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France is a unitary state. However, the various legal subdivisions, the régions, départements and communes, have various attributions, and the national government is prohibited from intruding into their legal normal operations.

A popular referendum approved the constitution of the French Fifth Republic in 1958, greatly strengthening the authority of the presidency and the executive in relation to Parliament. The French constitution establishes a semi-presidential system, where the President of France has a strong influence, but where, ultimately, the deciding factor is the majority of the French National Assembly.

During the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715), France was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Richelieu's successor (1642-1661) Cardinal Mazarin and the economic policies (1661-1683) of Colbert. Renewed war (1667-1668 and 1672-1678) brought further territorial gains (Artois and western Flanders and the free county of Burgundy, left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival powers.

France's founding membership in the European Union largely defines France's current foreign policy. The French Republic is furthermore a member of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and of the Indian Ocean Commission (COI), and an associate member of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS). France is also a leading member or the International Organisation of Francophonie (OIF) which gathers 51 fully or partly French-speaking countries.

France has 26 régions: 21 of these are in the continental part of metropolitan France, one is Corse on the island of Corsica (although strictly speaking Corse is in fact a "territorial collectivity", not a région, but is referred to as a région in common speech), 4 are overseas. The région are further subdivided into 100 départements.

France has a system of civil law, but jurisprudence plays an important role similar to that of case law. France uses a civil law system; that is, law arises primarly from written statutes; judges are supposed not to make law, but to merely interpret it (though the amount of judge interpretation in certain areas makes it equivalent to case law). Many fundamental principles of French Law were laid in the Napoleonic Codes. Basic principles of the rule of law were laid in the Napoleonic Code: laws can only address the future and not the past (ex post facto laws are prohibited); to be applicable, laws must have been officially published (see Journal Officiel).

The extinction of the main Capetian line (1328) brought to the throne the related house of Valois, but as Philippe IV's grandson, Edward III of England claimed the French crown for himself, inaugurating the succession of conflicts known collectively as the Hundred Years' War. The following century was to see devastating warfare, peasant revolts in both England (Wat Tyler's revolt of 1381) and France (the Jacquerie of 1358) and the growth of nationhood in both countries.

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.

Membership in France's labour unions accounts for less than 10% of the private sector workforce (in 2003, 8.2% of the workforce) and is concentrated in the education, manufacturing, transportation, and heavy industry sectors. Most unions are affiliated with one of the competing national federations, the largest and most powerful of which are the CGT, FO, and CFDT.

Following the Second World War, and especially the Fifth Republic, France embarked on an ambitious and mostly very successful program of modernization, under state impulse and coordination. This program of dirigisme, mostly implemented by right-wing governments, involved the state control of a minority of the industry, such as transportation, energy and telecommunication infrastructures, as well as various incentives for private corporations to merge or engage in certain projects.