In response to the student protests, the French government has initiated a public consultation via a digital platform. If that sounds familiar, it could be because it’s exactly what it did, in 2019, in response to the Gilets Jaunes protests. ‘Right at the outset they warned they would only consider contributions submitted online,’ Magali Della Sudda and Grégory Rzepski write in this month’s edition. ‘But, in fact, the authorities never responded to the exercise at all.’ Pretending to listen has a long history. Even the idealistic Estates General of French Renewal, a huge public consultation exercise organised in 1945 by the National Council of the Resistance (CNR), was quickly sidelined by Charles de Gaulle.

Elsewhere, Italy’s far right is being outflanked by an even further right; Pierre Daum reports from the Algeria-Morocco border; in Cameroon, the AI revolution looks more like poorly paid, precarious work for Western firms. To dive into the stories behind the news, read ‘the longer view’ each month. Our entire archive is available online to subscribers.