The Resurgence of the Extreme-Right in France: Political Protest and the Party System in the 1980'S

THE RESURGENCE OF THE EXTREME-RIGHT IN FRANCE: POLITICAL PROTEST AND THE PARTY SYSTEM IN THE 1980'S

SUBMITTED BY

DAVID BLATT DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

JULY, 1989

@ DAVID BLATT 1989 T 1/<:: f~': .:' 1 1 1: 'J '_' 1 Il /- Il 1 t I,I F. t 1 . JII' G',' j 1,1 ); 1 ;-' J ., J. ABSTRACT

until 1983, the extreme-Right had ceased to be a significant force in French politics. However, over a six-year period, the

Front National has established itself as a major politicaJ. party

Wl th the consistent support of at least ten per cent of the

French electorate.

The resurgence of the extreme-Right is rooted in the persistence of an extreme-Right tradition which the Front National has managed ta capture. The previous fail ure of this tradition to translate into support for parties of the extrerne

Right was primarily a resul t of the nature of electoral competi tion cturing the f irst quarter-century of the Firth

Republic and of the ability of the major parties ta integrate the concerns of potential extreme-Right supporters. Changes in the party system, along with France' s economic and social crisis, have allowed for the resurgence of the extreme-Right in France.

ii RESUME

Jusqu 1 en 1983, 11 extrême droi te était considerée une forcc politique insignifiante en France. Cependant, depuis plus de six ans, le Front National s'est impose comme parti politique qUI

reçoit regul ièrement l'appui dl au moins dix pour cent de l'électorat française.

Cette renaissance de l' extrême droite a pour orig ine la persistance dl une tradition d'extrême droite que le Front

National a réussi à saisir. Jusqu 1 à present, l'echec de cette tradition de s'exprimer a travers des partis d'extrême droite

était le résultat de la nature de l'enjeu electorale pendant le premier quart de siècle de la Vième Republique, ainsi que le talent des principaux partis d' integrer les preoccupations des partisans potentiels de l'extrême droite. La renaissance de l'extrême droite en France a été le resultat des changements dans

le système des partis ainsi que de la crise economique et sociale.

iii i •J .. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

l am deeply thankful to Professor Hudson Meadwell, who has

served as advisor and friend throughout this project weIl beyond

the call of dut Y • His comments and suggestions have hE' l ped me

out of and away from rnany blind alleys, and his availability at

any and aIl times has helped enormously in getting me through.

l am grateful also to Ruth Abbey, whose careful reading of a

rough draft of this thesis generously alerted me to numerous

crrors and improvements, and to Eric Darier, who translated the

abstract into French and also provided helpful comments.

A number of friends have contributed to the creation of this

thesis, either through their ideas and suggestions or by helping

me stay at least close to sanity through this past year. l would

especially like to thank Guy Dunkerley, Mike Lusztig, Ruth Abbey,

Bruce Morrison, Brett Naisby and Suzanne Inhaber at McGill, and

my incomparable array of housemates, Tim, Sue, Peter, Stuart and

Hank. Adrian Dix perhaps unwittingly instilled in me a keen

interest in French politics that has led in a roundabout way to

the present efforts, for which thanks rnay or may not be owed!

l gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance provided

during rny Masters 1 program by the Social Science and Humanities

Research Council of Canada and McGill University.

iv ~ ESpas.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT/RESUME ...... •.. i i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... •...... i V

LIST OF TABLES .•...... •...... V 1

INTRODUCTION...... 1

Chapter

ONE: THE EXTREME-RIGHT UNDER THE FIFTH REPUBLIC ...... la

The Extreme-Right ~radition and the Front National...... la Evolution of the Extreme-Right, 1945-1981 ..... 16

TWO: THE EMERGENCE OF THE FRONT NATIONAL ...... 31

Triumphs of the Front National ...... 32 An Expression of Crisis ...... 46 The Political Environment...... 59

THREE: THE PARTY SYSTEM AND THE RISE OF THE FRONT NATIONAL...... 68 The Legitimation Thesis...... 70 Persistence of the Extreme-Right Tradition .... 77 Evolution of the Party System: Changes in Electoral Competltjon...... 84 Evolution of the Party System: Dealing with Protest...... 94

CONCLUSION .•...... 105

APPENDIX

ONE: Electoral Results, AlI Parties, 1981-89 ...... 116 TWO: Electoral Results, Front National, By Department, 1984-89...... • • ...... 117

BI BLI OGRAPHY ...... • ...... 12 a

v LIST OF TABLES

Table Page 1. The Front National Vote in 1986 by Department, According to the Rate of Urbanization, the Level of Immigration and the Degree of Insecurity...... 49 2. Most Important Issues, Front National Voters, Total Electorate, 1984-89...... •. 51 3. The Electorate of the Front National, 1984-88...... 54 4. Ideological Self-Placement of Front National Voters, 1984-86 ...... 56

5. Motivation behind Vote, April 1988...... 65

L ,,4

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps no development in French politics since the unrest of May 1968 has been as surprising as the resurgence of the extreme-Right over the past five years. In 1981, Jean-Marie Le

Pen, President of the Front National (FN), was unable even to collect the five hundred norninating signatures necessary to rUIl as a Presidential candidate, while in the legislativc elections of that year, his party was unable to capture even two-tenths of one per cent of the vote. Yet in 1984, the Front National won over 11% in elections to the European Parliarnent and has since polled around 10% in every subsequent national and local election, including a st-unning 14.4% of the vote for Le Pen in the first round of the 1988 Presidential election. With i ts recent solid showings in the Municipal and European parliament elections of 1989, the Front National has firrnly establ ished i ts capaci ty to attract the support of a sizeable portion of the

French electorate tirne after time.

The ernergence of the Front National forces a reexarnination of a nurnber of widely held assumptions about the evol ution and nature of French politics under the Fifth Republic. First of a11, until virtually the moment of the FN' s initial electoral breakthrough in 1983, the extreme-right was believed to have been eliminated for good as a significant poli tical force in France.

1 2

In 1983, Jean-Christian Peti tfils wrote that "(t) he extreme-right has ceased to play a role in eiectorai politics ... broken into a myriad of li ttle pieces, this impotent coterie of phantoms

ll survives only as a historical residue • 1 Although some observers

interpreted incidents of right-wing terrorism and anti-semi tism as evidence of enduring extreme-right actjvism,2 twenty-fi ve years of electoral frustration, political isolation and organizational disuni ty marked the extreme-right as a most unlikely, even unthinkable, candidate for political resurrection.

Secondly and more generally f the emergence of the Front

National as a significant poli tical party runs counter to dominant interpretations of the main features and trends of the

French party system. From a fragmented, diffuse, multi-polar system throughout French republican history, the first quarter century of the Fifth Republic had witnessed the emergence of a stable, bipolar system monopolized by four dominant political parties - the Socialists (PS), Communists (PCF) f Gaullists (RPR) and Giscardians (UDF). While in the last election of the Fourth

Republic the four largest parties received only 70% of the vote, in 1981, the 'Big Four' together polled an overwhelming 96.6%.3

Similarly f whi1e the Fourth Republic saw significant parties

1Jean-Chr i stian Peti tfils, L'extrême droite en France (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 123.

2see Paul Hainsworth, "Anti-semitism and Neo-Fascism on the ll Contemporary Right , in Social Movements and Protest in France, ed. Phil Cerny (London: Frances Pinter, 1982), 142-71-

3Klaus Von Beyme, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: st. Martin's Press, 1985),386. 3 occupying aIl the positions along the political spectrum, by 1981 competition had been simplified to a straight L.,ft-Right conflict. By 1983, Frank Wilson, an expen. on French parties, could bl i thely, if prematurely, predict that "the reduction in the number of significant French parties to o'tly four seems permanent".4

One major source of optimism about the stability of the

French party system stemmed from its apparent ability to resist the challenge of protest movements and alternative organizations to the hegemony of the maj or parties. Beginning in the late

1960's - for many, ironically, with the events of May 1968 in France - increasing evidence and examples of major party decline were identified in virtually all the advanced Western dernocracies. Faced with growing demands by such groups as environmentalists, ethnie nationalists, pacifists, frustrated taxpayers and civil rights activists, previously stable party systems were showing undeniable signs of dealignment, realignment and deeomposition: "All over the world, single-issue movements are forming, special interest groups are assuming party-like

status f and minor parties are winning striking overnight victories as hitherto dominant parties lose the confidence of their electorates. 5

4Frank Wilson, "The French Party System Sinee 1981", contemporary French civilization 8 (Fall/Winter 1983-84): 117.

5Kay Lawson and Peter Merkl, ed. When Parties Fail: Emerging ALternative Organizations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 3. This volume presents a wide range of case studies to support this thesis, as does Electoral Change in Advanccd 4 As Frank Wilson notes, gi'/en the historical weakness of the French party system, together wi th the distrust and hostility wi th which pOlitical parties have traditionally been viewed, France would seem among the likeliest of candidates to suffer a similar decline. 6 certainly, French history provides no shortage

of examples of flash parties, party decline and party collapse. Of the four major governing parties of the Fourth Republic - the Radicals, MRP, Independent Conservatives and SFIO - only the last has survived as a major party, and then only after a radical transformation. Yet in its simplification, stabilization and concentration, the French party system seemed to be evolving in an opposite direction from those of its Western counterparts. Into the mid-1980' s, France was being touted as the single

exceptional case of parties that "refuse to fail", and even as evidence that the apparent trend towards decline and decay might be exaggerated. 7 The fact that weIl into the 1980's France was regarded as a rare example of a strong, stable party system resistant to

Industrial Democracies: Realignment or Dealignment?, ed. Russell J . DaI ton 1 Scott C. Flanagan and Paul Allan Beck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).

6Frank Wilson, "The Revitalization of French Parties", Comparative Political Studies 12 (April 1979): 82-3.

7Frank Wilson, "h'hen Parties Refuse to Fail: The Case of France" , l.n When Parties Fail: Emerging Al ternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter Merkl (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 503-32. Wilson's contribution was clearly written a number of years before its publication date as does not consider any of the changes to the party system after 1982. France is also considered as an exceptional case of stability in the collection edited by Dalton, Flanagan and Beek. 5 challenges from minor parties and alternative organizations, helps to establish the rise of the Front National as a significant and puzzling phenomenon. In addition, it is especially surprising that when disruption to the established system shouid occur, it should take the form of a xenophobie and nationalist right-wing party. CertainIy, sporadic breakthroughs of extreme-Right parties were a feature of previous French

Republics, most notably in pierre Poujade' 5 UDCA in the mid- 1950's, but aiso in the rise of the Parti Social Français and the Parti Populaire Français prior to the fall of the Third Rcpublic. still, there were precious few signaIs heraiding the resurgence of the extreme-Right not only in France but in the patterns of major party decline in other European countries. In France during the 1970's, and elsewhere where new organizations enjoyed electoral success, protest was expressed by new social movements affiliated at least loosely with the Left. Thus in an influential article identifying the failure of major West European parties to channel widespread politicization and mobilization into transformation or reform, Suzanne Berger concentrates on movements defined around such concern as the environment, local and regional autonomy, feminism and workers' self-management. 8 Indeed, while parties of the New Left in France (the Parti Socialiste Unifié and the Greens) and regionalists enjoyed considerably less success than their sister

8suzanne Berger, "Poli tics and Anti-Poli tics in Western Europe", Daedulus 108 (1979): 27-50.

1 6

parties in West Gerrnany, Italy, Great Britain and elsewhere, they seemed a far more credible threat to major party dominance than did a discredited and disorganized extreme-right. Therefore we must ask not only how a new party was able to break the maj or pùrties' stranglehold over the electorate in France, but also how and why it was the extreme-Right that enjoyed this unanticipated

success. Finally, we must consider the pdradox that the emergence of the Front National coincides with a period of French politics otherwise distinguished by moderation and convergence among French political parties. The traditionally intense polarization

of French politics, with Left and Right attacking each other "as bi tter enemies who will destroy French democracy", had been regarded as the party system's most troublesome source of fragility.9 Yet the period since 1983 has been marked by the demise of the Communist party as a viable national force, the deideologization of the Parti Socialiste and a lesstming of the gulf between Right and Left, embodied in aIl the rhetoric of the Mitterrand era: 'l'alternance', 'cohabitation' and 'ouverture'. This has been interpreted as part of a 'normalization' of French political life involving a less polarized and politicized system

finally committed firmly to the norms and processes of modern

industrial democracy.10 This corresponds also te a longer-

9Frank Wilson, "The French Party System ..• " 126.

10This thesis of Serge July's is explained and critiqued in Suzanne Berger, "French Politics at a Turning Point?", French Politics and Society, no. 5 (November 1986): 3-9. 7 standing pattern involving the growing homogeneity and uniformity of French society, weakening the political extremes and rallyinq them to existing political institutions. ll The Front National clearly stands as a striking exception to this alleged pattern. one is forced to try to comprehend how the rise of a radical challenge to the political system has coincided wi th a period otherwise seemingly defined by growing consensus and compromise.

Thus one is left with the puzzle of how a thoroughly moribund extreme-Right could reemerge in a system believed to be distinguished by its ability to resist challenges of any kind, during a time of growing political moderation. This thesis will attempt to account for the rise of the Front National in light of this puzzle. The first chapter will begin by attempting to define and situate the extreme-Right tradition and discussing how the Front National and Jean-Marie Le Pen correspond to this tradition. We will then provide a background narrative of the history of the extreme-Right during the first quarter-century of the Fifth Republic, to the time of the Front National's emergence. Chapter Two will recount the ri se of the Front National from its initial breakthrough in 1983 and 1984 to its most recent performance in June 1989. Having presented this history, we will begin to construct an explanation to account for th~ resurgence of the extreme-Right. The rise of the Front National, it will be argued, can only be understood as a multi-causal phenomenon,

I1petitfils, 124. 8 triggered by a series of inter-related factors. In the remainder

of Chapter Two 1 we will attempt to establish that electoral support for the Front National is a manifestation of economic and social crisis in France, especially in urban environments, which has engendered widespread feelings of uncertainty and fear and has given saliency ta the extreme-Right's themes of immigration and law and order. In addition, support for the extreme-Right has been facilitated by changes in the political environment that have served ta legitimize the ideology and politics of the extreme-Right, as weIl as the presence of a popular and skillful political leader. However, i twill be argued that ta understand why these economic, social and political changes crystallized into support for a po. Itical party of the extreme-Right, primary attention must be focussed on the French party system. We will argue in Chapter Three that the ability of the major parties to resist protest and maintain their electoral hegemony until 1984 was due to conjunctural factors and not to inherent and durable features of the French party system. Specifically, we will try to show that despite its long-standing electoral weakness, an extreme

Right tradition persisted in France with a considerable potential electora~e. The failure of this tradition to manifest itself was due largely to a combination of factors related to the nature of electoral competition prior ta the Left's victory in 1981 and to the ability ef the major parties, in particular the Gaullists, te integrate the preoccupations of this potential electorate. -4

Following 1981, the key aspects of the party system that had served to stifle extreme-Right protest from expressing i tsel f electorally were eroded. A series of changes will be considered, the most important of which have been the space left vacant by the convergence of all the moderate parties, the decade-long disarray among the parties of the moderate Right, and the inability of the moderate Right parties to articulate the nationalist-populist tradition promoted by the Front National. These factors provide the best explanation for both the initial breakthrough of the Front National and the continued success it has enjoyed right to the present. (

CHAPI'ER ONE

The Extreme-Right under the Fifth Republic

Few, if any, anticipated that the 1980's would witness the resurgence of a power fuI extreme-Right political party in France. The first quarter-century of the Fifth Republic had seen the

extreme-Right reduced ta a marginal player at the fringes of

French poli tics. This chapter will survey the evolution of the extreme-Right from 1945 ta 1983, with an emphasis on its fortunes

in the Fifth Republic. We must first, however, begin by attempting ta define and situate the extreme-Right and discussing

the Front National's relation ta this political tradition.

I. The Extreme-Right Tradition and the Front National

It has been said th'..it "no one knows precisely where the

extreme-Right begins, but we know aIl too well where i t may

lead ... ".1 There are no fixed and impermeable boundaries

between the extreme and the traditional or moderate Rights:

throughout modern French history there has been a flow of ideas

and activists between the two camps. To complicate matters

further, the extreme-Right in attitudes and policy frequently

shares more in common with the extrerne-Left than with rnoderate

lAndre Laurens, Le Monde (1965), quoted in Petitfils, 6.

10 11

elements of the Right. Nonetheless, few question the validity of speaking of the extreme-Right as a distinct political tendency. While the lines cannot be entirely clearly and sharply drawn, a glance at the extreme-Right tradition can help us define and distinguish what we are referring to. Petitfils argues that the extreme-Right appeared in 1789 at the same time as the Left-Right division, made up of hard-line monarchist counter-revolutionaries (the 'Ultra-Royalists') who wished a return to the Ancien Regime. 2 Radical anti- republicanism, whether was to assume royalist, authoritarian or fascist forms, would remain a dominant theme of the extreme-Right over the centuries. To this anti-republican core were added successive ideological principles that emerged and defined the extreme-Right at various periods: opposition to capitalism dating

from the anti-bourgeois orientation of the Ultras and revived by Maurras' Action Française; 3 virulent and populist nationalisrn that first accompanied the rise of 'Boulangisme' in the 1880's

and defined the 'Leagues' of the early twentieth-century;4 anti- semitism and racism from the writingG of Drumont and 'l'affaire

Dreyfus' ; hard-line reactionary Catholicism, known as , intégrisme'; anti-communism and others.

2Ibid.

3See Eugene Weber, "France," in The European Right: A Historical Profile, ed. Hans Roggan and Eugene Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), 73.

4See Zeev Sternhall, Neither Right nor Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 25-7.

• 12 certain values and ideals are more or less common to aIl the extreme-Right strains at different times a conception of natural order, submission to strong authority, the defence of French civilization5 - but this is by no means a united and ideologically coherent tendency. Petitfils summarizes the divisions as follows: No one seems in agreement on anything: not on the nature of the regime to install (monarchy or Republic?), on the form of the state (totalitarian or decentralized?), on the economic regime (liberal, co:poratist or statist?), on defence (professional army or popular defence?), on Europe (a Europe of nations or an integrated Europe?), on foreign policy (for or against NATO? For or against Israel?), on the role of religlon in society (a 'Christian West' or 'pagan liberation'?). Can a few common attitudes ... suffice to give hornogeneity to a political farnily ... ?6 Thus in attempting to distinguish the extreme-Right we must recognize that we are considering a divided heritage, one whose elements have distinct and eften confi icting priori ties. How then can we identify and separate the extreme-Right, especially from the rest of the Right that can be labelled 'tradi tional ' , 'classic' or 'moderate'? The extreme-Right has tended to be more anti-capitalist, anti-elitist, anti-Parliamentary, racist and authoritarian than the moderate Right, but too many exceptions exist on both sides to allow a distinction on purely ideological grounds te hold up. Both can be at least broadly identified with the values of arder, authority and nation and with su ch doctrines

5See Bernard Brigouleix, ~'extrême droite en France (Paris: Fayolles, 1977), chap. 5.

