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France is the fourth-largest Western industrialized economy. It has substantial agricultural resources, a large industrial base, and a highly skilled work force. A dynamic services sector accounts for an increasingly large share of economic activity (72% in 1997) and is responsible for nearly all job creation in recent years. GDP growth averaged 2% between 1994 and 1998, with 3% recorded in 2000.

Louis XVI's reign (1774-1792) saw a temporary revival of French fortunes through intervention (1778-1783) in support of Britain's rebel American colonies. But the over-ambitious projects and military campaigns the past century had produced chronic financial problems. Deteriorating economic conditions, popular resentment against the complicated system of privileges granted the nobility and clerics, and a lack of alternate avenues for change were among the principal causes of the French Revolution. This led to the formation of the First Republic on September 21, 1792.

Government economic policy aims to promote investment and domestic growth in a stable fiscal and monetary environment. Creating jobs and reducing the high unemployment rate has been a top priority. The Government of France has successfully reduced a double-digit unemployment rate in excess of 10% to 8%-9%, recently. France joined 10 other European Union countries in adopting the euro as its currency in January 1999. Henceforth, monetary policy will be set by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

France is a democracy organised as a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is a developed nation whose modern economy is the fifth-largest in the world in 2003. Its main values are expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The national government of France is divided into an executive branch, a legislative branch and a judiciary branch. The President of France has some direct executive power but most of the formal power resides in his appointee the Prime Minister of France, the choice of which in practice has to be approved by the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament (see below for a discussion of the division of power between the President and Prime Minister). Parliament passes statutes and votes the budget; it also controls the action of the executive through questioning and enquiry commissions. The constitutionality of the statutes is checked by the Constitutional Council. Finally, the independent judiciary is divided into the judicial branch (dealing with civil and criminal law) and the administrative branch (dealing with recourses against executive decisions), each with their own independent supreme court. In addition, the French government comprises various bodies checking against possible abuses of power and independant agencies.

The constitution does not contain a bill of rights in itself, but its preamble mentions that France should follow the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as well as those of the preamble to the constitution of the Fourth Republic. This has been judged to imply that the principles laid in those texts had constitutional value, and that legislation infringing on those principles should be found unconstitutional.

The French Republic or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents.

France surrendered to Nazi Germany early in World War II (June 24, 1940). Nazi Germany occupied three fifths of France's territory leaving the rest to the new Vichy collaboration government established on July 10, 1940 under Henri Philippe Pétain. Its senior leaders acquiesced in the plunder of French resources, as well as the sending of French forced labor to Nazi Germany; in doing so, they claimed they hoped to preserve at least some small amount of French sovereignty. The Nazi German occupation proved costly, however, as Nazi Germany appropriated a full one-half of France's public sector revenue.

One of the most important events during the Third Republic was the Dreyfus Affair, a political scandal that highlighted the dangerous levels of Anti-semitism and clerical power in the higher reaches of the French political and military systems, towards the end of the 19th century, which ultimately led to the speedy passing of the 1905 law on laïcité, split the whole nation and is referred to in most of the issues in France since that date.

Following the seizure of the (then separate) English, Irish and Scottish thrones by the Dutch prince William of Orange in 1688, the anti-French "Grand Alliance" of 1689 inaugurated more than a century of intermittent European conflict in which Britain would play an ever more important role, seeking in particular to keep France out of the Netherlands (the Dutch provinces and the future Belgium, then under Spanish rule).

Although ultimately a victor in World Wars I and II, France - much like Britain - suffered extensive losses in its empire, comparative economic status, working population, and status as a dominant nation-state. Since 1958, it has constructed a semi-presidential democracy (known as the Fifth Republic) that has not succumbed to the instabilities experienced in earlier, more parliamentary regimes.

The National Assembly may cause the resignation of the executive cabinet by voting a motion of censure. For this reason, the prime minister and his cabinet are necessarily from the dominant party or coalition in the assembly. In the case of a president and assembly from opposing parties, this leads to the situation known as cohabitation. While motions of censure are periodically proposed by the opposition following government actions that it deems highly inappropriate, they are purely rhetorical; party discipline ensures that, throughout a parliamentary term, the government is never overthrown by the Assembly.