The French State in Question places the idea of the state back at the heart of our understanding of modern French history and political culture, and challenges accepted views of the Third Republic as a "weak" state. At its core is an examination of a central problem in French politics of the belle epoque: Should the employees of the state have the right to unionize, and to strike? The book examines this as a problem of intellectual history: it seeks to explain why this was such an intractable question, and does so by demonstrating the importance of legal theory and the idea of the state in French political culture.