6petitfils, 5-6. See also René Chiroux, L'extrême-droite sous la vg Republique (Paris: Librarie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 1974), 18-28. q

13 as anti-communism and opposition to state economic intervention. The key difference seems to be in the depth and intensi ty of opposition to the status quo and of desired change - the extreme- Right is vehemently and often violently opposed to the social and political system and more prone to demand radical rather than graduaI change. Its anti-republicanism, nationalism, authoritarianism and religious fervour tends to be more intense-

more all-embracing, more unyielding, more fanatical, in short, more extremist. 7

On the basis of this discussion, how does Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National fit into the extreme-Right tradition? It is assuredly a label that Le Pen resolutely denies. "L'extrême droi te, c'est Hitler", says Le Pen; his movement he pre fers to calI "la droite populaire, sociale et nationale, la droite de la droite".8 Le Pen is not, as sorne might presume, a fascist. The

Front National accepts democratic procedures and the institutions of the Fifth Republic; it renounces and does not participate in violent and revolutionary tactics. Nor does i t trumpet an

7Bernard Brigouleix, in attempting to distinguish extremist from moderate activists, emphasizes the all-consurning nature of extreme-Right and extreme-Left involvement: "eL)e jugement qu'ils portent sur le monde dans lequel nous vivons, la façon dont ils ressentent ses defauts ou ses contraintes, le caractere total, structurel, des changements auxquels ils aspirent, font que chaque instant de la vie, ou peu s'en faut, est veçu en droitiste ou en gauchiste ... 11 cherche en toute chose, en toute circonstance, la confirmation de la pertinence de ses theses, du bien-fondé de son analyse, de l'urgente nécessite d'un bouleversement, qu'on l'appelle revolution, révolution nationale ou restauration. Brigouleix, 81.

8Klaus von Beyme, "Right-Wing Extremism in Post-War Europe", West European Politics Il (April 1988): 4. 14 expl icitly and openly racist or anti-semi tic discourse. While weaving elaborate metaphors linking immigrants with sickness, pollution, decadence and filth, Le Pen prudently avoids blatant racismi 9 the targets of his most vicious oratorical attacks against the political establishment usually 'happen to be' Jews, but if his intent is clear, Le Pen knows enough to imply more

than to assert. 10 Laws now exist against inciting racial hatred; more irnportantly, the boundaries defining what i5 politically and rnorally acceptable have changed over the past century and especially in the last thirty or so years. The Front National is not the most extremist movement ever to appear in France; even now, factions and groupings exist further to its right. Nonetheless, despi te i ts acceptance of parliamentary democracy, the Front National must be recognized as a contemporary manifestation of the French extreme-Right tradition. Its participation in the tradition can be looked at in two ways. First, in its most dedicated and long-standing activists, veterans of the extreme-Right: "nationalists, descendants of petainism, Poujadism and Algérie Française, integrist Catholics ... , rnonarchists rescued from the Action

9 Pierre-André Taguieff, "La rhetorique de national populisme", Mots, no. 9 (October 1984): 117; Jean-Paul Honoré, "Jean-Marie Le Pen et le Front National", Les Temps Modernes, no. 465 (April 1985): 1843-71.

10For exarnple, during a speech in Bourget in October 1985 attacking the French media, Le Pen identified four journalists as 'enemies' of the Front National - aIl four were Jewish. See Le Monde, 22 October 1985. ;

15 française, fascist co11aborators, neo-Nazis ... ,,11 Secondly, in its ideo1ogy, which brings together disparate extreme-Right legacies. Alain Rollat argues that "the original i ty of Le Pen is his ability to focus in a single synthesis, despite the

Incoherences that result, wide-ranging historical contributions, borrowing references from each without ldentifying totally wjth any" . 12 In 'Lépénisme', Rollat and others see residues of such movements as the Ultras, MacMahon, Boulanger, Maurras, the

Leagues of the 1930's, Vichy, Poujade and Algerie française. 13

What do these similarities consist of? A convincing Interpretation of Le pen's affinity to the extreme-Right tradition offered by Stanley Hoffmann is worth quoting at length: A straight line can be traced to Le Pen from Edouard Drumont, the anti-semitic author of the 1886 best seller ~ france Juive, a l ine running through General Boulanger and Colonel de la Rocque's 1930 Crolx de Feu and the Parti Social Français. All of them made the same shr i Il appea l for the "old France" and the same attack on the conventional politicians, "the big ones", the corrupt establishment, the press, the intellectuals, and the Cl v il servants who have allowed the old France to be destroyed, not least by allowing foreigners into the country. This kind of ultraconservatism is different: in its anti-state rhetoric from fascism, yet it often has fascist trapplngs; it i5 a reaction to distress that seeks scapegoats and clings to a

l1Christian de Brie, ilLe terreau de l'extrême droite", Le Monde Diplomatigue, May 1988, 13.

12Al a in Rollat, Les hommes de l'extrême droite (Paris Calmann-Levy, 1985), 134. 1 3Alain Rollat, "Une synthese totalit.aire", Le Monde, 22 June 22, 1984; Honoré, 1845; Rene Remond, "The Right as Oppos! tion and Future Maj ori ty", in The Mitterrand Experiment, ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann and Sylvia Malzacher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 136; Rollat, Les hommes., '/ 139, 16 cramped, closed, and xenophobie fantasy of France. 14 There are in 'Lépénisme' sorne distinctly modern elements that owe more to contemporary neo-conservatism than to the traditional extreme-Right: its passionate defence of free enterprise and the capitalist order finds few historical echoes. But, as Hoffmann's passage implies, its over-all programme and world-view is one strongly anchored in the extreme-Right: denunciations of foreigners (immigrants) and foreign elements (Communism) threatening arder and the nation; subordination of individual liberties to strong state authoritYi 15 vehement attacks on the political establishment; and maximal opposition, within limits, to the current state of affairs. If the Front National is a somewhat more respectable and less radical extreme-Right than previous incarnations, it is still a movement barn and bred of the same tradition.

II. The Evolution of the Extreme-Right. 1945-1981 The years from the fall of the Vichy Regime ta tl'8 return of de Gaulle were ones of mixed success for the French extreme- Right. It initially emerged from the war in a state of total defeat. At least five thousand of its leaders and activists were executed in the purges that followed the Liberation; just as importantly, in the political sphere, its most cherished

14stanley Hoffmann, "The Big Muddle In France", The New York Review of Books, 18 August 1988, 56.

15See Edwy Plenel and Alain Rollat, L'effet Le Pen (Paris: La Decouverte/Le Monde, 1984), 35-8. 17 principles had been thoroughly discredited and it had lost "all moral right to speak of the nation, the homeland, aIl that it believed in" .16 still, for many unrepentant survivors of Vichy, Action Française, and the Leagues of the 1930' s, reintegration into political life soon followed, either through involvement in openly neo-Nazi groups and journals, or through participation n more moderate political organizations that shared the anti- communist and anti-parliamentary orientations of the extreme- Right. 17 While extreme-Right activists managed partial rehabilitation through cooperation with sympathetic parties on the moderate Right, the extreme-Right itself remained marginalized through the first de cade of the Fourth Republic. Two major developments were to change this situation in the mid- 1950'5. The first was the startling breakthrough of pierre Poujade's union pour la Defense des commerçants et Artisans (UDCA) in the legislative election of

January, 1956. Initially a movement of traditional elements of small shopkeepers and artisans organized primarily in rural

France, the UDCA converted itself into a political party in time for the 1956 Legislative election. The Poujadistes captured 11.2% of the vote and elected fifty-two members te the National

16Brigouleix, 56. 17serge Dumont, Les brigades noires: l'extrême-droite en France et en Belgique francophone de 1944 à nos jours (Brussels: Editions EPO, 1983), 61-68. In the 1951 legislative election, de Gaulles' Rassemblement du Peuple Français solicited the support of the General' s former enemies by calling for an amnesty of former collaborators and the release of the imprisoned Petain. 18 Assembly. While mobilized primarily against inequities in the tax system and in favour of small enterprises and family firms, Poujadism was an all-embracing reactionary movement, incorporating the traditional extreme-Right themes of anti- parliamentarism, anti-semitism and virulent nationalism. 18 wi th their slogan of "Pour en sortir sortez les sortants!", the pouj adistes engaged in a strategy of maximal opposition to the

Government 1 the poli tical class and the insti tut ions of the Republic, further shaking already weak foundations. Alongside peujadism, the extreme-Right received even greater success and legitimacy from the crusade over Algérie française. René Remond points out that, as during the times of Dreyfus and the anti-parliamentary leagues of the 1930' s, this outbreak of nationalist fervour over Algeria served te radicalize political debate, allowing the ultra-nationalists of the extreme-Right to set the tone and the theme for the entire Right, and even part of the Left. 19 As successive governrnents proved less and less capable ùf handling the Algerian crisis, the extreme-Right became increasingly virulent in denouncing the despised Fourth Republic and in conspiring to bring about a new regime.

These activities were ultirnately successful, though not, of course, with the hoped for results. The return of de Gaulle and the establ ishment of the Fifth Republic were te have decisive

18Dominique Borne, Petits bourgeois en révolte?: le mouvement Poujade. (Paris: Flammion, 1977).

19René Remond, Les droites en France, 4th ed. (Paris: Aubier Nontaigne, 1982), 253. l1

19 consequences for the evolution of the extreme-Right. That the first decade of the Fifth Republ ic was, for the extreme-Right, ta be rnarked by absolute opposition ta President de Gaulle is one of the many great ironies of the Ge:neral' s reign, for not only did the unrelenting attacks and violent escapades of the extreme-

Right help ta undermine the Fourth and bring de Gaulle to power, but much of the extreme-Right actively campaigned for the

General' s return. It is true that for many Vlchyites and other impassioned extreme-Rightists, hatred for de Gaulle was of a profound and long-standing nature. 20 But in their unyielding opposition to the Fourth Republic, the Gaullists and the extreme

Right had worked side by side, often in close collaboration. 2l

When the National Assembly voted the investiture of De Gaulle as head of Government with emergency pO"'l:!rs in June 1958, most of the Poujadiste deputies (though not pouj ade) voted in favour, while Pétain and General Weygand announced their support for the new constitution. 22 Despite their profound dislike of de Gaulle, the General's antipathy towards the Fourth Republic, his insistence on the need for strong Executive authority and his apparent support for Algérie Française were sufficient ta consecrate a marriage of convenience with the extreme-Right.

The honeymoon was to be short and the divorce most nasty.

As de Gaulle went further and further towards cornpromising wi th

2 0Rémond , Les droites ... , 243.

21Dumont, 67-8 and 78-80.

22Petitfils,94.

s 20 the anti-colonial forces in Algeria, culminating in the Evian Accords in 1962 and the subsequent referendum that granted

Algerian independence, the hastili ty af the extreme-Right to de

Gaulle resurfaced and hardened. Violence, insurrection and terrorism were widespread, as the organization Armée Secrète

(OAS) and ather groupings plotted assassina.tian and coup attempts against de Gaulle and the regime. Yet the extreme-Right failed either ta influence or intimidate de Gaulle into changing his course or ta mobilize opinion behind its hard-line defence of

French Algeria. The 1962 referendum on Algerian independence provided firm praaf of de Gaulle' s success in maintaining public opinion behind his leadership and his approach ta the colonial crisis: the 'No' vate received only 1.80 million ballots, under

9% of those cast. 23

The extreme-Right was even less successful in organizing itself electarally. In the 1958 legislative elections, the UDCA, torn from the start by divisions and weak leadership, plummeted to 3% of the vote and failed to elect a single deputy.

Nonetheless, while the Poujadistes were the only clearly extreme-

Right party in Parliament, equally extremist members were to be found in other parliamentary formations of the Right, among both

23chiroux, 86. The previous referendum, on self- determina'... ion for Algeria, saw the 'No' votes near 25%, but in that case communists, Left Socialists and Radicals voted 'No' because they favoured direct negotiation wi th the FLN. See Phillip M. williams and Martin Harrison, Politics and Society in de Gaulle's Republic (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973), 40. •

21 the Gaullists and Independent conservatives24 . In 1958, a numoer of such deputies, inc1uding Jean-Marie Le Pen, gained re-

election, but they, along with the Gaullists who broke ranks over

Algeria, were wiped out by the legislative election of March

1962. In that election extreme-Right candidates managed only

0.87% of the vote on the first ballot, fai1ing to elect a single deputy.25

For rnost practical purposes, 1962 marked the end of the

Algerian conflict, but the memory of the struggle and the

consuming hatred towards De Gaulle it engendered were to dictate

the orientation of the extreme-Right in the years following. Rebuffed by the e1ection and referenda of 1962, the extreme-Right

seized the opportunity presented by the first presidential

election held under universal suffrage, in December 1965, to attempt to reorganize and uni te around a single candidate. The

candidate chosen was Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, a long-time

conservative lawyer and deputy, and passionate anti-Gaullist,

whose political career had straddled the ambiguous boundary

between the rrloderate and extreme Rights. The Tixier-Vignancour

campaign was counting on the votes of the 650,000 repatriated

Algerians (1 pieds noirs 1), along with conservatives disgruntled

by de Gaulle' s abandonment of 'national honor', to give the

24 Independent Conservatives includes the Centre National des Indépendants et des paysans (C.N. I. P.) and the Action Républicaine et Sociale (ARS).

25c hiroux, 7. 22

extreme-Right standard-bearer 10 - 25% of the vote. 26

While relying on thf> organizational and leadership base of

the extreme-Right and invoking his Vichy past, Tixier-Vignancour

attempted to make inroads to the political centre, embracing

democracy, presenting himself as the 'liberal national opposi tion' and running on a free-enterprise platform. 27 This served to win him few votes among moderates but managed to

"offend the open fascists among his associates,,28, and drove a wedge between hard-line activists and those more open to cooperation with elements of the tradi-tional Right. Tixier- Vignancour failed even to rally aIl the leaders of the extreme

Right, especially those like Poujade who were not consumed by

Algerie Française. Faced with the better than expected campaigns of Lecanuet and François Mitterrand, Tixier-Vignancour finished last with 5.2% of the vote, most of it concentrated in the

Southern departments populated by the pieds-noirs. 29 still, this was far above the extreme-Right's showing in legislative elections and would indeed remain the high water-mark for the extreme-Right in any national election until 1984.

Tixier-Vignancour and his supporters' enmity for de Gaulle was such that the extreme-Right joined with the Communists in

26William Tucker, "The New Look of the Extreme Right in France", Western Political Quarterly 21 (1968): 92. 27Ibid, 90.

28Williams and Harrison, 145.

2 9 Tucker, 92. 23 endorsing Mitterrand, candidate of the Left, on the second ballot

in 1965. Yet in T-V's failed opening to the centre can be seen,

ironically, a beginning of the rapprochement that was ta emerge between the extreme-Right and the traditional Right, including,

eventually, the Gaullists. This rapprochement was sparked by a

double impetus. Some individuals wanted to end the politicaJ

isolation of the extreme-Right, or as Alain Robert, stated it, to

"escape the ghetto where our political current is confined and

present the same ideas under a far more respectable label". 30

The traditional Right, meanwhile, needed ta attract votes and

recruit activists in an increasingly polarized Left-Right

political environment.

The year 1968 marked a pivotaI point in the transformation

of the extreme-Right. The events of May 168 proved a more

pressing and immediate concern for the extreme-Right than fading

memories of the Algeria crisis, and this time, the traditional

and extreme Rights were on the same side. In the wake of the

unrest of May, the legislative elections of June, 1968 were

painted by the Government as a choice "for or against

totali tarian communism". 31 Leaving nothing ta chance in i ts

effort ta woo extreme-Right supporters, the Gaullists took the

unambivalent step of freeing the remaining GAS prisoners and

providing amnesty for aIl those convicted. While a year

previously parties of the extreme-Right had polled close to

30oumont, 170.

31Williams and Harrison, 91.

1 24 200,000 votes, this figured slipped to less than 30,000 in 1968,

and there is little doubt that a majority of extrerne-Right vot ers

contributed to the landslide Gaullist victory.32 The ...,rUlingness of the extreme-Right to rally behind their

long-time nemesis in 1968 rnay be attributable to exceptional

circumstances. But with the departure ot de Gaulle a year later,

the trend towards cooperation between the various tendencies of

the Right, including the extreme-Right, accelerated. Gaullism

for rnuch of the extreme-Right proved much easier to accept in the

absence of de Gaulle. In the Presidential election of 1969,

Tixier-Vignancour endorsed Georges Pompidou on the second ballot and proclaimed his party a part of the Majori ty, while close to 90% of voters who positioned thernselves on the extreme-Right

voters for Pompidou. 33 In 1974, whi] e integrating the remainder

of the centre to the Presidential majority, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing received the endorsement of Minute, the most prominent extreme-Right journal, and benefitted from the services of

extreme-Right strongmen as his personal bodyguards. 34 This cooperation was to continue throughout the 1970's and 1980's, as prornil1ent and ordinary rnembers of the extreme-Right found refuge among the Gaull ists, Giscardians and especially the Centre

32See Chiroux, 7; 1BO-183.

33 I bid, 206.

34Brigouleix, 120. It has been established that the G i scard-d' Estaing campaign paid the extreme-Right formation supplying the guards, Faire Face, 18 million francs, which was used to erase debts and launch the Parti des Forces Nouvelles. The incident is recounted in Dunont, 154. 25

National des Indépendants et Paysans (C.N.I.P.). Alain Robert's prediction that "it is probable that in a few years we will Und a certain number of former leaders of Occident and Ordre Nouveau [two extreme-Right groups of the '60s and '70s] holding the reins of power of the major non-communist parties" was quickly fulfilled. 35 The integration of the extreme-Right into the moderate Right was never complete; at no time did the extreme-Right cease ta exist as a separate political tendency. Indeed, each time a strand of the extreme-Right moved closer to the pol i tical mainstream, those who rejected compromise and persisted in their opposition to the existing parties and institutions of the Republic moved ev en further ta the extremes. Thus, as Tixier-

Vignancour pronounced himself a "good Republican" and maved closer to the Gaullist camp, groups such as Occident, Groupe d'Union et de défence (GUD) and Ordre Nouveau assumed an increasingly violent and rejectionist stance. still, even the most violent elements were torn by the strategie dilemma faeing the extreme-Right during the Fifth Republic: whether to exert influence but 10se their distinctiveness by joining or collaborating with mainstream parties and organizations, or to retain their 'splendid isolation' on the fringes of their political ghetto. These conflicting temptations, which sometimes

35Dumont, 170. Most notable perhaps is Alain Madelin, one of the founders of the neo-fascist 'occident' in the mid-1960 '5 and currently a prominent leader in the Parti Republicain. 26

reinforeed but other tirnes eut aeross other ideologieal and personal eonfliets, were at the heart of the extreme-Right' s

failure to unite during the 1960's and 1970's. In the 1970' s, the strategie battle was played out between

the two major parties of the extreme-Right: the Parti des Forces

Nouvelles (PFN) and the Front National. The PFN, ereated in 1974 by aetivists of the banned Ordre Nouveau previously sympathetic to Giscard, was committed both to modernizing the extreme-Right and to liberating it from its political isolation. 36 It organized dinner-debates in the provinces, meetings wi th journalists, and cultural debates and forums. By 1976 it had began to make overtures to Jacques Chirac, and after failing to make a breakthrough in the 1978 legislative or 1979 European eleetions, most of its leadership jo':'ned the C.N.I.P. after

19'11. 37 Against the PFN, as champion of the uncompromising, unyielding extreme-Right stood the Front National. The Front National was created in October 1972 in anticipation of the legislative elections scheduled for March, 1973. The Front National began as a federation of the most active parties and journals of the extreme-Right, especially Ordre Nouveau and

Minute, whieh adopted the FN as a means to unite the fragmented

3 6 Brigouleix, 171-6.

