The Mediatization of Presidential Leadership in France: The Contrasting Cases of Sarkozy and Hollande

This paper examines the mediatization of politics with reference to the French president (political actor), who enjoys certain resources structurally embedded in the office and exercises power within a set of institutional constraints, both political and media. More particularly, the paper critically applies the concepts of media logic and political logic to executive leadership in France, with a particular focus on the presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande. The paper thus has an explicitly comparative focus (albeit within a single national political communication system), contrasting the impact of media logic on two recent holders of the top political office in a major advanced democratic polity. The central argument is that Sarkozy’s presidential leadership, both symbolically and substantively, was influenced more by media logic than Hollande’s, notably in the first two years of the latter’s tenure (2012–14). The empirical core of the paper analyses and evaluates the two presidents’ media activities under three headings: news management; image projection; and the mediatisation of the intimate. It explains the contrasting media strategies of the two incumbents and evaluates their success. Although the case-study material is drawn from the experience of French presidential leadership, the paper has broader cross-national relevance. In emphasising the importance of agency (the relative autonomy of the incumbent) as an important variable in an assessment of the impact of media logic on executive leadership in France, the paper suggests that a similar agency focus (alongside structural variables) is relevant to the study of political leadership in other advanced liberal democratic polities.