From Sarkozy to Hollande: The New Normal? Alistair Cole (Cardiff University, UK), Sophie Meunier (Princeton University, US) and Vincent Tiberj (Sciences Po, Paris, France Paoper presented to the Annual Conference of the Political Studies Association, Cardiff, 25-27 March 2013 1 The overall aim of the Developments in series, form which this paper is drawn, is to provide an integrated and systematic assessment of current trends, drawing on the latest research but with sufficient background to make the book accessible for readers without a detailed knowledge of French politics. Two central questions guide the present volume. First, is there still a “French exception”, a uniquely French path to identity and globalization - if there ever was? And second, did the presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande represent mostly rupture or continuity with French political and cultural traditions? To answer these questions, rather than identifying a single encompassing theme, the book sets out to capture the past decade or so of French politics across five main dimensions: the core political and institutional evolutions; processes of partisanship, citizenship, communication and mediation; political attitudes and elections; domestic policy reforms and the multi-level, regional and international contexts. Though there is no overarching conclusion to this volume, the key approach underpinning most chapters is one of France’s contingent governance --the country caught between converging economic, European and international pressures and the robust defence of a particular model of republican integration. The main purpose of the introductory chapter on which this paper is based is to provide a temporally specific overview that integrates the five dimensions mentioned above and contributes to our understanding of the evolution of the French polity. This holistic overview will be engaged primarily via a narrative of the presidency of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) and, where applicable, updated and contrasted with that of the presidency of Socialist François Hollande, elected in May 2012. This introductory chapter thereby contains a full analysis of the leadership context of the Sarkozy presidency (upon which very little has been written in English since 2007) and provides insights into the early period of the 2 Hollande presidency. The temporal scope of the book is mainly that of the Sarkozy and early Hollande presidencies, but references and comparisons are made to other times and places where appropriate. This introductory chapter in turn examines claims that Sarkozy was an inappropriate president, a paradoxical president, and a crisis president. By contrast, Hollande based his 2012 campaign on being a “normal” president. However, early observation of the Hollande presidency suggests that normality was a clever political construction, designed to rally anti-Sarkozy feeling and based on the sharp contrast between the two personalities , rather than an objective state or a return to a more ‘normal’ i.e. Gaullien model of presidential practice. President Sarkozy, 2007-2012: an inappropriate president Sarkozy was elected on the premise that fresh style and fresh policies were connected: because he was bringing a different style to the Elysée palace, he would also bring about policy reforms. His hyperactive personality (especially compared to his predecessor conservative Jacques Chirac), his unconventional pedigree as the son of a Hungarian émigré (though he was as bourgeois as Chirac or the Socialist Francois Mitterrand), and his exposed private life were part of the package that he offered to French voters in 2007. Yet he was barely elected before accusations of inappropriateness surfaced with a vengeance. By the end of Sarkozy’s five-year term, during which he had to face a succession of personal and international crises, the prevailing interpretation was that he had been, above all, an inappropriate president. Nicolas Sarkozy acted in a way, especially during his first 18 months, which was deemed as unsuitable for the presidential office, tailor-made by the iconic General de Gaulle and only 3 slightly modified by his successors. In the first few months of his presidency, the ‘bling- bling’ President engaged in personal excesses that provoked widespread disapproval, from the post-election celebration at Fouquet’s to the luxury holidays offered by close business allies). In a country where the private lives of politicians are jealously guarded by a complicit media, Sarkozy’s personal, especially romantic, life was propelled to the heart of his governing style; in an intensely mediatised age, French electors were invited to share his personal misfortunes and joys (his divorce from Cecilia, his quick courtship and marriage to Carla, the birth of their daughter Giulia). More than the temporary extolling of the virtues of enrichment, Sarkozy was brought low by suspicions of nepotism; most obviously in relation to his own son, Jean Sarkozy, who was being groomed to head the body governing the Défense business