37 In 1978, the PFN ran 79 candidates and claimed 1.06% of the vote. In 1979, the PFN list, headed by Tixier-Vignancour, scored 1.3%. In 1981, their leader, Pascal Gauchon, failed to colleet the necessary signatures to run as a Presidential candidate and the party endorsed Chirac. 27 extreme-Right and present it with a more respectable image. 38 As

its President, elected October 8, 1972, was Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Le Pen assumed the Presidency of the Front National with

impeccable extreme-Right credentials. By the age of sixteen he was a commi tted anti-communist and anti-Gaullist. 39 As a young

law student in Paris, Le Pen served as President of the 'Corpo du

droi t', making that organization the "spearhead of the

nationalist current in the student milieu". 40 After a stint in

Indochina with the 1st Foreign Battalion of Parachutists that

establ ished his image as a man of action, Le Pen returned to

France and in 1956 was elected to the National Assembly as a

Pouj adist deputy from the Seine. The youngest deputy in the

National Assembly, he was selected to be President of the

Poujadist parliamentary group, but quickly broke with Poujade and

spent six months serving in Algeria, charged with helping

dismantle the terrorist networks of the FLN. Returning to the

National Assembly as an independent member, Le Pen and a

colleague formed the Front National des Combattants and other

organizations dedicated to the struggle for Algérie française.

In 1958 he was re-elected to the National Assembly under the

C.N.l.P. banner; after four years of vicious opposition to de

380n the foundation of the Front National, see Brigouleix 167-9; Ro llat, Les hommes... 52 -7; and Monica Charlot, "L'émergence du Front National", Revue française de science politique 36 (February 1986): 30.

39Rolla t, Les hommes ... 14-17.

40 l b'd1. , p. 18. '1 l

28 Gaulle inside and outside Parliament, he lost his seat in 1962. Two years later Le Pen returned to prominence as General Secretary of the 'Comité T-V' organizing Tixier-Vignancour's

presidential bid. During that campaign Le Pen was the centre of an embarrassing controversy when it was discovered that a small record company he owned had released an album of Nazi chants. This was not Le Penis first, or last, brush with scandaI: his record includes allegations of torture jn Algeria, violent altercations with the police and allegations that a huge inheritance he received in the 1970's was manipulated against the donor's will. 41 Le Pen' s record, bath on the political and personal side, left little doubt that he was situated among the rnost hard-line, uncompromising elements of the extrerne-Right. still, for the newly created Front National, Le Pen' s leadership offered sorne clear advantages. He was a weIl known figure, with proven oratorical skills, to lead the party into the upcoming parliarnentary elections. He was also, for aIl his violence and bluster, one of the few extreme-Right leaders uninvolved with the

OAS and untainted by charges of illegality or conspiracy to overthrow the Republic. 42

4lPor an account of the allegations of torture, see Plenel and Rollat, 224-6; the allegation that he manipulated industrialist Hubert Lambert and may have been responsible for his death, made by his former closest friend, appeared in Le Monde, October 6, 1985. 42Eric Roussel, Les nouvelles droites en France (Paris: Je Lattes, 1985), 36. 29

The Front National failed, however, either ta gain anything more than token electora1 support or ta sustain unit y on the

extreme-Right. In 1973, the Front National averaged only 2.5% of

the vote in ridings where it fielded candidates, giving it an

average of under 0.5% nationally.43 The next year, as candidate

for president, Le Pen managed only 191,000 votes (0.74%), enough

to edge out the Royalist candidate but about eight million votes

shy of Giscard! These meager showings, along with exasperation

with Le Pen's monopolization of authority and publicity in the

party, led to the withdrawal of the founding Ordre Nouveau

activists in November 1974, who departed to form the PFN. 44

Ta some extent, the departure of Le Pen's rivaIs helped give

him greater control over the party, but factional inf ighti ng

within t.he Front National continued between an ultra-militant

wing known as the 'nationalistes-révolutionnaires' , led by

Franço is Duprat, and a more moderate '.... ing known as the

'solidaristes' led by Jean-Pierre stirbois. This struggle

continued until about 1981, when most of the 'national istes-

révolutionnaires', weakened by the assassination of Duprat in

1978, were purged from the party. 45

Whether divided or united, the Front National 's electoral record was one of repeated failure. In the 1977 municipal

43 Detailed results are provided by Chiroux, 218-231. Le Pen gathered 1,974 votes (5.2%) in the 1ge arrondissement of Paris.

44See Rollat, Les hommes ... 57-60.

45Rolla t, Les hommes ... 79; Jean-Yves Camus, "Les familles de l'extrême droite", Praj et, no. 193 (May-June 1985): 32. 30

elections, the FN managed only 15,800 votes (1.86%) from its l eighteen Parisian lists, an average score Le Pen was unable to

better in the ISe arrondissement. A year later, it scored 0.89%

nationally in the legislative elections. In 1979, an dttempted

reconciliation with the PFN for the European elections fell

through and the Front National counselled abstention. In 1981 Le

Pen suffered even greater humiliation when he was unable to

gather the fi ve hundred signatures from elected officiaIs

required to run as a Presidential candidate, while in the

subsequent legislative election, the FN rnanaged a derisory 0.18%

of the vote. How and why this situation changed so abruptly

shall be explored in Chapter Two. ." ---==-==""'--...... _ ...... _------

CHAPTER TWO THE EMERGENCE OF THE FRONT NATIONAL

In the legislative election of 1981, candidates of the extreme-Right (Front National and Parti des Forces Nouvelles) could muster no more than a combined 0.36% of the vote. Little wonder then that for Petitfils and others, the extreme-Right was presumed dead as a distinct and viable electoral force. As one observer has noted, Il in May 1981, in the euphoria over the victory of François Mitterrand, any observer who would have advanced such a prognosis [an extreme-Right electoral resurgence] would certainly have been considered crazy".1 Yet beginning with the municipal elections of 1983, the tide turned quickly for the

Front National, leading to a series of remarkable triumphs. The first section of this chapter will survey the performance of the

Front National from 1983 to the present. We will then begin ta construct our explanation for the success of the Front National by examining the changed circumstances that emerged following the Left's victory in 1981. We will see that the crisis that France was undergoing had economic, social and cultural dimensions that createn the potential for protest to emerge. However, it will be argued that the emergence of the Front National was a political phenomenon that can only be understood in light of changed

1Roussel, 13.

31 32 political circumstances following 1981. This chapter will

conclude by considering certain changes in the political

environment that favoured the kind of alternative prp.sented by

the Front National, and the skill of Le Pen in exploi ting this

environment, preparing the way for an examination in Chapter

Three of the decisive factor that explains the rise of the Front

National: changes in ~he political parties and party system.

l. The Triumphs of the Front National The first act of the Front National's ri se to prominence was played out in a series of four scenes on local stages in 1983. The municipal elections of March 1983, which saw the Left suffer enormous lasses, gave the Front National its long-awaited initial

breakthrough. Jean-Marie Le Pen won Il.26% of the vote in the 20e

arrondissemeJ.t of Paris and was elected a municipal councillor.

While no oth~r FN candidate enj oyed comparable success, the party

upped its vote in a number of Parisian districts and reached 6- 7% in parts of Marseilles. At the same time, the PFN continued

to perform disrnally, which, according to Serge Dumont, "allowed

the Front National ta present itself as the sole spokesman of the

extreme-right and eliminate with one blow the Parti des Forces

Nouvelles". 2 In addition, while Chirac ruled O'lt electoral

alliances with I.e Pen in Paris (which were unnecessary in light

of his easy sweep of aIl twenty districts in the capital),

representatives of the Front National were integrated into the

20umont, 225.

- 33

Right's lists in Dreux, Grenoble, Grasse, Antibes, Le Cannet and elsewhere. 3

In Dreux (a town of 33, 000 people in Eure-et-Loir with 20% immigrants), a RPR-FN list won 32% of the vote on the first round, and lost narrowly to Socialist Mayor Françoise Gaspard, a prominent activist who worl\.ed on behalf of immigrants, on the second. But the election was overturned by an administrative tribunal and a by-election was called for September. That on the heels of Le Pen 1 s success in Paris a by-election would happen to be held in Dreux has been called an act of providence for the

Front National, for i t was one of a very few ci ties where the party had shown organi zational and electoral strength. 4 This time the Right forbade any first ballot alliance with the Front

National, but running on an independent list led by Jean-Pierre stirbois, the FN polled a startling 16.7%. Between ballots an alliance was concluded, and after the Right unseated the Left on the second ballot, the FN was rewarded with four seats on council while stirbois ended up Deputy Mayor.

The momentum created by these two elections helped give l:he

Front National enough credibility and attention throughout the nation to allow it to flex its newfound muscle in less favorable milieus. Thus in November, a little known candidate scored 9.32%

3Ibid.

4Rollat, Les hommes ... , 9J. See also Dumont, 225-6 and Martin Schain, "The National Front in France and the Construction of Political Legitimacy", West European Politics la (April 19B7): 239-40. 34 in the Communist bastion of Aulnay-sous-Bois outside Paris, where the Front National had no local presence. still, Aulnay-sous- Bois was heavily urbanized and had a strong immigrant presence, factors already recognized as correlating wi th FN success. A month later, attracting huge crowds and the national media

entourage, Le Pen himself scored 12.0% in a legislative by- election in Auray (Morbihan), a rural area in his native Breton with virtuàlly no immigrants. The next question was whether success in a series of isolated and local elections could be sustained and converted to the national level. Leaaing up to Le PenIs first national test,

the European election of June 1984, events began to unfold

quickly. For the first time in well over a decade, an extreme- right party was being treated as a s1gnificant political entity, appearing as the subject of daily reports ;md analyses in the media. In mid-February, Le Pen appeared on the influential television interview program 'L'heure de Verité', a show renowned for institutionalizing politicians, and despite tough questions

and a hostile panel, Le Pen' s very appearance was said to give

him instant credibility and national importance. 5 Meanwhile, membership in the FN soared and local chapt ers emerged from

almost nowhere, aided by prominent defections from other parties of the Right. 6

5Desire Calderon, La droite francaise: formation et projet (Paris: Messider/Editions Sociales, 1985), 201.

6See Plenel and Rollat, 68-81.

L 35 The Front National set two goals for the European election: to surpass 10% and to equal the score of the Parti Communiste. 7 opinion polIs in June showing the FN at 6-7% and the PCF at 12-

14% indicated that neither was likely to be achieved. Yet the resu1ts gave the FN list, the 'Front d'opposition national pour

l'Europe des patries' a stunning 10.95%, or 2.2 million votes.

This was just 40,000 votes short of the PCF (11. 2%), which

suffered its worst showing since 1928. That election also saw an unprecedented abstention rate (43.2%), the continued poor

performance of the Parti Socialiste (just 20.8% for the list led

by Lionel Jospin) and the failure of any other minor party to

exceed 3.5%.(see Appendix One).

Nine months later, in cantonal elections he Id in March,

1985, the Front National regressed slightly, gaining 8.8% of the vote. In the 1,500 cantons where it fielded candidates, however,

it attracted over 10%, disproving the notion that the 1984 results were just a flash-in-the-pan. Where the party f ielded candidates, it tended to increase from its scores in 1984, especially in urban areas. 8 As weIl, the cantonal elections proved the party' s ability to compete at a level where local issues and local campaigns are as decisive as national leadership, and helped strengthen the party' s organization by preparing local candidates and electoral teams.

7Ibid, 110.

8pascal Perrineau, "Le Front National: un electorat autoritaire", Revue Poli tique et parlementaire, no. 918 (July- August 1985): 24. 36

still, the legislative election of March 16, 1986 would stand as the true test of the Front National's ability to compete

nationally in a contest wi th real stakes. In any previous legislative election under the majoritarian electoral system, the party would have stood little chance of winning more than a token

number of seats. But in 1985 the Socialist Government changed the electoral system to proportional representation. It is

undeniable that the primary impetus behind this tactical maneuver

was a rather desperate attempt to limit the Socialist' s losses

and to cut the RPR-UDF' s gains, a strategy that '.vas ul timately

successful. No one doubted, however, that the Socialists gained a certain amount of cynical pleasure over the prospect of the

Front National winning seats and the RPR-UDF 1 s possible dilemma

of having to cooperate with the Front in the Assembly if FN seats deprived them of a rnajority.9

Once again, the Front National exceeded expectations. Its

2.7 million votes (9.8%) were enough to elect thirty-five

deputies from twe,lty-four separa te departments. Among these deputies were an alrnost equal nurnber of long-term FN and extreme-

right activists, including at least seven with prior convictions

for insurrection or inciting racial hatred and one who had voted

full powers for Pétain; and newcomers and defectors from other

9See, for example, James Shields, "politics and Populism: The French Far Right in the Ascendant", Contemporary French Civilization 14 (Fall 1987): 41-2. 4

parties. ID This time the party surpassed the vote of the PCF, which continued its 'chute libre' to a meager 9.7%. Concurrent with the legislative election, regional elections were held in Francels twenty-two regions. The Front National won

135 seats on regional councils in voting that mirrored the

legislative ballot. Most importantly, the FN ended up holding the balance of power in five regional assemblies (Provence-Alpes- Côte d'Azur, Languedoc, Corsica, Picardy and Upper Normandy). In order to keep the Right in power, regic.l1al Presidents from the RPR and UDF struck deals with the Front National that gave the party six regional vice-presidencies and chairmanships of important commissions. Entering the National Assembly implied sorne enormous

advantages for the Front National - a ready-made pedestal from which to promote their programme and fire their assaults against the four established parties (the 'bande des quatres'), along with additional money, staff and researchers. Le Pen certainly

made his presence knewn, establishing himself in one observer's

judgement as "the best orater - the most fiery, the most biting, of course the most vehement, sometimes the mest unexpected". Il

But the heterogeneity of the group that Le Pen had succeeded in

attracting to the ranks of the Front National created problems

inside and outside ParI iament. Within Parliament, the cohesion

1 0See Elisabeth Schemla," Les 35 visages de l'extrême droite", Le Nouvel Observateur, 4-10 April 1986, 26-7.

llAlain Duhamel, La vg Président (Paris: Gallimard, 1987), 182. 38 of the FN group proved fragile; by July, 1986 two of the '- "ralliés" to the parties from the RPR had resigned or been

excluded from caucus .12 wi thin the party, Le Pen was forced to walk a tight line trying to maintain his appeal both to party activists, who themselves represented diverse and often conflicting backgrounds and concerns, and to the party's electorate, which included many supporters considerably less committed to the extreme-Right than was the party's upper

echelons .13 From 1986 to 1988, Le Pen suffered caucus dissension, a conviction for provoking racial discrimination, mass protests in Martinique and Guadeloupe that prevented his aircraft from 1anding, and the antics of his wife Pierrette, who 1eft Le Pen, accused him of being an anti-semite and an inadequate lover and proceeded to pose half-nude for P1ayboy. Most damaging was an

incident in September, 1987 when, in a radio interview, Le Pen

described the Holocaust as a 1 d€ltail' of the Second Wor1d War. In conjunction with previous subtle and not-so-subtle anti-

semi tic and racist outbursts, Le Pen 1 s Holocaust statement was expected to convince the public of his true nature and seriously jeopardize his chances as a Presidentia1 candidate. Indeed, most

l2Schain, 248.

13Some of the difficulties caused by a heterogeneous membership are discussed in Roussel, 156-61; Camus, 37 and especial1y Jean-Louis Schlegel, "Le Pen dans sa presse", Projet, no. 191 (Jan-Feb 1985): 33-46. A

opinion polIs until March, 1988 showed Le Pen enjoying under 10% of intended votes for the upcoming election. 14 Yet somehow scandaI, division and embarrassment refused to take their toll on Le Pen. The first round of the Presidential election on April 24th, 1988 was to provide the greatest triumph for Jean-Marie Le Pen and his party. with 4.376 million votes, or 14.4%, Le Pen had achieved a result that defied aIl predictions and almost defied belief. While not enough to propel him to the second round, Le PenIs result was a major victory: he had exceeded the previous best score of the Front National by close to 4%, and he had not only more than doubled the score of the Communist candidate, André Lajoinie (6.8%), but had come within two percentage points of Raymond Barre and within 5.5% of Jacques Chirac, the Right's standard-bearer against François Mitterrand in the second round. 15 In nine departments and three regions Le Pen emerged as the leading candidate of the Right, winning both Marseilles and Nice among other major cities. Le PenIs triumph, which he dubbed a 'political earthquakc', dominated national and international coverage of first-round voting. with Le Pen proclaiming that "rien ne se fera en France sans, et a fortiori contre, les électeurs de Front National",16

14pascal Perrineau, "Le Front National et les élections: L'exception présidentielle et la règle législative", Revue 20litigue et 2arlementaire, no. 936 (July-August, 1988): 34.

15Full electoral results can be found in Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents: L'élection présidentielle de 24 avril-8 mai 1988, May 1988, 28-9, and in Appendix One. 16Ibid, 59. 40

intense speculation focussed on the tactics Le Pen wou1d adopt

between the two rounds. For Jacques Chirac i t was c1ear that whatever slim chance he had of overtaking François Mitterrand

depended on his capturing the overwhe1ming majority of voters who

had initially supported Le Pen. In this light can be understood

the remark by Charles Pasqua, Chirac' s lieutenant, that the FN

and the Majority ~share the same preoccupations, the same

values" .17 The furor touched off by this remark underscored

Chirac's dilemma of how to attract Le Pen voters without suffering a corresponding loss of support from the centre.

Raymond Barre underscored this dilemma by conditioning his

endorsement of Chirac on the latter promoting "an open, tolerant society that refuses xenophobia, racism and extremism of any

kind" .18 Chirac, meanwhile, tried walking a polit~cal tightrope

by formally repudiating any cooperation with Le Pen while

promoting a program emphasizing such FN themes as immigration,

security and a new nationality code.

The weekend after the first round, during an enormous ral1y

on May lst that drew close to 50,000 supporters to commemorate

Joan of Arc, Le Pen urged his followers to shun Mitterrand

without going so far as to endorse Chirac. 19 In typical Le Pen

fashion, the choice was characterized as one between "the bad

1 7Ibid , 6l. 18Ibid, 5S'.

