Since its publication in 1978, The Government and Politics of France has established itself as the leading textbook on the government and politics of France. The book examines the major political institutions and arrangements of the Fifth Republic, and it emphasizes the diffuse, fragments, complex and elusive quality of political power. Since the last edition, there have been many important changes in France, which are now covered by Vincent Wright and his co-reviser, Sonia Mazey—developments such as the the dramatic decline of the Communist Party, and the no less dramatic rise of the extreme right. He draws on the logics and institutional distribution of power in the form of alternance in 1981 and co-habitation in 1986, as well as the situation of a government without a majority in 1988.