Malagasy affairs under Presidents Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, and was pivotal in maintaining France's sphere of influence in sub-Saharan Africa (or '' Françafrique'') by putting in place a series of cooperation accords with individual African countries and building a dense web of personal networks that underpinned the informal and family-like relationships between French and African leaders. After de Gaulle, Foccart was seen as the most influential man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hubert Maga
Hubert Coutoucou Maga (August 10, 1916 – May 8, 2000) was a politician from Dahomey (now known as Benin). Born a peasant in 1916, Maga served as a schoolmaster from 1936 to 1945, during which time he gradually gained considerable influence among the uneducated. He rose to power despite regionalist politics in Dahomey, and was elected to Dahomey's territorial assembly in 1947 and founded the Northern Ethnical Group, later renamed the Dahomey Democratic Rally (''Rassemblement Démocratique du Dahomé''). In 1951, Maga was elected to the French National Assembly, where he served in various positions, including premier from 1959 to 1960. When Dahomey gained its independence from France on August 1, 1960, Maga was appointed to the presidency, and was officially elected to that post on December 11. During Maga's term of office, Dahomey's economy collapsed; there was little foreign investment and unemployment rose. In response, he launched a four-year plan in January 1962, the ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Fifth Republic
The Fifth Republic () is France's current republic, republican system of government. It was established on 4 October 1958 by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of France, Constitution of the Fifth Republic.. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the French Fourth Republic, Fourth Republic, replacing the former parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential republic, semi-presidential (or dual-executive) system that split powers between a President of France, president as head of state and a Prime Minister of France, prime minister as head of government. Charles de Gaulle, who was the List of Presidents of France#French Fifth Republic (1958–present), first French president elected under the Fifth Republic in December 1958, believed in a strong head of state, which he described as embodying ("the spirit of the nation"). Under the fifth republic, the president has the right to dissolve the national assembly and hold new parliamentary elections. If the president ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and two Îles des Saintes—as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings. It is south of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat and north of Dominica. The capital city is Basse-Terre, on the southern west coast of Basse-Terre Island; the most populous city is Les Abymes and the main centre of business is neighbouring Pointe-à-Pitre, both on Grande-Terre Island. It had a population of 395,726 in 2024. Like the other overseas departments, it is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union and the eurozone, the euro is its official currency and any European Union citizen is free to settle and work there indefinitely, but is not part of the Schengen Area. It included Saint Barthélemy and C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caribbean
The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America to the west, and South America to the south, it comprises numerous List of Caribbean islands, islands, cays, islets, reefs, and banks. It includes the Lucayan Archipelago, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles of the West Indies; the Quintana Roo Municipalities of Quintana Roo#Municipalities, islands and Districts of Belize#List, Belizean List of islands of Belize, islands of the Yucatán Peninsula; and the Bay Islands Department#Islands, Bay Islands, Miskito Cays, Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina, Corn Islands, and San Blas Islands of Central America. It also includes the coastal areas on the Mainland, continental mainland of the Americas bordering the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zaire
Zaire, officially the Republic of Zaire, was the name of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1971 to 18 May 1997. Located in Central Africa, it was, by area, the third-largest country in Africa after Sudan and Algeria, and the 11th-largest country in the world from 1965 to 1991. With a population of over 23 million, Zaire was the most populous Francophone country in Africa. Zaire was strategically important to the West during the Cold War, particularly the U.S., as a counterbalance to Soviet influence in Africa. The U.S. and its allies supported the Mobutu regime (1965–1997) with military and economic aid to prevent the spread of communism. The country was a one-party totalitarian military dictatorship, run by Mobutu Sese Seko and his Popular Movement of the Revolution. Zaire was established following Mobutu's seizure of power in a military coup in 1965, after five years of political upheaval following independence from Belgium known as the Congo Crisis. Zaire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The National Interest
''The National Interest'' (''TNI'') is an American bimonthly international relations magazine edited by American journalist Jacob Heilbrunn and published by the Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., that was established by former U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1994 as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. The magazine is associated with the realist school of international studies. History Founded in 1985 by American columnist and neoconservatism advocate Irving Kristol, the magazine was until 2001 edited by Australian academic Owen Harries. In 2001, The National Interest was acquired by The Center for the National Interest, a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., that was established by former U.S. President Richard Nixon on January 20, 1994, as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. In 2005, ten editors of ''The National Interest'' resigned due to different viewpoints regarding the magazine's acqu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Affairs
International relations (IR, and also referred to as international studies, international politics, or international affairs) is an academic discipline. In a broader sense, the study of IR, in addition to multilateral relations, concerns all activities among states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—as well as relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs). International relations is generally classified as a major multidiscipline of political science, along with comparative politics, political methodology, political theory, and public administration. It often draws heavily from other fields, including anthropology, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, and sociology. There are several schools of thought within IR, of which the most prominent are realism, l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1995 French Presidential Election
Presidential elections were held in France on 23 April, with a second round on 7 May. Background The Socialist incumbent president François Mitterrand, who had been in office since 1981, did not stand for a third term. He was 78, had terminal cancer, and his party had lost the 1993 French legislative election in a landslide defeat. Since then, he had been " cohabiting" with a right-wing cabinet led by Prime Minister Édouard Balladur, a member of the neo- Gaullist RPR party. Balladur had promised the RPR leader, Jacques Chirac, that he would not run for the presidency, but as polls showed him doing well and he had the support of many right-wing politicians, he decided to run. The competition within the right between Balladur and Chirac was a major feature of the campaign. Meanwhile, the left was weakened by scandals and disappointments regarding Mitterrand's presidency along with the unemployment rate hovering around 10%. In June 1994, former Prime Minister Michel Rocar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was a French politician and statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest holder of that position in the history of France. As a former First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Socialist Party First Secretary, he was the first Left-wing politics, left-wing politician to assume the presidency under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic. Due to family influences, Mitterrand started his political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy France, Vichy regime during its earlier years. Subsequently, he joined the French Resistance, Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office several times under the French Fourth Republic, Fourth Republic. Mitterrand opposed Charles de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, he outmanoeuvred rivals to become the left's standard bearer in the 1965 French pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French Socialist Party
The Socialist Party ( , PS) is a Centre-left politics, centre-left to Left-wing politics, left-wing List of political parties in France, political party in France. It holds Social democracy, social democratic and Pro-Europeanism, pro-European views. The PS was for decades the largest party of the "French Left" and used to be one of the two major political parties under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic, along with the Rally for the Republic in the late 20th century, and with the Union for a Popular Movement in the early 2000s. It is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance and Socialist International. The PS was founded in 1969 from a merger of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), the Convention of Republican Institutions led by François Mitterrand, and other groups. In the 1970s, the PS surpassed the French Communist Party, Communist Party's share of the left-wing vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cohabitation (government)
Cohabitation is a system of divided government that occurs in semi-presidential systems, such as France, whenever the president is from a different political party than the majority of the members of parliament. It occurs because such a system forces the president to name a premier (prime minister) who will be acceptable to the majority party within parliament. Thus, cohabitation occurs because of the duality of the executive: an independently elected president ''and'' a prime minister who must be acceptable both to the president and to the legislature. France Cohabitation took place in France in 1986–1988, 1993–1995, and 1997–2002. The president faced an opposition majority in the National Assembly and had to select his government from them. Origins Cohabitation was a product of the French Fifth Republic, albeit an unintended one. This constitution brought together a president with considerable executive powers and a prime minister, an executive responsible before Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