19sarah Bosely, "Le Pen Hijacks Joan of Arc", Manchester Guardian Weekly, 8 May 1988, 1. A

41 [Chirac] and the worse [Mitterrand]". 20 "No, no, not one vote for Mitterrand. No true Frenchmen [' Français du coeur' 1 could offer his vote to that man", stated Le Pen. 21 Nonetheless, on

May 8th, François Mitterrand was re-elected President with 54.0% of the vote, including 18% of those who had voted for Le Pen and

12% of those who had voted for Barre two weeks earlier. Of the remaining Front National voters, 52% voted for Chirac and 30% abstained. 22 If May, 1988 marked the best of times for the Front

National, the worst of times were soon to follow. Shortly after being re-elected President and naming Michel Rocard to head a government, François Mitterrand dissol ved the National Assembly and announced legislative elections for June 5. Wi th the return to the two-ballot majorily electoral system, the Front National stood no chance of duplicating its success of 1986. However, even in light of reduced expectations, the resul ts for the FN were a major disappointment. In an election with an

20Between ballots of the 1978 legislative election Le Pen endorsed the Right saying that "when you have a choice between diarrhea and cancer, you choose diarrhea" (Rollat, Les hommes ... , 79). In 1984 he stated that "1 prefer, if 1 have the choice between the plague and cholera, the disguised socialism of Messrs. Giscard d'Estaing and Chirac ... to the revolutionary socialist-communism practiced since 1981" (Le Monde, 12 June 1984) .

21Le Monde, Dossier et Documents: L'election présidentielle ... , 61.

22Gerard Grunberg et. al., ""Trois candidats, trois droites, trois électorats", Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents: L' election presidentielle de 24 avril- 8 mai 1988, May 1988, 42. Among those actually voting, 26% supported Mitterrand and 74% supported Chirac. 42 unprecedented abstention rate (34.3%), the FN managed only 9.8% of the vote, a decline of almost 50% from the results obtained by

Le Pen six weeks earlier. 23 Fron~ National candidates received the 12.5% needed to continue onto the second ballot in only thirty constituencies, almost aIl in the departments of Bouches

du-Rhône, Var and Alpes-Maritimes. 24 Due to an electoral alliance between the RPR and the UDF that saw the two parties run a single candidate in almost every riding, FN candidates emerged as the leading candidates of the Right in only nine ridings - eight in Bouches-du-Rhône and one in Var. A hast y agreement between the Front National and the RPR- UDF, dubbed the 'accord Gaudin' after the UDF leader in the Bouches-du-Rhône, saw each party withdraw its candidates in favour of the leading candidate of the Right. Yet while this agreement allowed FN candidates to proceed unopposed from the Right in aIl nine ridings where it led after the first round, the party won but a single seat. This was despite having parachuted

many of its leading candidates, including Le Pen, stirbois, and

campaign director Bruno Mégret into Marseilles-area ridings in the hopes of salvaging a number of seats. 25

23The FN retained the vote of only 57% of those who supported Le Pen in April, with those who supported other parties preferring the RPR-UDF to the Left by a three-to-one margin. Perrineau, "L'exception présidentielle .. ", 38.

24Le Monde 1 DossJers et Documents: Les élections legislatives de juin 1988, June 1988, 38.

25Rumours circulated that Le Pen rejected advice to run in Marseilles' most winnable riding because it contained "too many Jews". Serge Raffy, "La vendetta Arrighi", Le Nouvel Observateur, lA

43 The 1988 legislative electien marked the first time since 1983 that the Front National or its leader had failed to perform better than expected or to better its previous performance. More importantly, it deprived the party of the considerable advantages it had enjoyed as a parliamentary group. And while the RPR/UDF lost its parliamentary majority, its success in depriving the Socialists cf a majority in the National Assembly quickly braught an end te the FN' s shert-lived ambitions 0: assuming leadership of the Right. 26 As much as events after 1983 snewballed to the Front

National's advantage, the short-term aftermath ta the 1988 legislatives saw one disaster follow after another. In early september, addressing a gathering of FN youth, Le Pen made a blatantly anti-Semitic comment at the expense of Government Minister Michel Durafour, referring to him as 'Durafour- crématoire' . The reméirk provoked the RPR to rule out

'definitively' any future electoral alliances with the FN and led to the party's 10ss of its only member in the National Assembly after she expressed criticism of the remark. 27 Al though not appreciably more tasteless than previous 'slips " Le Pen seemed to have finally exhausted the patience of the palitical class to

9-15 September 1988, 32. 26 The Front National 's potential ta assume leadership of the Right following the Presidential election had been discussed in Paul Webster, "Le Pen Unsheathes the Sword" , Manchester Guardian Weekly, 1 May 1988, 6. 27James M. Markham, "Religious War Ignites Anew in France", New York Times, 9 November 1988, A6. 44 tolerate his fouI and excessive outbursts. On the heels of the

furor over the 1 Durafour-crématoire , line came internaI dissension and the creation of a spI inter party in Marseilles,

followed by the death in early Nove~ber of Jean-Pierre stirbois. In the span of a very few short months, the FN had found itself internally divided and either ignored or rejected by pUblic opinion. But once aga in the obituaries proved premature. The

Iegislative elections of March, 1989 contained mixed blessings for the Front National. On the one hand, its vote plummeted in Marseilles, Le Pen failed to gain re-election in Paris, and the moderate Right held firm, with only two minor exceptions, to its refusaI to conduct any electoral alliances wi th FN candidates. As weIl, the unexpectedly strong showing of the Greens in many ci ties gave analysts a new phenomenon to concentrate on - the Front National seemed more like yesterday's news. On the other hand, even without alliances, the Front National elected 804 municipal councilors, including its first Mayor, and gained representation in 143 cities with over 70,000 inhabitants. 28 As weIl, refusing to wi thdraw after the f irst round, the party proved capable of holding its voters on the second ballot, even in cities where the Right was locked in close struggles with the Left. 29 The refusaI of FN voters to transfer to the moderate Right reaffirmed the fact that the Front National has developed a

28Le Monde, 23 March 1989, 12; Libération, 21 March 1989, 2.

29Liberation, 20 March 1989, 4. 45 loyal and distinct electorate. Furthermore, the poor over-all performance of the moderate Right seemed to confirm the FN' s contention that in the absence of cooperation with the extreme- right, the Socialists were guaranteed continued electoral hegemony.30 Most importantly, despite a disastrous nine-month period prior to the Municipal elections, the Front National had not collapsed: its survival as a significant party was established. On June 18, 1989, elections to the European Parliament brought to an end a dizzying year of political campaigns (fj ve elections and nine ballots in fourteen months) and .hrought the Front National full circle to the scene of its initial national breakthrough. with 1.1. 73% of the vote, the Front National finished in third position, behind the PS and the UDF-RPR, slightly in front of the Greens and comfortably ahead of the independent Centre list and the PCF (see Appendix One). The FN's showing, its second strongest ever, received seant attention from a media preoccupied with the breakthrough of the Greens, the enormous abstention rate (51.1%), the rebirth of Giscard and the po or showing of the Left. 3l The fa ct that, while only four lists in 1979 and 1984 attracted over five per cent of the vote, six lists in 1988 surpassed five per cent is a clear indicator that a

30See the statements by Yvon Briant (CN!) and Yvan Blot (RPR) in Le Monde, 23 March 1989, 10.

31Neither Le Monde nor Libération devoted a singlt~ article to the FN's performance in their extensive post-electoral coverage of 20 and 21 June, although brief mentions were made in articles surveying the results. 46

major realignment of the party system is underway in France. 32 A

rare three year reprieve before the next anticipated national election will give an opportunity for changes to crystallize that

will shape the French party system for the next decade. The

future and consequences of the Front National will be considered

in \.he concluding section, but in the meantime we can state that

the Front National has succeeded in becoming n durable feature of the French political landscape, gaining a consistently sizeable proportion of the electorate in election after election and exercising a significant impact on the fortunes of the other major parties.

II. An Expression of Crisis

Identifying causes for the rise of the Front National is a complex, multi-faceted matter. We must take seriously the argument of Rene Rémond that "the advances of the Front National, like any trend of similar magnitude, were the combined product of multiple factors". 33 In order to construct a convincing and adequate explanation, we will argue that the rise of the Front

National was the product of a cornbination of socio-economic factors, features of the political environment, skillful

32 Furthermore the three largest parties (RPR-UDF and PS) polled 64.5% of the vote in 1979 and 63. B% ln 1984, but only 52.9% in 1989.

33Remond, "The Right ... ", 137 (emphasis mine). cf. Rollat, Les hommes .•. , 86: "Le 'phenomène Le Pen" n'a pas une mais plusiers causes ... Le président du Front National a bénéfici~ au même moment des fruits de son propre travail, de concours de circonstances et d'évolution du corps social". q

political leadership, and most cri tically, changes in the parties and party system.

The emergence of the Front National occurred against a

backdrop of economic crisis. Unemployment \Vas already at 7.6%

when the Left assumed power in 1981 and was to rise ta 8.6% in

1982 and 1983, to 9.3% in 1984 and to 10.5% in 1985. 34

Successive deflationary measures adopted by the government

brought inflation down from its 1980 rate of 12.2%, but involved

increased taxation, ~uts in pUblic spending, wage and price

contraIs, reduced consumer spending and significant decreases in

real disposable income. 35 Yet, as Pascal perrineau has rightly

point.ed out, the economic crisis cannat in and of it;3elf account

decisively for the rise of the Front National: "the economic

crisis does not date from 1984 and previously (1973-1983) i t

seemed to have strengthened the moderate parties (PS, UDF, RPR)

without in any way favouring extreme parties (PC, FN) ";36 nor did

support for the FN decline once the economic situation began ta

improve following 1984. One can add that France was far from

unique in suffering severe economic decline during the earl y

1980' s, and yet e1sewhere the extreme-Right was held easily in

check.

34peter A. Hall, "The EVOlution of Economie Policy under Mitterrand", in The Mitterrand Experiment, ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann and sylvia Malzacher (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 61.

35Ibid, 54-72.

36pascal Perrineau, "Front National: l'écho poli tique de l'anomie urbaine", Esprit (March-Apr1l 1988): 24.

L 48

What must be considered then is that what the French calI

'la crise' had other than simply economic dimensions: it was a social and cultural crisis as weIl, and these dimensions contributed significantly to creating an environment conducive to the Front National. This interpretation has been succinctly elaborated by Alain Rollat:

Jean-Marie Le Pen has skillfully exploited the psychoses of a society weIl on the way to breaking up because 'la crise' is not reducible to its economic dimension but has called into question a model of civilization elaborated in a period of prosperity, especially in the cities, where ... the cohabitation of cul tures has bec orne a battle. The soil was fertile because it had been nourished by a general feeling of insecurity, a dynarnic combining such diverse collective obsessions as the fear of unemployment, of the future, of petty crime, of major terrorism, of foreigners, of differences. 37

Studies of the geography of the Front National vote show that it is indeed highly correlated with urbanization and the attendant social problerns of immigration and insecurity. Table 1 shows this re1ationship: in departments where the level of urbanization, the level of immigration and the degree of insecurity (a rneasure based on the number of crimes per capita), were a11 in the fourth quartile, the Front National averaged only

6.1% in 1986; where these measures were aIl in the first quartile, their average was 16.4%.38 These sarne trends were

37Ro lla t, Les hommes ... , 109.

38Jerôme Jaffre, "Front National: la relève protestaire", in Mars 1986: la drôle défaite de la gauche, ed. Elisabeth Dupoirier and Gerard Grunberg (Paris: PUF, 1986), 216. • e

equally pronounced in 1984 and in 1988. 39 In addition to

immigration and insecurity, FN support also correlates

geographically with the presence of AIDS: in the six

TABLE 1

r.che Front National vote in 1986 by department according to the level of urbanization, the level of immigrants and the degree of insecurity {in %)1

Rate of Presence of Degree of Urbanization Immigrants Insecurity

1st Quartile 13.2 13.4 13.1 2nd Quartile 10.9 10.6 9.7 3rd Quartile 7.3 7.4 9.7 4th Quartile 5.7 6.0 5.8

1The 96 departrnents are divided into four equal quartiles according to the decreasing proportion of foreign population and degree of insecurity. For the level of urbanization, the departrnents are divided into four categories: greater than 80%, between 60 and 79.9%, between 45 and 59.9%, less than 45%.

SOURCE: Jaffré, "Front National ... ", 216.

regions where AlDS is most prevalent in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen

received among his six highest scores by region in 1988 in five

of them. 40 The one region where AlDS is most serious and Le Pen

did less weIl is Corsica, until 1988 a FN stron9hold. Again, the

connection between support for the Front National and urban

39See Gérard Le Gall, "Une élection sans enjeu, avec conséquences", Revue pol i tique et parlementaire, no. 910 (May June 1984): 41, and perrineau, "L'exception présidentielle ... ", 34.

40Adapted from Le Monde, 22 February 1989, and John Frears, "The 1988 French Presidential Election", Government and opposition 23 (June 1988): 283. The regions involved are Provence-Côte d'Azur, Languedoc, Alsace, lle-de-France and Rhone Alpes. 50

prob1ems, and the fear and uncertainty these problems generate,

can be seen. Those who identify a connection between Front National

support and urban problems, especially immigration, are often

quick to point out that the mere presence of foreigners cannot

bear simple and direct responsibility for FN success. After aIl,

the presence of immigrants is nothing new in France, nor is their

sett1ement pattern, nor is anti-immigrant sentlment. 41 As one

journalist put it: "Immigrants were already numerous when Le Pen

won 0.3% of the vote in 1978. Indeed, they have followed in

successive waves to the same places for over a century without

the traditional xenophobia of the extreme-Right... gaining any

electoral advantage". 42 Immigrants, and North Africans in

particular, identified in the public mind with the problems of

crime and i nsecur i ty, simply became a convenient visible

scapegoat for the deep anxieties caused by the failure of the

cities to integrate groups and individuals and maintain social

harmony in a period of crisis.

The importance of the immigration issue to the success of

the Front National can be seen from the figures in Table 2.

41surveys have shown that the percentage of French finding 'foreigner5 in general' too numerous in France was 51% in 1968, 61% in 1977 and 61% in 1984. North Africans specifically were believed to be too numerous by 62% in 1968, 63% in 1977 and 66% in 1984. Schain, 238.

42Herve Le Bras, "Où naissent les lépénistes?", Le Nouvel Observateur, 4 -10 April 1986, 29. 51

TABLE 2 MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES, FRONT NATIONAL VOTERS, TOTAL ELECTORATE, 1984-1988

Response to the question: "At the time of voting, which problem(s) counted most for you".

PROBLEM

Insecurity 30 15 18 8 55 31 Immigrants 26 6 46 10 59 22 Unemployment 17 24 13 28 41 45 France's world role 11 16 16 21 Inequalities 10 16 18 J1 Europe 8 25 15 21 Inflation/Priees 6 10 7 17 13 15

NOTE: Due to differences in surveying techniques and choices offered, comparisons should only be made within each survey.

SOURCES: 1984: SOFRES exit poll, 17 June 1984, from M. Charlot, 41; 1986: IFOP exit poll, 16 Mareh 1986, from perrineau, "l' echo politique ... ": 26; 1988: CSA exit poll, 24 April 1988, from Perrineau: ilL' exception présidentielle ... ": 39.

The Front National's eleetorate, unlike those of the other parties, identifies immigration and insecuri ty as i ts dominant preoccupations. As Martin Schain notes, "although the se issues have clearly eoncerned a great many voters in recent years, for

National Fropt voters they had beeome a political priority. The

Le Pen list attracted 11 per cent of the vote in 1984, but 22 per cent of those who were most eoncerned with law and order, and 48 per cent of those most concerned w i th immigrants" . 4 3 Not surprisingly, Front National voters are far more prone than the general electorate to hold the view that foreigners are too

43Schain, 237 (Emphasis his). 52 numerous in France, that they are a principal cause of unemployment and delinquency and that immigrant workers must immediately be dispatched h~me.44

Along with anti-immigrant xenophobia, the Front National' s electorate is one dominated by the values of "order, authority and nation". 45 The primacy of order and authority are expressed in overwhelming support for the death penalty and in making respect for the authority of the state a priority.46 A majority of Front National respondents (62%) to a 1984 survey also gave priority to "putting the house of France in order", 47 which expresses an overwhelming lack of confidence in the justice system and support for organizing self-defence against violent offenses. 48 Nationalist sentiments are apparent in such attitudes as opposition to a common European defence and support for expell ing England from the Common Market. 49 These attitudes suggest an electorate worried about the direction of French

44 perrineau, "l'echo politique ... ", 31-2; L'Express, June 8, 1984.

45Jerôme Jaffre, "Ordre, Autorite, Nation", Le Monde, February 14, 1984.

46I bid. 47Ibid.

48A survey in L'Express, June 8, 1984, showed only 6% of FN supporters expressing confidence in the justice system, compared to 81% lacking confidence; 50% supported the statement that "People should organize themsel ves against violent offenses".

49Jaffre, "Ordre, Autorité ... " and L'Express, June 8, 1984. 53 society and the status of the nation, attitudes triggered or reinforced by 'la crise'.

The importance of 'la crise' in providing an opening for the Front National can also be seen by examining the party' s socio- economic base (Table 3). It is a diverse electorate, with support from across social categories; this diversity, along with the fact that class is an imperfect and declining determinant of voting behaviour in France50 , must caution us not to expect clé'\ss-based factors to explain fully the party' s performance. still, detailed studies of the Front National' s base help prov ide important insight into the nature of the party' s appeal.

In 1984, the Front National' s vote has been called one of

'la France aisee', with the party winning the support of 21% of shopkeepers and small businesspeople and 15-17% of members of the liberal professions. 51 Examining the success of the Front

National among the better-off sectors of the bourgeois, Nonna

Mayer and Jérôme Jaffré each identify a vote of exasperation and maximal opposition of a part of the tradi tional Right' s electorate, expressing intense hostility towards the policies of

50See Alain Lancelot and Marie-Thérese Lancelot, "The Evolution of the French Electorate, 1981-86", in The Mitterrand Experiment ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann, Sylvia Malzacher (New York: Oxford University PL~SS, 1987), 77-99.

51Le Gall, 46. 54

TABLE 3 The Electorate of the Front National, 1984-1988 ------PERCENTAGE Euro Cant Leg Pres Leg 1984 1985 1986 1988 1988 ------SEX Male .. . · ...... 13 10 12 17 13 Female ...... •• 9 7 7 10 6

AGE 18-24 .•...... •...... •..••. 12 10 7 16 Il 25-34 .. · ...... l1 7 8 Il 9 35 -4 9 •••••••••••••••••••••• 12 10 12 17 9 50-64 .• · ...... 12 10 12 14 9 G 5 + ..••••..••••••••••••.••• 9 8 9 12 9

PROFESSION Farmers •...••...... •...•.. 13 5 Il 18 10 ShopkeepersjSmall Business. 21 15 14 31 16 Liberal Prof. jUpper Manag •• 12 10 9 17 7 Mid-Level Executives •..•.•• 13 9 10 12 8 Salaried Employees ...... •• 12 10 7 14 10 Workers ...... 9 8 Il 16 Il Service Employees ...... 6 7 6 15 RetiredjNo Profession ....•. 10 8 9 Il 10 ------TOTAL ...... 11 9 10 14 9

SOURCES: For the 1985 Cantonals: From Perrineau, "un électorat autoritaire ... ", 25 (Bull-BVA exit polI, March 10,1985); for the rest, Nonna Mayer, "L"effet Le Pen' s'est nourri de l'effet 'premier tour"', Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents: L'élection }2rcsidentielle du 28 avril - 8 mai 1988, May 1988, 44 (AlI from BVA exit polIs, except Leg. 1988, which are projected totals from a CSA exit polI of 24 April 1988).

