The Statecraft approach: A case study of Nicolas Sarkozy

This article makes the case for employing the Statecraft approach (with origins in British scholarship) to assess French presidents. It will be proposed that despite the differences that exist between political leadership in parliamentary Britain and semi-presidential France, the Statecraft approach serves as a useful operationalising tool with which to aid researchers in making both accurate and 'fairer' assessments of leaders. It steers away from the tendency in French and American literature's emphasise on the leader's 'personality', and instead encourages a broader and more flexible understanding of the broader political clique focused on the 'pragmatics of winning'. Through the utilisation of the Statecraft approach to assess the case study of the Sarkozy administration (2007-2012), it will be seen just how useful the British-developed approach is in advancing French scholarship in understanding and assessing its leaders.