Strategy and Contradiction in the Victory of French Socialism

The almost iron law of anti-incumbency which gripped the French Fifth Republic for over 20 years saw consistent pendulum swings at each major election from 1981 to 2002. The French electorate repeatedly punished the broken electoral promises and poor governmental records – especially on unemployment – of mainstream Left and Right alike. This should have played into French Socialist hands in 2007, but the Parti Socialiste (PS) and Ségolène Royal failed to exploit the opportunities presented by disaffection with Chirac’s record and uncertainty about Sarkozy (Clift 2007). At first glance, it would seem that the current French political situation ought to send the pendulum hurtling back in the French Left’s favour. President Sarkozy’s popularity ratings are plumbing historically low depths, and the French economy is struggling to emerge from recession whilst unemployment creeps stubbornly upwards. Furthermore, the French public finances are in a parlous state, and the new Fillon government will have to enact deeply unpopular austerity measures and cuts in the run up to the elections. The puzzle which this article explores is why, despite this following wind, the Socialists are by no means assured of sailing to victory in the forthcoming presidential elections, and why the re-election of Sarkozy seems at present the most likely outcome in 2012. It begins by looking at the fundamental ideological reasons for French Socialism’s lack of dynamism and renewal, before illustrating the French Socialists’ programmatic shortcomings in their handling of the recent pensions crisis. The problems facing contemporary French Socialism are then further explained by examining the party’s organisational characteristics which constitute structural impediments to its effective performance within the presidentialised Fifth Republic. Turning to the build-up to and candidate selection process for the presidential election, likely difficulties facing the PS during 2011 and 2012 are identified. The article concludes by noting the ongoing difficulties the PS, and its presidential candidate, will face in constructing a viable presidential and parliamentary majority given the current configuration of the French party system, and the extent and distribution of electoral support for the Left.

1977

This article examines the political transformations experienced by the Communist Party and the evolution of the radical left in France in the twenty-five years after 1989. Interpreting the Communist Party and Left Front as anti-establishment, that is, opposed to the political elite, but pro-system parties that are not interested in changing the nature of democratic governance. The peculiarities of French communism and its political philosophy are illustrated. Finally, this study considers the constituent process of the Front. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Front plays the role of a political federation to the left of the Socialist Party with positive electoral results.

2013

The French Socialist Party (Parti socialiste-PS) was returned to power in 2012 after a decade in opposition. How was it able to win an election again? How, previously, had it reacted to defeat in 2007? These two questions are the key ones that will be addressed in this chapter. The left's victory in 2012 was explained in part by the unpopularity of the outgoing president, rather than by any inherent dynamics occurring in the left itself (Jaffré, 2012). But we must not forget that the right was also very unpopular in 2007, that the economic outlook was grim and that the left had won all the intermediary elections since 2004. A united PS, with a credible programme and led by a politician commanding broad respect, appeared to be a necessary, if not a sufficient, condition for victory in 2012. To make sense of current developments, I will begin by situating the PS within the broader context of left-wing party politics in France.

The Three World of Social Democracy (edited by Ingo Schmidt), 2016

French Politics, 2004

The creation of the UMP after the 2002 presidential election began a new cycle for the French Right. It can be characterized as the refoundation of a party by merger. The reasoning behind the partial unification of the parties of the Right can be understood only in terms of the ...

The last weeks of 1989 concluded a year of turmoil in Eastern Europe and the fall of communist regimes. For a significant portion of the French population the direction of European communism was relevant not only to the European political landscape but to their own beliefs and identities. In Western Europe and America, the press heralded the 1989 communist collapses in Eastern Europe, from groundbreaking Polish elections in June to the fall of the Berlin wall in November, as great victories in the struggle against communism. But relying upon the English speaking press alone to examine Cold War era events provides a misleading image of how Western countries viewed Communist states and the events which led to their collapse. The political climate in America and Britain was highly conservative; however, the political right did not hold as strong a position in other Western nations, even those in the NATO alliance. In places such as Italy and France, viable Communist parties and strong leftist movements existed along with press outlets which represented their ideas and those of a constituency which took a less straightforward view of the West's moral position. The French Communist Party (PCF) achieved some degree of electoral success throughout the Cold War. The collapse of Communist governments and ensuing dramatic power shifts raised a number of questions about the French left which my article considers. How did Communists and Socialists in France, view the fall of states who espoused, in theory, the forms of government and social management their own parties advocated? And how did the Socialist and Communist parties in France relate to their ideological counterparts in Eastern Europe? This article employs French newspapers, political journals, and party communications to discuss the French left's expectations for the future of communism in Eastern Europe, their views on the revolutions of 1989, and their hopes and fears for the future of Eastern Europe as the political climate evolved.

Modern & Contemporary France, 2017

With the extraordinary rise of Emmanuel Macron and the near complete collapse of the Parti Socialiste (PS), the past year has seen arguably the most dramatic upheaval in the French party system since 1958. This article develops a political economy analysis of the Hollande quinquennat to better understand how we arrived here. It argues that Hollande's programmatic failures must be situated within an institutional account of the constraints of the presidential logic of the Fifth Republic and tensions between competing factional courants within the Socialist Party. Here we shed fresh light on this moment of rupture by situating a political economy analysis of Hollande's economic programme within a more intricate institutional analysis of the specificities of the PS and its position within the Fifth Republic. The article traces the most salient political developments of the 2017 elections and outlines the political landscape of the contemporary French left. These factors explain why, after numerous crises of French socialism, this time is different. L'année passée a connu l'irrésistible ascension d'Emmanuel Macron et l'effondrement du Parti socialiste (PS), potentiellement le bouleversement le plus dramatique du système des partis français depuis 1958. Cet article développe une analyse de l'économie politique du quinquennat Hollande pour mieux comprendre comment cette situation s'est développé. Il est nécessaire que les échecs du programme économique de Hollande soient situés dans un compte institutionnel des contraintes de la logique présidentielle de la Ve République et les tensions entre les courants au coeur du PS. Ensuite, l'article utilise ce compte pour tracer les développements politiques les plus profonds de la période électorale de 2017 et détaille le paysage politique de la gauche en France aujourd'hui. L'article suggère que, ce faisant, il est possible de comprendre pourquoi, après plusieurs crises du socialisme français, celle-ci est différente.

2014

How can the resurgence of the FN since 2007 be explained? Has it finally normalise? Has the mainstream right radicalised and thus, helped in such a process? How did the FN benefit from the rejection of mainstream politics? This paper will argue that this renaissance is due to endogenous and exogenous political factors that had a 'normalising-effect' on the FN's rhetoric and, in turn, placed it at the point of confluence between national and social protests, hence widening its electoral basis. To demonstrate that, we will, firstly, analyse the strategy of de-demonisation, focusing on the replacement of anti-semitism by islamophobia and the corruption of republican symbols. Secondly, the era of Sarkozism and the strategy of droitisation will be reviewed and we will be able to assess the extent to which the mainstream right has radicalised and, thus, legitimised the FN's rhetoric. Finally, we will explain the widening of Le Pen's electorate by looking at her social volte-face on political economy and the way she profited from both the economic and political crisis.