NOTE: The 1988 Legislative results are projections from May 1988 !4

55 the government and a lack of satisfaction with the moderate

Opposition. 52 While sorne remained loyal to the Front National, many returned to the UDF and RPR in 1986 when the electoral stakes were more significant. 53

For sorne of the bourgeois and for many belonging ta the tradi t ional middle classes the shopkeepers and small businessmen who have voted for the Front National in greatest numbers in every election - an addi tional explanation can be offered. Along with exasperation with the major political parties, the success of the Front National among this group can be attributed in part to their willingness to finally give expression to long-standing political preferences, in part to the dislocations and anxieties provoked by 'la crise'. This group is identified by Christian de Brie:

We find the fellow travellers (of the extreme-Right) 1 who, often despite themselves, rallied over the years to the conservative and Gaullist parties due te the logic of the institutions and the electoral system, and who have yielded, once the circumstances presented themselves, to their natural penchant for 'national order'. The most reactionary elements of the small and middle bourgeois, members of the independent, 1 ibera l and commercial professions, but also salaried employees, managers, public servants ... Social classes who find threatened their interests, their status and the value system that legitimizes them. 54

52Nonna Mayer, "De Passy à Barbes: deux visages de vote Le Pen à Paris", Revue francaise de science politique 37 (December 1987): 891-905: and Jaffré, "Front National. .. ", 217-8.

53Mayer, "De Passy ... ", 902.

54de Brie, 13. 56 This vu1nerabi1ity is equally acute for the growing numbers of manual workers and unemployed (14% in 1986, 19% in 1988), who turned to the Front National. Again social dislocation- unemployment, industrial decline, po or housing and working conditions, social immobility - contribute to rejection, despair and a receptiveness to a message that "seeks scapegoats and clings te a cramped, closed and xenophobie fantasy of France".55

Whereas the ether social categories of greatest FN support come

from the tradi tional Right or extreme-Right, these voters, who tend to be disproportionately young and male, are the natural constituency of the Left. Survey data establishes that the Front National has sueeeeded in attracting support both from its natural

TABLE 4 IDEOLOGICAL SELF-PLACEMENT OF FRONT NATIONAL VOTERS, 1984-86

EURO CANT LEG 1984 1985 1986

Extreme-Left 1 4 Left 5 1 5 Centre 13 36 14 Right 22 35 12 Extreme-Right 40 21 52 No Answer 19 7 13 SOURCES: 1984 and 1986: Isoloir-SOFRES polIs, 1984 and 1986, from Jaffre, "Front National ... ", 227; 1985: Bull-BVA, 10 March 1985, from perrineau, "un électorat autoritaire •.• ", 25. ------

55Hoffmann, "The Big MuddIe ... ", 56. See also de Brie, 13 and Perrineau, "l'echo politique ... ", 26. ;

57 consti tuency on the extreme-Right and from those who identity with other ideological tendencies. Table 4 shows Front National support divided between those who consider themsel ves on the extreme-Right and on the Right and Centre, wi th a small percentage coming from those who place themselves on the Left.

If we look at the partisan origins of FN voters, we see that of those who voted for the party in 1984, only 34% claimed to support the Front National, while 39% preferred parties of the moderate Right (RPR, UDF, CNIP) and 10% parties of the Left. 56

Looking finally at the 1981 Presidential vote of those who supported the Front National in 1984, we see that 27% claimed to vote for Chirac in 1981, 27% for Giscard, 24% for Mitterrand and

5% for other candidates, while 19% were too young or abstained. 57

This information allows us to identify three kinds of origins for Front National voters. One group of supporters must have voted consistently for extreme-Right candidates or abstained until1984. Another, more numerous group, however, consists of those who until 1984 tended to vote for parties and candidates of the tradi tional Right. As we saw from the figures for ideological self-placement, many of these voters positioned themsel ves on the extreme-Right, and many held extremist attitudes, but this was not reflected in their voting behaviour until 1984. others who voted for parties of the traditional

Right were less extremist ideologically but have still chosen to

56Jaffré, "Front National. .. ", 218.

57Le Monde, 6 June 1984. 58 support the Front National. Finally, there are others who previously supported the Left before switching to the Front

National: less numerous in 1984, Mitterrand voters in 1981 made up almost a third of the new voters who switched to the Front

National in 1986. 58 We see that as a result of 'la crise', the Front National could capi talize on the disarray in urban areas, widespread resentment against immigrants and the laxity of the justice system, and despair arnong individuals of various social categor ies. However, socio-economic and cultural conditions, while providing a necessary favorable environment for the Front

National, do not provide a sufficient explanation of why prote st emerged and, in particular, why it took shape in the way it did.

Why, for example, did protest not take the fom of a widespread social movement, a sudden outbreak of protest similar to May '68, or fail to emerge at all, but instead coalesced around an organized political party of the extreme-Right engaged in electoral competition? Why did electors abandon long-standing partisan preferences in favour of the Front National? What we must now consider is the poli tical dimension of 'la crise', for it was in the political sphere that the decisive changes and transformations that caused the rise of the Front National occurred. In the remainder of this chapter we will look first at certë.d n changes in the political environment and then at the performance of the leader of the Front National.

58Jaffré, "Front National ... ", 223. a •

59 III. The Political Environment

One way to approach the change in the political envi ronment is to note that the label 'la droite', which for decades had been rejected by the conservative parties of 1 the Majority', was openly embraced a.fter 1981. 59 This was one manifestation of a rightward shift in the French political environment that" served to enhance the acceptability and legitimacy of the extreme-Right and pave the way for the Front National. This shift involved a number of elements which we shall now consider.

One important element was the phenomenon of 'la nouvelle droite' , a largely intellectual and cultural extreme-Right movement, centered around the organization G.R.E.C.E. (Groupe de

Recherche et d'Etudes sur la civilisation Europeene), that enjoyed a crescendo of publicity beginning in 1979. Based on an eclectic mixture of elitism, inegalitarianism, and hostility to capitalism, Christianity and the United states, the 'New Right' attempted te expose the decadence of modern civilization and the lies of liberal ideology. In much of its ideology, but especially in its emphasis on culture and intellectual reform, the 'New Right' paralleled and revived the tradition of Maurras'

Action française. 60

Openly affirming and embracing the long-taboo label of the

'Right', leaders of the ' nouvelle droite 1 collaborated closely wi th the preminent conserva ti ve parties, newspapers and

59Rémond, "The Right ••. ", 131-2.

60Rémond, Les droites ... , 283-6. 60

magazines. Le Figaro displayed special sympathy for the ideds

and prograJ'llme of the New Right, but its influence in clubs

associated with the RPR and UDF, especially the Club d'Horloge,

waS considerable. Whlle one must recognize a separation between

the ideologues of the 'nouvelle droite' and extreme-right parties

such as the Front National, the legitirnacy and este~~ enjoyed by

the former could not help but benefi t the poli tiraI proj ect of

the latter, helping desegregate the extreme-right from its

political and intellectual ghetto and popularizing an elitist,

anti-egalitarian discourse. 61

The popularity and Iegitimacy enjoyed by the New Right can

be viewed in the context of a broader 'lifting of taboos'

jnherited from vichy and the Liberation. According to Pienei and

Rollat, liA change in ger.erations, a decline in the Gauilist consensus, historicai 'revisionism' on the genocide of the Jews, trlvialization of Nazism, neo-liberal critiques of the social gains of the Liberation ... a series of slippages have erased the sharp break the last war once consti tuted". 62 As mernories faded,

61This argument has been made by, among others, then-Prime Mlnister pierre Mauroy imrnediately following the 1984 European election: "Deja sous le septennat de M. Valery Giscard d'Estaing, la montee de ce que l'on appelait la "nouvelle droite" avait marque le refus de la solidarité, l'exaltation de l'élitisme et une certaine forme de xénophobie. Relayee par certains grands organes de presse, cette ideolgie a prépare les mouveme~ts electoraux de dimanche. Car, que nul ne s'y trompe, en dcmocratic le discours n'est jamais innocent" (Plénel and Rollat, 196) .

62 P l enel and Rollat, 6. See also Hainsworth, 134. Pcrrineau (" •.. un électorat autoritaire ... ", 26) has noted that the only age group which denies its vote ta the FN are those over sevcnty-five years old, a group "which entered politics during q

61 the extreme-Right se0med less odious and less threatening than it

might have ten years earlier. Its acc~ptability was aided by its ability to present a more moderate and more modern image, shirking violence and anti-republicanism, or as Taguieff states, "tactically masking the part of its poli tical tradi t lon most

rejected by opinion revolutionary nationalism, fascism, colonialist xenophobia". 63 And once the Front National enjoyed initial electoral success, its legitimacy was further enhanced by

the glare of a curious, if largely unfriendly, media. Le Pen' s

1984 appearance on 'l'Heure de Verité' has been interpreted as "the consecration of the acceptabil i ty [banal izat ion] of a

previously marginal ized extreme-R~ght: carried by the charismù

and the buoyant populism of th~ President of the Front National, it has finally acceded ta political norrnality".64 In the next

chapter we will consider the role played by the other political parties in legitimizing the extreme-Right. Along with the growing acceptability of the extreme-Right, the poli tical dimension of 'la crise' added to the movements' s

appeal. According ta Thierry Pfister, "along wi th what, for

linguistic convenience, we calI the 'economic ~risis' has developed a withdrawal towards individualism, a selfish search

for protection that favours the return of themes of exclusion and

the troubled years between the twa world wars" when the extreme Right posed an imminent threat ta French democracy. 63Taguieff, 117.

64Edwy Plenel, "La levée des tabous", Le Monde, 14 February 1984.

L __ r 62 justification of an inegalitarian system". 65 It is precisely this emphasis on exclusion and hierarchy that Christian de Brie sees as the core of Front National ideology: exclude immigrants, communists and criminals; reestablish a hierarchy of values and races. 66 Individualism also took a less reactionary form in popular support for economic liberalism, the defence of individual liberties and hostility towards the state. While these themes were rapidly embraced by parties of the moderate

Rjght,67 they also corresponded to the anti-interventionist discourse of the Front National.

The spread and entrenchment of 'la crise' and the failure of the Left' s grandiose project. brought about not only a shift in ideoloqical attitudes that benefitted all segments of the Right, but also a change in political mood. Following the 'politics of hope 1 ushered in by the Left 1 s victory came what can be called

'the politics of despair'. A profound and enduring pessimism about the direction and prospects ,.,f French society has been detectable throughout this decade: Pfister notes how discourse has been dominated by the not..ion of 1 decline 1 and catastrophic discussions on topics such as demography, the ecology and social welfare. 68 These conceptions reinforce and in some way validate

65Thierry pf lster, "Le nouveau paysage poli tique: les trois France", Revue politique et parlementaire, no. 935 (May-June 1988): 11.

66de Brie, 13.

67Remond, "The Right ... ", 134-6.

68Pfister, 11. 2

63 the apoca1yptic vision painted by the Front National, the pressing and grave threat to the nation posed by such dangers as communism, immigrants, terrorists and AIDS.69 It was this political environment that Jean-Marie Le Pen was able to skil1fu1ly exploit. It is worth emphasizing the perhaps obvious fa ct that, as Mogens Pederson puts it, "personality matters in pOlitics"70, especially in cases where political parties achieve enormous overnight success. Other than the black eyepatch which he shed in the early 1980' s, Jean-Marie Le Pen remains the same po1itician who spent two decades in the political wilderness until 1983. Yet if Le pen's career shows him to be as much a victim and hero of circumstances as any po1itician, his ability to capitalize on the opportunities of fortune has been crucial for the success of the Front National. Le Pen' s first suc cess was to finally uni te the extreme- Right behind a single political movement, an objective that had eluded Tixier-Vignancour, Ordre Nouveau, and Le Pen himself until the 1980's. Having already gained a firm grip on the Front National fo1lowing the defeat of the radical 'national- revolutionary' wing, Le Penis first victories in 1983 est3blished the FN as sole spokesrnan for the extreme-Right and put an end to the Parti des Forces Nouvelles. while it was anticipated that

69See de Brie, 1.

70Mogens Pederson, "The Defeat of AlI Parties: The Danish Folketing Elections, 1973", in When Parties Fan: Emerging Alternative Organizations, ed. Kay Lawson and Peter Mcrkl (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 271.

1 J 64

personality and ideological conflicts within the extreme-Right

would create problems for the Front National,71 Le pen's

leadership has gone virtually unchallenged and no credible

alternative extreme-Right movement has materialized. Considering

the divided legacy of the extreme-Right and its proclivity for

fratricidal war, it is no small accomplishment to keep together a

movement where "monarchists travel alongside revolutionary

nationalists, neo-Poujadistes cohabit with integrist Catholics,

the last Petainists mix with vbterans of the O.A.S., disappointed

socialists rejoin deserters from the RPR and UDF ... ". 72

One cannot easily determine the extent to which the Front

National' 5 success has been a result of Le Pen' s popularity. In

1984, the FN vote was relatively 'personalized': 49% of FN voters

clted 'the personality at the head of the party list' as a

motivation behind their vote, while only 41% supported the

'pol i tical family' (Table 5).73 However, by 1988, Le Pen' s vote

was among the least personalized and most based on the

candidate's program. Yet if this is an electorate concerned more

wlth issues than with personality, the party they support has

from the start been virtually synonymous with Jean-Marie Le Pen.

71see Camus, 37.

72Rolla t, Les hommes ... , 7.

73 The percentage of voters citing the leader's personality was only 27.7% for RPR-UDF voters, 24.7% for PS voters and 17.8% for peF voters. Le Gall, "Une election ... ", 46. q

TABLE 5 MOTIVATION BEHIND VOTE, APRIL 1988 (in %) Le Pen Lajoinie Barre Chirac Mitt. Total ------Personality 13 9 20 23 20 18

Competence 10 Il 45 44 42 33

Political 4 15 3 4 7 7 Affiliation program 19 50 39 11 9 19

No Opinion 23 26 21 20 24 24 source: Louis Harris exit polI, April 24, 1988, from "L'extrêmc droite: Radioscopie d'un vote", L'Express, 6 May 1988, 14.

Le Pen is a fiery orator, captivating his audiences with blistering rhetoric and vivid imagery. Many have notcd his ability to present a moderate message to the media and genera] public one moment while unleashing a vitriolic dose of the 'old time religion 1 to the extreme-Right fai thful the next. 74 Le PenIs dynamic speeches, which he delivers without notes, contrast sharply with those of most French politicians, who "rcsemble robot-like products of a school of communication".75 The effectiveness of Le PenIs style is such that his approval rating has jumped after every major television interview appearance and during each electoral campaign. 76

Le Pen 1 s greatest Skl11 has been to present himsel f as the outsider, the underdog, the honest and besieged battler for the

74See the account provided by Roussel, 8S-7.

75Pfister, 14.

76Jaffre, "Front National ... ", 218-9. 66

interests and concerns of 'the little guy', a~ainE:'- the

indlfference and corruption of the rest of the poli tical

establishment. His slogan has long been that he is the only one

"who says out loud what everyone thinks to himself" and "what the

others hide, fake and deceive" i 77 remarkably, a 1987 survey

showed that 55% of respondents agreed that 'the President of the

Hational Front is the only pers on who says publicly what many

people think privately,.78 Le Pen alternately assumes the stance

of populist hero or populist victim: in one speech he referred ta

himself as 'Superdupont', 'Zorro of the poor and of the French'

ilnd as "Robin Hood, who is not ashamed to shoot his arrows into

the fat buttocks of the occupiers,,79, while in true demagogjc

fashion, he constantly attacks the powerfu1 enemies out ta

destroy him. 80

Le Pen beneflts from an ability to present a distinct

POlI tlca1 vision, however simplistic, dlstorted and pernicious,

in a time when French poli tical discourse suffers from a lack of

Im~glnatlon and ambitlon. Andre Laurens has seen in the success

of the Front National an indictment of the attempt to reduce

polltics to its technocratic, problem-sclving dimensions:

77Tagul eff, 128.

78Subrata Mitra, "The National Front in France - A Single Issue Movement?" , West European Politics Il (April 1988): 61.

79Pl enel and Rollat, 38.

80see Taguieff, 121-2; Jean-Paul Mari, "Le grand soir de Jean-Marie Le Pen", Le Nouvel Observateur, 21-27 March 1986, 32; Le Monde, March 29, 1989, 10. 67

We have seen the limi ts of an evolution in which pol i tl.CS asserts itself... only in terms of administration. Pure administration, the rel igion of modernization and the cult of technology have not shown a convincing effectivcness: there i5, in thi5 language, an absence of dreams, an inability to pro]ect a common commun1ty involving the participation and inclusion of all. Social integration does not happen by itself, mechanically ... ln overly reducing the ambition of politics, we give ground to demagogy.81

Le Pen fi11s this vacuum, playing off fears and adding an evangelical Element that offers salvation by restoring the

traditional order and expell~ng those responsible for sin. 82 If

this combination of apocalyptic warnings and simple solutions has

proven successful, i t is in part because the visions offered by

others seem neither convincing nor worthy nor visionary.

The Front National has sueeeeded because i t has managed to present itself as an outlet for the disenchanted, for the fcd up

- fed up with immigrants, with inseeurity, with Economie decay,

with unresponsive and visionless politieians. We have considered

key factors that contributed to this dis~nchantment and some of

the reasons why protest crystall i zed on the extreme-Right - a political environment favorable to the extreme-Right and a

political leader who skillfully exploited this environment. Yet

to understand fully how a sudden but durable breakthrough of this

nature and magnitude by a minor political party could have

occurred, we must devote specifie and detalled attention ta

changes involving the party system and the major parties.

81Andre Laurens, "Qui sont-ils?", Le Monde, Dossiers et Documents: L'election présidentielle du 28 avril - 8 mai 19R1L May 1988, 30. cf. Plenel and Rollat, 6.

82 c f. de Brie, 13.

1 ~. __ CHAPTER THREE

THE PARTY SYSTEM AND THE RI SE OF THE FRONT NATIONAL

Thus far we have considered sorne of the key conditions that

permitted the resurgence of the extreme-Right in France in the

1980's. We have interpreted, in Chapter Two, the success of the

Front National as a reaction of protest to an economic and social

crisis facilitated by a rightward shift in the political

environment and skillful political leadership. AlI these

conditions, it has been argued, were necessary for a movement of

the extreme-Right to succeed. Yet what is notable about the

resurgence of the extreme-Right in the 1980' s, and what must be

emphasized if the S\lccess of the Front National is to be fully

explained and understood, is that protest was activated by and

expressed through support for a pol i tical party in electoral

competltlon. The resurgence of the extreme-Right did not follow

the pattern of protest typical either of the extreme-Right (the

1930's Leagues, Poujadisme) or of other movements (May 1968,

regional autonomy, ecology) that began as social movements and

eventually transformed themselves, usually with minimal or

fleeting success, into political parties. In this instance,

\..Jhile obviously related to changes and events at the societal

level, the Front National did not grow out of an autonomous and

68 2

69 already active social movement but rather emerged directly as a political party.l

This fact implies that we would be well-advised to look in the sphere of the party system for the decisi ve changes that explain the rise of the Front National. We must ask what changes occurred within the ex~sting party system and the parties themsel ves to allow a protest party of the extreme-Right to disrupt a previously stable system and capture ten per cent or more of the French electorate. Why were the existing parties unable to integrate or at least diffuse the protest generated by 'la crise', as they had previously wi th such movements as May '68, environmentalism, regional autonomy, feminism and the traditional middle classes?2 Why did a party system previously understood to be exceptional for its 'refusaI to fail' suddenly suffer at least a partial failure?

l'La nouvelle droite' can be seen as a movement that in sorne respect paved the way for the Front National. Yet the New Right was an intellectual, rather than a social movement; it scrupulously avoided direct invol vement in party poli tics, and its members are neither active in nor support ive of the Front National (see Rollat 1 Les hommes ... , 146.). The New Right is better understood as having simply "nourished the soil upon which the 'phénomerne Le Pen' has grown" (Rollat, Les hommes ... , 147).

