Alexandre Chabert

His two Master thesis (1st and 2nd year), supervised by Marc Lazar, focused on the decline of Communist Party in Italy and France.

His PhD thesis, supervised by Marion Fontaine, takes the form of a comparative History of the crisis of left-wing political parties in France and in Italy. It is yet a “bottom-up” comparison, id est including protagonists’ experience. This study questions the link between social structures’ transformations and left-wing parties’ crisis, as well as mechanist explanations usually suggested to explain this decline (working-class crisis, collapse of the East, introduction of “neoliberalism” theories in left-wing parties programs, etc.). If these hypotheses were true, they will have to be understood as closely as possible to local reality and direct witnesses experience, through an extensive use of oral history. The research is based on the study of four territories, two in Italy and two in France: Province of Turin, Province of Bologna, Seine-Saint-Denis and Var. It begins in the late 1970s and ends in the early 2000s, a period that today could absolutely be considered by historical studies.