I.

Introduction

Lionel Jospin (1937- ), French diplomat, academic, and politician, Prime Minister of France (1997-2002). Jospin was born into a Protestant Socialist family in Meudon, on the western side of Paris. His father taught disabled children and his mother was a midwife. As a teenager, Jospin was admitted to the Lycée Janson de Sailly, a prestigious high school in Paris, where he developed an interest in Marxism. In 1961 he entered France’s elite National School of Administration, the training ground of nearly all of France’s political leaders. After graduating in 1965, Jospin took a job in the French Foreign Ministry, where he focused on economic affairs. Jospin quit his diplomatic career in 1970 and became Professor of Economics at the University Institute of Technology of Paris-Sceaux near Paris, where he remained until 1981.