2For discussions of how the party system had reslsted previous challenges, especially in the 1970' s, see Wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... ",; Berger, "Politics and Antl-Politics ... ",; Jack Hayward, "The Dissentient Pol i tical Culture", in fiQ.Ç.. ELl Movernents and Prote st in France, ed. Phil Cerny (London: Frances Pinter, 1982), 1-16; and Roger Eatwell, "Poujadism and Neo Poujadism: From RevoIt to Reconciliation", in Social Movement~; and Protest in France, ed. Phil Cerny (London: FraI.ces Plnter, 1982),70-93. 70 The explanation that will be offered will argue that the apparent stability of the Frenr.h party system until 1983 and the failure of protest parties, including the extreme-Right, to mount successful challenges to maj or party hegemony, was based on a combination of, first, conjunctural factors specifie to the nature of electoral competition prior to the victory of the Left, and, second, the capacity of the major parties to integrate and articulate the concerns of potential sources of protest. We will see that following 1981, both sets of factors changed in a way that, given the favorable environment outlined in the previous chapter, allowed a party of the extreme-Right to attraet new found electoral support.

I. The Legitimation Thesis In order to establish our argument, it is worthwhile to begin by presenting the thesis advanced by Martin Schain to account for the rise of the Front National. 3 For Schain, the decisive factor underlying FN success was a process of legitimization of the themes and arguments associated with the extreme-Right begun by party elites of both the Left and traditional Right following 1981. He argues that whereas the extreme-Right had previously been excluded as a legitimate political actor and its xenophobie themes conseiously ignored, an increasing focus on immigration and insecurity by the PCF and the

RPR in particular, beginning with the elections of 1981, served

3Schain, 229-52.

h 4

71 to create "a broader acceptance of the [Front National) as a carrier of key issues among a broader sector of the electorate that still identifies with other parties" as weIl as an

"acceptance by political élites of the party as a legitimate partner for influence 1 mobilization and decision-making".4

It is indeed highly l ikely that the growi ng attention paid to issues associated wi th the extreme-Right and the frequent willingness of the moderate parties of the Right to cooperate with the Front National had important effects in making the party appear more acceptable and respectable, and thus helping it attract popular support. We have already explored, as one aspect of the favorable political environment, a series of factors that helped give the extreme-Right legitimacy and acceptability

However, Schain 's argument, which focusses on the process of legitimization as decisive to the success of the Front National, needs to be questioned. Central to the persuasiveness of this thesis is the implicit suggestion that had the other parties ignored the race issue and consistently refused any cooperation with the Front National, the Front National's breakthrough could not have occurred. "The issues of immigration/law and order became the means through which the legitimation of the National

Front was constructed through conscious decisions by party élites and groups within the political system".5 Under this view, the

4 I bid. 1 230-l,

5Ibid., 249. 72 success of the Front National was in essence a creation of the other parties. It is, of course, impossible to test Schain' s thesis by atternpting to reconstruct what would have happened had the other major parties not raised immigration and law and order as political themes prior to and following the emergence of the Front National in 1983-84: politics does not lend itself to this kind of method. Yet there are a number of grounds upon which doubts about this thesis can still be raisei. Schain treats immigration and law and order as issues that only gained saliency once they were broached by the major parties; once the 'cat was out of the political bag', the Front National's programme was validated and voters turned to the party that offered the most militant 'solutions' to immigration and related problems. First of aIl, this seems to underestimate the extent to which immigration and insecurity emerged independently as issues of popular concern during a period of widespread social and economic crisis. A SOFRES survey taken in August, 1983, before even the Dreux by-election, found 51% of respondents, including 70% of RPR electars, in favour of repatriating immigrants as a most favoured 'remedy' to reduce unemployment. 6 This followed a period where issues related to immigration had achieved a new visibility due ta a strike by immigrant automobile workers and the increasingly vocal refusaI of young Muslims to

6Jerôme Jaffre ed., SOFRES, Opinions Publiques: Engu~tes et commentaires (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1984), 221. 73 accept integration into the 1 national identi ty ,.7 We can also recall that the link bdtween immigrants and unemployment is inevitably persuasive to sorne in times of crisis Le Pen's slogan of "Two million immigrants Two million French unemployed" echoes an Austrian Nazi slogan of the 1930's equating unemployment with Jews. 8 As for the issue of insecurity, already by the late 1970's, self-defence (autodéfense) organizations were emerging in protest against the perceived laxity and indifference of the state towards crime. 9 The point is that politicians were reacting to concerns that were to a large degree emanating independently from society. The idea that, had aIl the , respectable' parties acted in a pure and honorable manner by refusing to playon insecurities generated by 'la crise', no widespread support for a party based on intolerance and xenophobia would have emerged, is highly questionable. Secondly, we must ask why these issues, once they did emerge as salient, were so successfully captured by the Front National. The argument that the other part ies served to radical i ze the electorate and legi timiz~ the Front National by adopting the extreme-Right's them~s is not entirely convincing. other possibilities, intuitively more plausible, are imaginable. By ignoring the Front National, would not the other parties have

7See Catherine wihtol de Wenden, "Du bon usage politique des immigrés", Projet, no. 191 (Jan-Feb 1985): 5I. 8Rollat, Les hommes ... , 127.

9See Plenel and Rollat, 134. 74

been creating an enormous vacuum into which the FN could have

stepped even more forcefully?

Typically, when protest emerges, existing political parties

attempt to diffuse it by adopting and incorporating its central

themes. In France, this strategy is credited with the failure,

for example, of the 'autogestionnaires' and parties representing

the traditional middle classes to disrupt the party system during

the 1970' s - their concerns were incorporated by the PS and the

parties of the moderate Right respectively.10 Indeed, in the

British case it was precisely the ability of Thatcher's Tories to

flaunt a 1 hard 1 image on race and immigration that was se en to

depri ve the British National Front of an electoral opening .11

One might reasonably have expected, then, that by addressing and

incorporating the Front National's themes, the other parties, and

especia'ly the RPR, would have captured potential FN voters

rather than buttress the extreme-Right, if not immediately, then

at least by the leg lslative plections of 1986, when the RPR-UDF

adopted a hard-line programme on immigration and security

(subsequently enacted in the Loi Pasqua) that was virtually

10For the traditional middle classes, see Eatwell, 70-93 and Suzanne Berger, "Regime and Interest Representation: The French T:cadi tional Middle Classes", in Organ iz ing Interests in Western E.)..lrope, ed. Suzanne Berger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19B1" 83-101. For the 'autogestion' movement, see steven C. Lewis and Serenella Sferza, "French Sod al ists between state and Society", ln The Mitterrand Experiment, ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann and Sy Iv ia Malzacher (New York: Oxford Uni versi ty Press, 1987), 101-4.

llChristopher Husbands, Il "Extreme Right-Wing Politics in Great 8r1 tain: The Recent Marginalization of the National Front", h'er;t European Politics 11 (April 1988): 65-79.

1 1 75 indistinguishable from that of the FN .12 We can agree that by adopting a discourse with racist undertones the other parties served to help the Front National, but we need to know wh'r this effect, and not the opposite, was produced ,13

FinaIly, we can also question the extent to which Jean-Marie

Le Pen and his party were indeed legitimized by the political elite. opinion surveys have consistently shown fairly widespread support for the policies advocated by Le Pen: for example, 26% in

November 1984, and 23% in October 1985 of the general population declared themselves in agreement with Le Penis ideas, with 29% in the latter survey supporting his posi tians on securi ty and justice and 31% on immigration. 14 However, increas ing nurnbers from 1983 ta 1985 considered Le Pen and the FN racist, a danger for democracy in France, and an extremist party unlike the other parties of the opposi tion. 15 It has also been noted that a sharp decline in Le Pen' s approval rating in the fall of 1987

(following his 'Holocaust as detail' declaration) failed to translate into a corresponding de.cline in intended Le Pen

12see Shields, 39-52.

13schain notes this dilemma but fails to resol ve i t. Ile writes: "The validation of many of the National Front issues, ot course, could have attracted many of the vaters who had moved from the established right to the National Front in 1983-8!') bi-lc)t to their original parties. However ... the net effect has becn il consolidation of the National Front. nationally ... ". Schain, 242.

1411un sondage sur 11 image du Front National", Le Monde, 17 October 1985. By October 1987, only 18% approved of his policies, while 78% disapproved and 4% were undecided (Schain, 60. )

15I bid. 76

voters .16 This suggests that the party' s legi timacy and i ts

inclusion among the pol i tically acceptable do not have a clear

and direct impact on its electoral support.

Nonetheless, public opinion was shaped in part by the

tactics and attitudes adopted by the other parties vis-à-vis the

Front National. As we saw in Chapter One, these have been

confused and contradictory, wi th outright denunciations and

rejection frequently giving way ta equivocations and temporary

cooperation whenever Front National support was deemed necessary.

Yet in situations where the moderate Right has stuck ta i ts

avowed principles and refused to recognize the Front National as

<'In acceptable political actor, the FN has suffered no real

damage. Thus in the 1984 European campaign, Simone Veil, head of

the joint RPR-UDF l ist, never once mentioned Le Pen' s name, yet

the FN won 11% . 17 In 1986, Raymond Barre initiated a pact in

Lyon with aIl the other major party candidates whereby they aIl. agreed to avoid mention of racist themes: "i t had the effect of

leavlng a free run for the FN which, revelling in the fact, shaved large numbers of votes from Barre' s total ... " .18 And the steady and consistent insistence of the moderate Right following

October, 1988 to reject any cooperation with the FN had little impact on the party' s resul ts in the rnunicipals of March, 1989.

16perrlneau, "l'echo politique ... ", 23.

17See L'Express, 22 June 1984.

18Dav id Goldey and R.W. Johnson, "The French General Election of 16 March 1936", Electoral Studies 5 (Decemher 1986): ~4J. c

Once again, we see that the willingness of the other major parties to borrow the extreme-Right 1 s discourse and to succumb to cooperation with the Front National seems incapable of providin~ a full explanation for the party' s emergence and continucd success. None of the alternatives to cooperation and legi timj zation suggest a plausible al ternatl. ve outcome. As Jcan-

Marie Colombani once noted: "Attack Le Pen, and for a part of the population he assumes the status of a martyr; ignore him and he steadily but surely continues to gain ground Il.19 Our conclusIon must be that it WilS not the actions and statements of the establ ished parties regarding the Front National and i ts programme that account decisively for the Fr~nt National's rise, but rather other factors re1ating ta the nature and evol ution 0 f the French party system. To construct a more satisfactory explanation of the Front National' s success, an alternatlve approach must be deve1oped.

II. Persistence of the Extreme-Right Tradltion

Instead of explaining the emergence of the Front National as caused by a process of pol i tical legl timation, the thesis we will develop attempts to understand the Front Natl.onal ln terms of the persistence of an extreme-Right tradition in France wi th a distinct set of values and concerns and a distinct electorate.

We will argue that it i5 only by recognizing the extremc-Rl.ght ar;

19Jean-Marie Colombani, "Jean-Marie Le Pen, ou comment r;'en debarasser?", Le Monde, 24 October 1985. 78

a distinct electorate that we can account for the rise and

durabil i ty of the Front National. This section will attempt to

establish this thesis and show how it accounts for the

performance of the Front National.

Following the stunning breakthrough of the Front National in

1984, a number of analysts studying the composition of the FN

vote concluded that it was primarily "a vote of the radicalized

Rlght that found the UDF and RPR too soft in its denunciation of

the Lcft". 20 This analysis was based on the high percentage of

Le Pen voters who identified most closely with the RPR and UDF

(~6%, compared ta 34% who identified with the FN), as weIl as his

support among the better-off elements of the bourgeois. Not

surprisingly, the Front National lost 36% of its 1984 electorate

ln 1986, of whom 84% t-ransferred to the RPR-UDF lists. 21 This

1055 may be attributed to such causes as the greater stakes

invo1ved ln the '86 election, the easing of hostility towards the

Social ist government following the Communists 1 departure or the

thcn-Opposi tion 1 s tough line on issues such as iml'1igration ar,1

security. In their place came a group of electors more based in

the working class, less afflliated with any party or ideological

straln, and less interested in pOlitics,22 leading analysts to

20pascal Perrineau, "Portrai t-robot du lepeniste" Le Nouvel pbservateur, 29 April - 5 May 1988, 26. See also Jaffré, "Front Nùtlona1 ... " 217-227; Plenel and Rollat, 127-130.

21Mltrù, 48 and Jaffre, "Front National. .. ", 223.

22Jaff.cc, "Front National ... ", 221-7.

L .4

label the 1986 vote a "force de refus" or an "electoratE> of

social protest".

What risks being ignored in such attempts ta distinguish tho

successive electorates of the Front National is the extent to

which the party has maintained a consistent core of voters, im

electorate which is solidly committed to the extreme-Right.

Almost t~o-thirds of FN voters in 1984 (64%) supported the party

in 1986; 90% of those who voted FN in 1986 supported Le Pen in

May, 1988, and 57% of the far greater number who voted for Le Pen

in that election remained faithful ta the party a month latp.r. 21

It should be remembered that even in 1984, before the Front

National registered its first national electoral success, 34 % 01

FN voters associated themselves with the party and 40% situatod

themselves on the extreme-Right. 24

These figures allow us ta speak of il loyal, dedicaterl

extreme-Right faithful, representing at least five per cent of

the total electorate. 25 This electorate has a

ideological and politl.cal profile that refutes any attempt_ to

assimilate i t ta a strand wi thin the moderate Right, Centre or

Left. Among those who remained faithful ta the Front National

from 1984 ta 1986, 71% classified themselves as belnq on th('

extreme-Right, compared ta 45% of those who defccted ln 19BG dnrl

23Figures amassed from NItra, 48; Mayer, "L"etfet' Le Pen' •.. ", 44 and Perrir.eau, "L'exception presidentielle ... ", J8.

24 Jaffre, "Front National ... ", 2 27.

25This fjgure is offered by Mayer, "L"effet Le Pcm' ... ", 44.

l_~ __ _ 80

37% of those who rallied to the party.26 Again in 1988, the

'fai thful' (those who voted for the FN in 1986) had a profile

markedly different from those who rallied to Le Pen; according to

an analysis undertaken by Nonna }~ayer, the faithful "forro a solid

nucleus. " poli ticized, partisan, ideologically coherent, that we

can qualify without any hesitation as extremist, and they prefer

to abstain on the second ballot than vote for Jacques Chirac (46%

ogainst 43%) ".27 This core was found ta associate itself closely with the extreme-Right, to be preoccupied with the issue of

lmmigration, to react strongly against the r 19ht ta abortion, the rl.ght ta strike and the idea of a multiracial society and to strongly favour capital punishment. 28

These analyses correspond with the findings of Subrnta

Ml tra, who on the basis of a cl uster analys is of attitudinal and

POll tlcal variables of FN voters in 1984, identif ied 38% of the somple as 'hard-core xenophobes'. 29 This group, the largest in

~>lZC, lS identified as constituting Il a durable social base for on cxtrüme rlght movement": obsessed by immlgratlon, they are a polltic ized group and express strong partisan identi f ication wi th the cxt rcmc-Rlght and the Front National. 30 They are also older, more often retired and more predominantly male than the average ------

26Jaffre, "Front National. .. ", 224.

27Mayer, "L"effet Le Pen' ... ". ,*4.

28]bid.

2 9r-1i tl.-a, 58.

J01bid., 58-61.

J 81

FN voter. Those identified as the 'Traditional R.lght' (28t of the sample), by contrast, were concerned far more with economic issues and wished to express their strong hosti 11 ty to the policies of the government. These voters correspond ta those who returned to the moderate Right in 1986, while two other groups labelled the 1 Young Workers 1 and 1 prodigal Sons of the Left· while only 16.3% of the 1984 sample, correspond Jn their soclal and political origins to the working class electorate th.:,t assumed an increasing1y larger pli'lce in 1986 and 1988. Ag.:dn wp see a fusion of separate e1ectorates wlth varyl.ng priorl.ties, motivations and orJ.glns, of which the most significant is é1 dedicated extreme-Right core.

Earlier wc alluded to the persistence of an extreme-Right tradition that accounts for the Front National' s success. The d1.stinct extreme-Right electorate we have j ust identified, wlllch

percei 'l'es 1. tse1f as being on the extreme-Rlght 1 wi th strong partisan aff il iation to the Front Nat ional and w i th a coherent

1.deology and a strong interest in politics, ctid not l..ilmply mater.lall.ze out of thin a1.r over the course of a year. Tt !s filr too loyal, tao consistent and too ded.lcated to the extrerne-H ight to be a new creation, even if lt has adopted a modern guise in its most dominant priorities. The historlcal legùcy of the extreme-Right i5 too strong to bel ieve that the trdd l tlOnd l electorate disappeared complete l y dur ing l ts dry years p r 10r ta

1981, only to reappear 1.n the 1980'5 Wl.th 50 many comman, integra ted beliefs and understandings.

------~~~...... 82

Instead, along with a small core of long-tirne militants, an

enduring extreme-Right electorate can be found in what de Brie

calls "the fellow travellers ... who y ield 1 when ci rcumstances

present themselves, to their natural penchant for national

order": the most reactionary elements among small businessmen,

artisans, farmers, the liberal and independent professions and

others who flnd thelr interests and status threatened. JI Le

Pen' 5 core electorate is made up to a large degree of the

tradi tional mlddle classes who supported POU] ade in 1956, the

1 pieds-noirs 1 anù other hard-line advocates of Algerie Française

who voted for Tixier-Vignancour in 1965, those with a nostalgia

10r Vichy, those most obsessed W1. th ant1. -Communism, wi th strong

leadersh1.p, W1. th the glory and purity of the nation and the

authorl ty of the state, those whose world-v iew is anchored in the

not.lons of natural order, social hierarchy and cultural

homogene 1. ty. Le Pen 1S indeed, as we argued in Chapter One, the

l nheri tor of a distinct ldeological and political tradition, one

tlElt \vûS nevcr extlnguished; despi te the length of time during

which it falled to mabillze itself 1nto a politically successful

pd rty, l. ts potentlal ta be activated persisted.