district in Paris before public uproar forced the President to abandon his plan. This explicit importing of family life into the operation of the Elysée and the public representation of the Elysée office was novel. There was much less respect than under previous Presidents for the traditional boundary between public and private. While in part a comment on Sarkozy’s style, this blurring of public and private can also be read as a sign of the times, when a stolen image on a cellphone can instantaneously reach a worldwide audience. Herein lay one of the principal paradoxes of the Sarkozy period, as Raymond Kuhn shows in Chapter 8. On the one hand, there was a tightly planned strategy of media control, evidenced by a far closer intervention into the media than at any period since the 1960s (Kuhn 2010; Padis 2007). On the other hand, even the most tightly planned media strategy could not cope with the spontaneity of presidential interventions, such as Sarkozy’s infamous ‘casse-toi pauv’ con’ [‘get lost loser’] outburst at the Paris Agricultural Salon in 2008, which challenged the sense of appropriate behaviour and decorum commonly associated with the presidency. 4 In more subtle ways, also, the Sarkozy style broke with established presidential practices. His use of the triangulation strategy (adopting and adapting policies put on the agenda by political opponents, such as the Tobin Tax on financial transactions) was unusual for a French president, as it implied a detailed involvement in day-to-day politics. Moreover, these strategy was not typically French but had been inspired by the US Democrats and by Britain’s New Labour premier Tony Blair. Blurring the boundaries between left and right (by triangulation and even more by opening up the first government of Union pour Une majorité Populaire (UMP, conservative) Prime Minister Francois Fillon to socialists and representatives of civil society) was successful in the short-term, but ultimately produced confusion and dissension within Sarkozy’s own camp. Aware of the bad reputation acquired by his initial handling of the presidency, Sarkozy tried to correct and transform his presidential image to shore up his sagging popularity from 2009 onwards. Each fall a new Sarkozy was spun in the media. He worked hard to learn from his mistakes and adapt his behaviour in a way broadly deemed appropriate for the office, especially after the fateful first 18 months. The new behaviour was manifest in a conscious and rather successful retrenchment of his personal life from the public sphere. It also took the form of a series of successive, often failed, efforts by Sarkozy to detach himself from the day- to-day management of domestic policies. The 2007-2012 period witnessed an evolution from the early highly interventionist President to the consciously more focused figure seeking to symbolise national unity and crisis management. Initially ambivalent about Gaullist symbols, Sarkozy had embraced the Gaullist model by the end of his term as a means of restoring the authority of the office itself 5 (Landrin, 2009). As many political leaders before him, Sarkozy looked to salvation in the European Union (EU), in the international political economy or in foreign policy interventions (such as that in Libya) to make a difference, through adopting the regalien posture that only the Head of State can assume.If reshaping the presidency was central to Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign message, by late 2011 the office had almost tamed Sarkozy. Yet most French voters could not forget the early years of the presidency, and the 2012 presidential election was in many ways an anti-Sarkozy referendum and a repudiation as much of the man, as of his policies. What was the meaning of this personal unpopularity? Did it signify the rejection of an individual deemed inappropriate to exercise the highest office or a consequence of the new rules of presidential leadership introduced by the quinquennat? Or did it reflect a demand for different policies? Answers to these questions are provided in the chapters by Stimson, Tiberj and Thiebault (Chapter 11) and Gougou and Labouret (Chapter 10). Whichever interpretation is preferred, the low poll ratings were a harsh verdict on the President’s style of governing, especially as premier Fillon remained more popular than Sarkozy for most of the five year period –a highly unusual feat for a French prime minister. In the perception of most French voters, Sarkozy had been the one actually governing for five years and was therefore the one to be held accountable for the policy outcomes. In some accounts, the Sarkozy presidency was reduced to being an inappropriate transgression of the key personal and institutional codes, most notably via a deeply political reading of the office, whereby the political leader dispensed with the discourse of national unity, slated opponents and invited unpopularity in response to detailed interventionism in politics and policy-making (Giesbert, 2010, Nay 2011). But it makes more sense to reason in terms of a paradoxical president.