Frédéric Monier - Speech on France Culture: «Nicolas Sarkozy's imprisonment: what can the history of corruption teach us?»
Intervention by Frédéric Monier in the Questions du soir podcast: the idea« by France Culture published on Monday 20 October 2025.
Nicolas Sarkozy's conviction and imprisonment on 21 October 2025 revives an old French question: what does our relationship with corruption reveal?
Between indignation, defence of a «former head of state» and calls for a presidential pardon, the reactions reflect less an isolated scandal than a profound disturbance in public morality. Justice, virtue and political trust seem to speak different languages. From tolerance to distrust, what do these cases say about our collective relationship with justice, probity and power?
"The founding moment in the history of political corruption, or in the politicisation of the issue of corruption, was the French Revolution.”says Fréderic Monier. “In Robespierre's eyes, the only remedy against corruption was virtue”and the latter could not “exercise without terror”. Corruption“has many faces”and“one of these faces is electoral corruption”since we “invented in the 19th century a form of government based on election”. With the enlargement of the electorate, “fraudulent methods of obtaining votes are uncovered”. It is “to buy the honorary distinction more quickly, as it were”.
However, corruption is not only political, it can also be economic. “Since the 1780s, the French have also associated corruption with agiotage, a form of stock market speculation.”explains Frédéric Monier. At the time, speculation was “essentially on government bonds, i.e. on annuities, at a time of very high inflation”.