If we accept the perslstence of an extreme-Right tradition

wlth a slzeab~e potentldl electorate, we must confront the dual

questions of why it falled for 50 long ta manifest itself and why

the Front Nat10nal was suddenly able ta activate it. 'l'a state

m,1tters broadly, the answer, as de Brie suggests, is that

11de Brie, 13 .

• 83

circumstances had to present themselves. First, it had ta await

'la crise'. As John Frears argues, for the first twenty years of

the Fifth Republic, the regime succeeded in effectively providing

economic well-being, stabil i ty and secur i ty that endowed i t w i th

legi timacy and undermined extremism. 32 Hoffmann emphas1.zes how

"economic growth mitigated the huge social dislocations that

occurred between 1955 and 1973 - the dccline of agriculture, th0

spread of industry, the boom in the ci ties". 33 The cr is i~;

revealed and accentuated these dislocations, called i:he shared

priorities and values that undermined extremism into question,

and focussed attention on new concerns, namely immigration and

insecuri ty, around which both traditional extLemists and

frustrated partisans of the more moderate parties could rally.

Secondly, as long as the extreme-R1.ght legacy was considered

illegitimate and shameful, a party embody ing this legacy could

not expec'c to mobil ize widespread support, even among thase

sympathetlc ta its concerns. The changes in the political

environment we considered in the last chapter, whereby the

discourse of the New Right gained an audience and the taboos of

the Liberation were partially lifted, and the adoption by the

extreme-Right of a more modern, moderate programme that appealed

to segments of the activists and electorates of the other

32John Frears, "Legitimacy, Democracy and Consensus: A Presidentlal Analysis", West European Pol i tics 1 (October 1978): 11-23 and John Frears, Political Parties and Elections in the French Fifth Republic (London: C. Hurst and Co., 1977), 165.

33Hoffmann, "The Big Muddle", 55.

L 84

parties, served to permit potential supporters to find their true

home. We discussed in Chapter One how many extreme-Right

activists in the 1960's and '70's could no longer tolerate being

confined to a political ghetto; once the walls of the ghetto were

torn down, many mernbers of the communi ty fel t secure enough to

rcturn.

Yet above aIl, the activation of the dormant extreme-Right

tradition had to await changes in the party system. We will now consider why the party system prevented the resurgence of the

extreme-Right prior to 1981 and the transformations that have

occurred that have allowed the extreme-Right both to recapture

its core and to expand its appeal to other segments of the

population.

III. Evolution of the Party System: Changes in Electoral Competi tion

As mentioned in the Introduction, the French party system

just prior to the breakthrough of the Front National was

considered highly and uniquely stable. ThrC'ugh the 1960' sand

1970' s, the four major parties consistently resisted challenges

to their hegemony from various sources - from political clubs,

single-issue movements, and fringe parties - and seemed immune to

the processes of party ~ccay and dealignment prevalent elsewhere

in advanced Western democracies. 34 It was noted that in 1983,

party specialist Frank Wilson predicted that "the reduction in

34See Wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... ", 503-32.

- ,

85 the numl:er of significant French parties to only four seems permanent". 35

This p-:riod of stability and invulnerability obviously came to an abrupt end with the success of the Front National. Wc will not attempt to provide a comprehensive discussion of the changes

in the French party system under the Fifth Republic and how the parties were able to resist previous challenges. 36 Instcad, wC' will consider two features of the party system that are most

important in accounting for the fallure of the extreme-Right prior to 1983, and how these factors changed in ways that were to provide an opening for the extreme-Right.

The first set of factors relates to the nature of electoral competition. As the Fifth Republic progressed, electora 1

'=!ompeti tion was increasingly structured into a bipolarized

struggle between the Left and the Right, with two-party coalitions (RPR/UDF; PS/PCF) eventually crystallizing around each pole. During the 1970'5, the competition between the two major blocs was very tight, with parties and candidates of the Leit coming within one to four percentage points of capturing a

3 5Wilson, "The French Party System ... ", 117.

36Among the good discussions of the French party system, see Wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... "; Roy Pierce, "French Legislative Elections: The Historical Background", j n The French Legislative Elections of 1978, ed. Howard Pennimann, AEI studies 269 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Pub]ic POlicy Research, 1980), 1-37; Gerard Grunberg, "France", in Electoral change in Western Democracies: Patterns and Sources of Electoral Volatility, ed. Ivor Crewe and David Denver (London: Croon Helm, 1985), 202-29; and vincent Wright, The Gavernment and Politics Q{ France, 2d ed., (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1983), chap. 6. 86

majority of the votes cast in the elections of 1973, 1974 and

1978. 37 The narrowness of electoral outcomes in a bipolar

environment handicapped minor parties of all stripes:

The preoccupation wi th the left-right. battle drew attention away from the challenges of alternative organizations at election times. with the stakes in each election high and the contests close, voters wet:"e disinclined to trade off their ties to the rnaj or parties in order to support a new minor party even if i t represented... interests with which the voters sympathized. 38

For the extreme-Right, the hazards of bipolarization had

becn fel t as early as 1968. In the early years of the Fifth

Republ ic, the extreme-Right, consurned by anti-Gaullism and

wllling to play its traditional game of 'politique du pire',

frequently supported the moderate Left on second ballots. 39 In

the leg islati ve electiol1 following the events of May, both the

Gaullists and the Cornmunists purposefully pOlarized the

confrontation, the former asking voters to choose between order

and anarc. hy and the latter treating their struggle as one against

'Gaullist dictatorship'. 40 In such an environment, and as the

Left subsequently united and stood poised to assume power, the

extrewe-Right was forced to rally behind the Gaullists and their

allies or risk seeing the Cornrnunists emerge victorious. Anti-

37wright, 190-1.

38Wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... 'I, 521-2.

39Por example, Tixier-Vignancour urged a vote for François Mitterrand on the second ballot in 1965. In 1967, the Left again "proved capable of winning an unexpectedly significant fraction of the right-wing anti-Gaullist vote" (Williams and Harrison, 90).

4 o\villi

L 87 communism was easily the strongest common ideolog ical thread uniting a divided extreme-Right, and while sorne hoped that a victory of the Left could provoke a right-wing counter-reaction, most deeply feared a major clampdown on their activi ties were the

Left to assume power. 41 The bottom line, as John Frears defined i t, was that IIsources of right-wing discontent take second place to the fear of a Left-wing victory at the polls which would bring the Communists into government". 42

Closely related to the narrowness of electoral competj tion was the fact that competition between Left and Right was so hOfitile and all-consuming, with the two camps representing

IIdramatically different economic, social, and pol i tical philosophiesll. 43 Vùters were presented a clear, stark ideological choice. Defeat of the Right could mean tt.c introduction of a whole set of liberal and socialist policies

(contained in the Common Programme) to which the extreme-Right was fjercely opposed. Sa long èS the choice was a stark one, it was natural for supporters of the extreme-Right to rema in faithful to the mast credible bulwark against the Left.

Parties of the extreme-Right, like other small parties, were also handicapped by the mechanics of the electoral system. 'l'he majority two-ballot system serves first of al:!. to deny any seats to parties unable to win a plurality of votes in any district.

41Brigouleix, 123-5.

42Frears, Political Parties .. . , 165.

43wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... ", 521. 88

This is especially damaging to isolated and ideologically unpopular parties, for even if they can gain initial support, it will be difficult for them to expand their base sUfficiently on the second ballot te win. 44 While smaller parties should have received sorne bene fit from the presence of a first, non-decisive ballot, the system of alliances, by ensuring that only the best- posi tioned candidate from each bloc after the first ballot would continue onto the second, gave a strong incentive to vote tactically on the first ballot, not necessarily for the most preferred candidate, but for one who stood a chance of advancing to the second round. The extreme-Right, at least as long as it was weak and isolated, thus had to overcome barriers associated with the electoral system.

How did this situation change after 1981? Electoral competition remained structured along Left-Right lines, but the constraints on the extreme-night were weakened. The circumstances of the 1984 European election were extremely fortunate for the Front National. It had previously been observed that miner parties were most successful in elections

"that would no way affect the national political balance between

44The PCF has tended to be the greatest victim of this constraint: in 1958, for examp1e, with 18.6% of the vote they won only two per cent of the seats (Pierce, 16). Hewever, it also affected the Front National in June, 1988, for in many of the Marseilles-area ridings where it led the Right after the first ballot, it lost due to a po or transfer of votes. In the nine ridings where the FN represented the Right on the second ballot, its candidates averaged 6.0% less than the combined first-ballot totals of Right candidates (FN, RPR-UDF, various Right). 89 the major parties,,45, when the electoral stakes were lower and • the intense Left-Right polarization would have less of an impact in shaping voters' perceptions and calculations. The election of 1984 provided just such an opportuni ty: a ballot seen as one without risks, or in Le Gall' s phrase, "an election without stakes, but with consequences". 46 with the next important national election still two years away, with few clear issues structuring the vote, with a proportional representation system in place, the normal disinc.entives against registering a vote for the extreme-Right (or other minor parties) were largely absent. That at the time of the election the President' s populari ty was at an all-time low,47 and that the Right was highly mobilized in opposition to the Government's policy on private schools, further benefitted the party most militantly opposed to the Left. It is difficul t to imagine the Front National enjoying subsequent success of such magnitude had not the unique circumstances of 1984 helped set the wheels in motion; however, the durabili ty of i ts vote under less favorable circumstances suggests that its breakthrough would have occurred nonetheless. As rnentioned earlier, the Front National again benefitted from circumstances in 1986, with the introduction of proportional

45wilson, "When Parties Refuse ... ", 522. 46Le Gall, "Une élection ... ". 47Mitterrand's approval rating was at 34% in June, 1.984, cornpared to 50% who disapproved and 16% undecided. By comparison, Giscard' s lowest approval rating, at the time of the Presidential election in April, 1981, was 37%. Le Gall, "Une élection ••. ", 10 . • 90 representation. This has been demonstrated by Jérôme Jaffré, who 1 shows that voting for the Front National was clearly influenced by tactical considerations. In short, Jaffré finds that voting for the Fr.ont National was strongest where its candidates had the best chance of being elected: In departments where only two seats were up for grabs [thus where proportionality was least extensive and where small lists stoed little hope of electing a deputy], the Front National lest 27% of its electorate from 1984, while where there were more than ten, it lost only 7.7%. In the 63 departments where it had no hope of being elected it lost 16.7%; in the 32 departments where i ts chances were real, its losses were limited to 8%.48

The presence of proportional representation, and, in 1984, of a ballot without the traditional stakes surely, then, facilitated the emergence of the Front National, but they did not cause i t and they do not offer much in the way of real

explanation for why i t occurred. A more significant change concerns the nature of the competition engaged in between Left and Right, triggered by the Left's experience in office. prior

to 1981, competition was highly intense, with two sides who "view(ed) each ether not only as political rivaIs but aIse as bi tter enemies who (would) destroy French democracy". 49 Both

sides, as we have noted, couId present bold, stark choices, with the prospect of an al ternation of power offering nothing less than immediate redemption or damnation for France.

48Jaffré, "Front NationaL .. ", 222.

49wilson, "The French Party System ••• ", 126.

'. 91 Once the Left had undergone the sobering experience of having its utopian dreams shattered by practical constraints, the previous situation collapsed. The 'deideologization' of the Left

moved the Socialists away from the notion of class ~onflict and a state-dominated economy towards an acceptance of private enterprise, modernization and restructuring. 50 The Opposition, meanwhile, having itself been in government for so long, could not, as the Socialists had, indulge in the luxury of claiming prompt remedies to aIl the country's troubles. The experience of 'cohabitation' provided further impetus towards displacing confrontation with cooperation and establishing a broader realm of consensus between the moderate parties of Left and Right. As Hoffmann states: This does not mean, as sorne have argued, that there are no more ideological differences between Left and Right, or that the areas of consensus have spread over aIl fields of battle. But there ~ important realms of agreement: not only over diplomacy and defence, over economic policy (where choice is indeed limited), over a cornbination of public and private schools, etc. And many of the disputes are about questions of degree (how much liberalization and privatization of the media and the economy, how much decentralization or "flexibility" of employrnent, etc) .51 Accompanying this convergence, during the period of the Front National' s ri se , was an attempt by aIl the major

50See Berger, "French Poli tics ..• "; and Hoffmann, "Conclusion" , in The Mitterrand Experiment, ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann and Sylvia Malzacher (New York: Oxford University press), 348-9. 51stanley Hoffmann, "Conclusion" / in The Mitterrand Experiment, ed. George Ross, Stanley Hoffmann, and Sylvia Malza~her (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 349. 92

Presidential hopefuls to establish an appeal that would be 1 attractive to the floating voters of the Centre, an electorate

that is ideologically moderate and politically flexible. Electoral studies have long shown the persistence of a strong

element of centrist opinion among the electorate "whi::::h helps to

explain both the growth of Socialist support from 1973 to 1981

and its decline thereafter".52 Indeed, it has been thought that

the political parties have long been far more polarized than the

electorate itself, forced into a "mold of confrontation" by the

electoral system, lingering confrontational 'mentalités' and the

reaction of notables "who, after years of electoral fighting

between left and right, are deeply suspicious of attempts at

blurring between the party lines".53 But if old suspicions have

stymied formaI cooperation between Left and Right, an awareness of the pragmatism and moderation of the key centrist electorate

informed the strategies of Barre and Chirac in their attempts to gain the Presidency.S4

52Grunberg, "France", 220. This piece was ,.,ri tten following the municipal elections of 1983. cf. William Safran, "centrism in the Fifth Republic: An Attitude in Search of an Instrument", in The Fifth Republic at Twenty, ed. William Andrews and Stanley Hoffmann (Albany: SUNY Press, 1981), 123-45.

53Hoffmann, "The Big Muddle ... ", 53. cf. Wilson, .. "Revitalization of. .. ", 100, and Stanley Hoffm,:ulll, "The Impact of the Fifth Repub1ic on France", in The Fifth Republic at Twenty, ed. William Andrews and Stanley HCJffmann (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1981), 477.

540n Chirac, see William Schonfeld, "Le RPR et l'UDF face à l'épreuve de l'opposition", Revue française de science politique 36 (February 1986): 20; for Barre, see Goldey and Johnson, 243. This issue is discussed in many of the accounts of Chirac' s dilemma between ballots of the 198B Presidential election - how 93 That this tendency towards consensus and moderation occurred • at the same period as the emergence of an extremist party with such strength is paradoxical but not inexplicable. The solution would seem to be that growing consensus within the mainstream of the party system (excluding for the most part the PCF) , while responding to one segment of opinion and to many of the changes in French society that left previous divisions artificial and archaic, left a further segment disenfranchised and did not respond to the dislocations triggered by the crisis. It is not

surprising that 64% of Le Pen voters in 1988 believed that things

were going poorly in France, compared to 41% of Mitterrand and Barre voters and 31% of Chirac voters. 55 The Front National vote can be understood as a reflection of the inabili ty or unwillingness of the other parties to articulate the outlook and concerns of angry and neglected portions of the electorate. The 'normalization' of French politics, the end of bitter polarization in the party system, has not further stabilized the party system, as was expected,56 but instead has helped to unleash a movement that destabilizes it.

to attract Le Pen voters without alienating centrist moderates. 55 "Extrême-droite : radioscopie d'un vote", L'Express, 6 May 1988, 17. significantly 1 69% of Lajoinie (PCF) supporters felt the same way. According to the same survey, nearly half of Le Pen voters fel t things were going poorly for them personally, compared to 20% of Chirac voters.

56See Wilson's discussion at the conclusion of his articles "The Revitalization of French Parties" and "The French Party Since 1981". « 94 IV. Evolution of the party System: Dealing with Protest

These issues must be explored further by examining the

second series of changes in the party system that allowed the extreme-Right tradition ta reassert itself and to gain support

from other segments of the electorate, namely the capacity of the major parties ta integrate and articulate the concerns of

potential sources of proteste More than institutional factors, more than the importance of

Left-Right polarization, the failure of the extreme-Right to

mobilize more than token political support from the collapse of Algérie Française ta the breakthrough of Le Pen was due to the

ability of the established parties, and especially the Gaullists,

ta channel and diffuse this tendency' s potential. As we have

discussed, the extreme-Right tradition in France has Iargely been defined by a mixture of authoritarianism, nationalism and anti

elitist populisme While Gaullism had an ideological base that

extended beyond these themes, de Gaulle and his successors, both

in discourse and policy, served to integrate much of the extreme

Right tradition. As René Rémond has shawn, De Gaulle, while

fundamentally a democrat, adhered to many of the legacies of the

Bonapartist tradition in France that def ined the extreme-Right 1 s

resistance ta previous regimes: the need for strong Executive

authority, strong and personalized leadership, distrust of

parties and parI iament as representati ve structures and a passion

for national grandeur. 57 As weIl, the Gaullists, at least under

57Rémond, "Les droites ••• ", 324-7 •

• -

95 ( de Gaulle, differed from tradi ticmal conservative parties in not being tied exclusively to the bourgeois but rather enjoyed strong inter-class 'catch-aIl' support. 58 The populist strain in Gaullism helped attract workers and members of the petit bourgeois whose anti-elite sentiments might otherwise have been represented by the extreme-Right.

During the first decade of the Fifth Republic, the extreme- Right kept its distance from the Gaullists due to the enduring saliency of the Algerian crisis. As this cleavage was displaced, a product of fading memories and the more imminent threat posed

by the Left following 1968, the remaining divisions structuring

electoral competition could be captured by a moderate Right

reflecting the basic themes of the 1 nationalist-populist'

tradition. The moderate Right undercut the extreme-Right by preaching a consistently hard-line against the threat of

Communism and in favour of law and order, and by pursuing a nationalistic foreign policy (seen especially in the hostility of

the Gaullists towards a more integrated EEC). The extreme-Right

stood grudgingly behind de Gaulle in 1968, accepted Pompidou

overwhelmingly in 1969, tried its hand with Giscard in 1974, and

then turned to Chirac after 1976. The attraction of Chirac's RPR

should be apparent from Vincent Wright' s characterization of the

party as one which "revels in the aggressive, muscular, populist,

58See Berger, "Politics and Anti-Politics .•• ", 42-44, and Peter Gourevitch, "Gaullism Abandoned, or the Costs of Success", in The Fifth Republic at Twenty, ed. William Andrews and Stanley Hoffmann (Albany: SUNY Press, 1978), 112-122.

( 96 nationalist and voluntaristic utterances of the present leader,,59.

Nonetheless, the ability of the moderate Right to continue

to integrate the extreme-Right tradition after 1981 was

diminished in important respects. The most important was the

RPR's abandonment of the 'nationalist-populist tradition'. After

1981, the RPR moved cl oser ideologically to the liberal tradition

represented by the Giscardians. It abandoned its prior statist

orientation, marked by a receptiveness to nationalization and

state intervention in the economy "that attempted to update an

authoritarian tradition which challenged private interests and had confidence in the state's ability to provide arbitration".60

At the same time, the RPR became less markedly nationalistic, as

shown by its increasing acceptance of French integration into the

EEC (and its eagerness to run a common Iist with the UDF in the 1984 European elections under the leadership of centd st and

Europeanist Simone Veil). Also dropped was the rigid, muscular

tone that Chirac had previously adopted, in his attempt to

moderate his image and appeal to centrist voters.

