Conspiracism in Comparison: The Case of France

This case study was composed using the TaCT-FoRSED framework for explorative case studies for conspiracism research (Christoph et. al. 2025). This is a pre-print of the case study to be published soon in an edited volume.

This case establishes conspiracism not as an anomaly within an otherwise well-functioning democracy, but as a structural product of the specific tensions between France's formal democratic architecture, its substantive legitimacy deficits, its historically deep conspiracist cultural resources, and the contemporary intensification of social, economic, and informational conditions that activate these resources. However, the French case has structural factors that help in inhabiting the effect of conspiracy theories further like a strong institutional robustness, an active (and mobilised) civil society, and deliberative instruments in politics.