The liberal tradition, unlike the Gaullist one, does not

share many common reference points with the extreme-Right, based

as it is on consensus, openness, individualism and political

59wright, 209.

60Rémond, "The Right ... ", 134. cf. Ella Searls, "The French in opposition, 1981-86", Parliamentary Affairs 39 (October 1986); 470-1; Byron Criddle, "Parties in a Presidential system", in Political Parties: Electoral Change and Structural Responses, ed. Alan Ware (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 145. 97 c moderation. 61 with its adoption by the Gaullists, an opening for the Front National emerged. According to Bernard Rideau, a

former adviser to Giscard, ilLe Pen's emergence dates, in reality,

from the period when Jacques Chirac undertook to move to the

centre".62 The importance of Chirac' s centr ism has been

recognized by political scientists and FN activists alike.

William Schonfeld argues that "Chirac' s fresh new discovery of

liberalism leaves a space vacant for the extreme-Right; the

fraction of the electorate that was appreciati ve of Chirac' s

'authoritarian style' and muscled language has turned larg81y towards Jean-Marie Le Pen". 63 Meanwhile, for a former RPR

activist who quit to join the Front National in 1983 l "the centrist politics of Chirac no longer correspond with my

nationalist convictIons as a man of the Right nor to my personal difficulties as the owner of a business under jUdicial liqujdation".64 The further the RPR moves away from its Gaullist

hericage and towards an acceptance of liberalism and Europeanism,

an evolution it shows no signs of rejecting, the greater its

61See Rémond, Les droites ••• , especially ch. 4 and 297-304.

62"Le Pen? Son émergence date, en réalité, de l'époque où Jacques Chirac a entrepris de se recentrer". L'Express, 15 J'une 1984, 23.

63Schonfeld, 2l.

64Plenel and Rollat, 70.

( 98

difficulty in recapturing the nationalist-populist tradition that l has reverted to the Front National. 65

As we have already seen, not a11 the voters who have

supportE:d the Front National can be situated on the extreme-

Right, either in terms of their political origins or ideological

atti tudes. other changes relating to the party system help

account for the FN 1 S success among the 'sw 1ng' cornponent of the

electorate or its ability to steal votera previously faithful to

the other parties. Among voters who consider themselves close to

the RPR and UDF, and who ideologically belong to the Centre or

Right, defection to the Front National (which has been much

greater for non-critical ballots, su ch as the Europeans and the

first round of the Presidentials) must be understood in light of

the ongoing turnoil within the parties of the tradi tional Right.

As Schain rightly notes, the emergence of the Front National

occurred in a period of transformation marked by continuing lack

of confidence in parties of the Right as al ternati ves to the Left

in power. 66 The Right governed France without interruption for

the first twenty-three years of the Fifth Republic: to find

itself suddenly removed from power came as a major shock. While

the Right quickly regained electoral support equal to its pre-

1981 levels, it remained torn by leadership struggles (the

'guerre des chefs 1 between Chirac, Barre and Giscard), inter-

65The argument in these two paragraphs is heavily indebted to Pascal Perrineau's analysis in "L'exception présidentielle ... ", 38, 41.

66Schain, 230.

-.. 99 C· party competition and the problems of renewing its ideology and organization. 67 Used to serving as vehicles for Presidential candidates and Governments, the parties of the Right have been unable "to transform themselves into real parties of opposition, namely to provoke debates, proj ects and confrontations". 68 The

opposition following 1981 inflamed passions by its alI-out attack on the Government, but it failed to establish the unity , leadership and renewal needed to channel discontent. Despite the

Right 1 S brief return to power in 1986, the dislocations triggered

by its defeat in 1981 have so far failed fully to work themselves

out - parties of the moderate Right remain in a state of flux and real ignment . A further respect in which the moderate Right has lost its capacity to diffuse potential protest predates 1981 and involves the transformation of the Gaullists from a 'catch-aH' party enjoying support from aIl social categories, including the working-c1ass, towards a more typical1y conservative party

dependent on farrners, professionals, t~~ retired, the elderly and practicing catholics. 69 By 1978, the Gaullists had an electorate

that was virtually indistinguishable from that of the UDF, and

67See Lancelot and Lancelot, 77-99;; Calderon, pt. 3; and Schonfeld, 14-29.

680aniel Carton, "Pousée de sève iconC'lclaste à droite" ,Le Monde (International Edition), 6-12 April 19139), 7.

69See Berger, "Politics and Anti-Politics ..• " 42, and Wright, 206.

( 100 ,1 this situation persisted during the 1980 's. 70 Berger argues that the Gaullists under Chirac conscious1y tai10red their program

a1most exclusively to the conservative coalition of sma11

independent proprietors and big capital: the more they did so,

"the less able they (were) to respond to new currents of opinion

in the country or ta make the accommodations in organization and

program that would be needed to win over new segments of the

ll 71 electorate • Not surprisingly, then, we find the Front

National making great inroads among social categories poorly

represented by the moderate conservative parties, especially

workers and the unemployed, of whom 16% and 19% respectively

voted for Le Pen in 1988, compared ta 7% and 10% for bath Chirac

and Barre. 72 These groups are indeed traditional electarates of

the Left, but with the conservative parties unable and unwilling

to expand their base beyond narrow sectiona1 interests,

disenchanted left-wing voters have nowhere to turn but to the

Front National.

The fa ct that a sizeable portion of the Front National' s

electorate cornes from left-wing consti tuencies alerts us to the

need to consider changes in parties of the Left that may also

he1p account for the Front National. Potential extreme-Right

70See Jérôme Jaffré, "The French Electorate in March 1978", in The French National Assembly Elections of 1978, ed. Howard R. pennimann, AEI Studies 269 (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public policy Research, 1980), 69-71. See also criddle, 148.

71 Berger, "Politics and Anti-Politics ... ", 43.

72Grunberg Elt al., 41. 101 support prior to 1981 was undereut not only by the strength and 1 orientation of parties of the Right, but also, perhaps, by the strength of the communist Party. The PCF has tradi tionally served as the voiee for those, espeeially in the working-elass, least integrated into the politieal system; it has been lia tribune or organ of the protest and frustrations of the under privileged". 73 The extreme-Right is, of course, vehemently anti- Cornrnunist, but it is a fact that historieally, most notably during the 1930 's, many leaders and aetivists of the extreme

Right originated in the cornrnunist Party. 74 The extreme-Right, aleng with the extreme-Left, draws mueh of its support from those most hostile to and alienated from the politieal system, for whom maximal opposition te those in power weighs more deeply than ideologieal details. The Parti Communiste Français, sinee at least 1981, has been in a state of profeund and apparently unresolvable erisis. Serving in government from 1981-84 naturaIIy weakened its ability to funetion as an 'organ of protest', but even baek in opposition it has been undermined by eleetoral failure, ideolegieal and strategie ineonsisteney and deeaying leadership and organization,

73wright, 189; see also Jaffré, "Front National ••• ", 229. 74Poujade also received substantial support from Communists and the PCF during the early period of his movement.

( 102 to the point ""here i t has been reduced to a marginal player in :1 aIl but its stronge st local bastions. 75 Contrary to what sorne assume, the direct transfer of votes from the PCF to the FN has been minimal: only 2% of Le Pen voters in 1984 voted (or would admit to having voted) for George Marchais in 1981. 76 still, the ability of the FN to capture an electorate (young, male, working class) that previousl:y" voted Communist, and the strength of the FN in the Red Bel t and Southeast of France, indicate that sorne displacement has

occurred. Goldey and Johnson, in noting the FN's success among working class and unemployed youth in 1986, have suggested that "the FN stole a good portion of the PCF' s potential electorate

before it had forroed any effective partisan attachment. It is not so much that the FN stole votes that the PCF had, rather that it took votes the PCF • ought· to have had. ,,77 The Front National in this view has emerged as a functional replacement for the Parti Communiste within the French political system, a voice for workers, the unemployed and others most opposed to and poorly

75See Gérard Le Gall, "Printemps 1988: Retour à une gauche majoritaire", Revue politique et parlementaire, no. 936 (July August 1988): 14-24, and Eric Dupin, "La gauche regagne le terrain perdu en 1983", Libération, 14 March 1989, 5, for discussions of PCF performance in recent elections, and Eugene Dainov, "Problems of French Cornmunism, 1972-86", West European Politics 10 (July 1987): 357-75, for a broader look at PCF difficulties. 76M. Charlot, 39. Geographical analysis of the two parties' electorates have reached the same f inding: see Le Bras, 28 -9. For a somewhat different conclusion, see Jaffré, "Front National ..• ", 227-9. 77Goldey and Johnson, 244-5.

l 103 integrated into the system. 78 Surveys have established the 1 persistence of strong levels of personal and political

dissatisfaction in Fran~e compared to other European countries,79 and we have seen that such sentiments are especially widespread among FN voters. While previously the peF could channel much of this discontent, the FN now stands as the only credible voice of protest. Support for the Front National resul ts not only from the declining capacities of the major parties, but also from frustration and hostility towards the parties 'tout court'. Le Pen' s popul ist stance is successful because i t both appeals to and heightens the disenchantment of a considerable segment of the electorate with the political elite. In a 1984 survey, 72% of FN voters, compared to 42% of the total population agreed with the proposition that "once elected politicians forget thcir promises".80 With the successive failures of both the Righl: and the Left in office, and with the mainstream parties aIl adopting a similar ideology and rhetoric, the Front National has benefitted from a sense that all the political parties

(derisively labelled the • bande des quatres· by Le Pen) are the

78Jaffré, "Front NationaL •• ", 229. The same view has been forwarded by Pienel and Rollat, 159 and Markham, "Au Revoir to Ideology", 32. 79Ronald Inglehart, "The Renaissance of Political Culturel!, American Political Science Review 82 (December 1988), 1214. 80Jaffré, "Ordre, autorité, nation".

( 104 same and that none has solutions to the country' s problems. 81 nistrust and rejection of political parties, always present to a

considerable degree in France, increased after 1981i 82 it is instructive that during the time of the FN's rise, the Most popu1ar politician of the moderate Right, Raymond Barre, tried to distance himself from the parties "and the tricks and games they play in their 'artificial microcosm'''. 83 This distrust and rejection in part accounts for record abstention rates in recent French electionsi it also accounts in part for support for the Front National, the strongest vehicle of protest for the disenchanted.

81See Olivier Duhamel, "La France à l'envers", L'Express, 6 May 1988, 12. 82Jean Charlot, "La transformation de l'image des partis politiques français", Revue française de science politique 36 (February 1986): 5-13, and SChain, 233. 83Volkmar Lauber, "Change and continuity in French Conservatism since 1944", in The Transformation of Contemporary Conservatism, ed. Brian Girvin, SAGE Modern POlitics Series Vol. 22 sponsored by the European Consortium for Political Research/ECPR (London: Sage Publications, 1988), 49. The Most popular politician of the Left in this period, Michel Rocard, al 50 cultivated an ambivalent attitude to~,ards political parties.

• CONCLUSION

The firm lock that the four major parties in France seemed to have on the electorate until 1981 was more apparent than real, a result of conjunctural factors relating, first, to the nature

of electoral competition until 1981 and, second, to the provisional ability of the Gaullists to integrate the extreme Right tradition, of the Right to keep hold of its electorate and of the PCF to provide a voice for the disenchanted. The extreme Right tradition, rooted in a nationalist populi sm , was not extinguished by the Fifth Republic, as i ts failure to manifest itself for two decades had suggested. Instead, it remained dormant until the circumstances we have discussed in the previous

chapters combined to allow i t to explode: the socio-economic crisis, the shift in the political environment, skillful political leadership, the end of intense bipolarization and the declining capacity of the parties to diffuse potential extreme Right protest. Willy Brandt once referred to the Greens in West Germany as the "SDP' s lost children". Our analysis suggests that while there are many lost children of the RPR and of the Left who have run away or been orphaned from their real political families and

have sought shelter with the Front National, it is more revealing

105

( 106 to think of the RPR as having served as the adoptive parent of t the extrerne-Right until the breakthrough of the Front National. These children have returned to their natural homes, along with the run-aways and orphans: together they constitute the Front National's diverse electorate. The questions that rernain concern the future of the Front National. Almost four years ago already, an article in Le Monde Jean-Marie Colornbani was entitled "Jean-Marie Le Pen ou comment s'en débarasser?".l The question is as relevant as ever. Our analysis, by interpreting the rise of the Front National as a mul ti-causal phenomenon, irnplies that no single change will suffice to undo what has been done. Michel Rocard, upon assurning the Prime Ministership in May, 1988, stated that the Le Pen vote "was nothing but the effect of crisis, anxiety, cutting-off. Let

us attack the causes Il .2 This might be the right approach for the

Government to take, irnplying as it does that the target will be job creation, better housing, urban renewa1, stronger cornmunities

and greater participation, rathe.c than the pursuit of further

clarnpdowns on immigrants or repressive security measures. But the problems Rocard identifies are of a profound and pervasive nature, rooted deeply in France's economic, social, and cultural system. They have been barely touched by five years of relative economic recovery, and to resol ve them would require not only

l"Jean-Marie Le Pen, or how to get rid of hirn?". Colombani, 7. The allusion is to a play by Ionesco, "Amédée, ou comment de s'en débarasser". 2Le Nouvel Observateur, 29 April 29 - 5 May 1988, 38. 107 considerable funding and careful policy-making but also radical shifts in attitudes and understandings. To take issue wi th Rocard, we can reemphasize that the emergence of the Front National was fundamentally a political phenomenon and thus its future will likely be determined by developments in the political sphere. Economie prosper i ty and wiser approaches to social problems may eventually serve to abate the sources of protest that helped give rise to the Front National, but not to eliminate them. Will the other political parties regain their capacity to channel and integrate new and enduring sources of protest that fuel support for the extreme Right? No answers can be provided, but we can perhaps identify the factors upon which the answer will be decided. Above aIl, the answer may hinge on what happens with the parties of the moderate Right. As was noted earlier, the Right is in a state of flux and realignment. Forced finally by the disappointment of successive electoral defeats in the presidential, legislative and municipal elections to consider seriously the need for change, a process of party realignment has begun to manifest itself. Since March it has become apparent that the days of the RPR and UDF as the two major parties of the Right, incorporating the Centre, are numbered, although what will emerge to take their place has yet to be decided. Giscard, whose political star has again risen as a result of his success in the

European elections, would like to see a single party of the Centre and Right, perhaps structured as a federation similar to 108 the current UDF. Others anticipate the Christian Democratie CDS joining with independents and elements of the Centre-Left to form a distinct party of the Centre, friendly ta the Rocard Government, leaving the RPR and the Parti Républicain free to establish a more conservative party of the Right. The first scenario, by uniting the Opposition and by forcing the Centre-

Right to accept diversity and the 'cohabitation' of various ideological traditions, could serve to recapture lost adherents and a1low for the reintegration of the extremists. Alternately, by creating a party that would by necessity have to direct its appeal towards the larger bloc of voters who are moderates and centrists, it could leave the field wide open for the Front

National on its right. The second scenario, envisaging a distinctly conservative moderate Right party, seems more capable of dealing with the Front National, but a divided opposition, and one weakened by the departure of the centrists, might lack the political strength to serve as a credible alternative to the Left in the eyes of current FN voters. We must also consider the question of leadership. The Right currently lacks a single promising, fresh Presidential hopeful.

Chirac and Giscard remain the favoured politicians among UDF and

RPR supporters to lead the opposition, but both are tarnished by past defeats and face challenges from a younger generation. 3

3See the IFOP opinion survey published in Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 June 1989, 31. In an interview in Le Point published following the European election, François Léotard, President of the Parti Républicain, suggested that if Giscard and Chirac continue ta lead the Right, i twill remain in Opposi tian 109 Among the 'Young Turks' (who have banded together in an informaI « grouping known as the 'rénovateurs'), Michel Noir, newly-elected RPR Mayor of Lyon (and a passionate, unwavering opponent of any cooperation wi th the Front National), seerns the rnost prornising, but it is rnost unlikely that Jacques Chirac will abdicate his leadership of the RPR to rnake way for him. 4 As long as this situation remains unresolved, the decisive, firm leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen will continue to seem attractive. Of more specifie concern, however, is whether any prospective leader can recapture the vote that has defected ta the Front National. To do sa would require adoption of the

authoritarian, 'muscled' tone, abandoned by Chirac following 1981, that integrates the nationalist-populist tradition. The impact of this sort of leadership on the fortunes of extreme-Right parties can be seen by considering other European examples. Althouyh additional factors are involved, the failure of the extreme-Right to assert itself in Great Britain may be attribut able largely to Thatcher's ability to project an authoritarian image and assume a hard-line stance on such issues and themes as immigration, law and order, the EEC and national

for twenty yearsi Léotard is apparently manoeuvering te dispose of Giscard. See Daniel Carton, "La résurrection de M. Giscard d'Estaing", Le Monde, 20 June 1989, 2.

4See Maurice Duverger, "La nouvelle ouverture", Le Monde, 23 March 1989, 2. 110 glory.5 conversely, in West Germany, in the first national election following the death of the intensely conservative and nationalist

Christian Democrat Franz-Joseph strauss, the extreme-Right Republican Party of Franz Schonhuber polled 7.5% in the 1989 European Parliament elections, including 15% in strauss' former st~onghold of Bavaria. In this instance, commentators were quick to connect the extreme-Right's rise to the moderate Right's abandonment of the popular nationalist tradition so weIl articulated by Strauss. 6 Wh) le one shudders to prescribe a Thatcher or a Franz-Joseph strauss as a solution to the problem of the Front National, the presence of a solidly right-wing leader within the mainstream may be the lesser of two evils if it serves to hold the extreme-Right at bay. What is unknown, however, is the extent to which a popular nationalist leader within the mainstream could recapture lost votes once an extreme- Right party has achieved electoral success. As long as the Left remains in power and the Right remains in disarray, any predictions ahout the imminent demise of the

5She also leads a party that has managed to retain power, while disarray in Britain is found on the Left, not the Right. The electoral system also gives her far greater leeway to ignore centrists, as long as Labour and the Alliance split the non-Right vote. Above aIl, Bri tain lacks an indigenous and autonomous extreme-Right tradition similar to France, Italy or Germany. Still, Thatcher's tone and confrontational style allow the Conservatives to perform like a protest party while remaining in power.

6See Pascale Hugues, "Allemagne: l'épine de 1 'extrême droite", Libération, 20 June 1989, 12. 111 ( Front National will likely prove as naive and premature as all those advanced over the last five years. Perhaps ën unpredictable major crisis or transformation, similar in magnitude to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and de Gaulla's

return to power, or May '68, could so shake up th~ party ~ystem that the Front National will disappear. Perhaps it will suffer a steady erosion of support to a point below a 'cri tical mass' where it can no longer perform or be treated as a major party and the movement will fizzle out. But given the current trends and

outlines of French politics, one may more r~asonably expect the

Front National to remain a significant and disturbing preeance

within the French party system. Aside from the specifie matter of the future of the Front

National, this study points to a number of broader issues that are worth raising briefly. The first relates to the evolution of

the French party system. Electoral events over the past decade

have disproved not only the presumed demise of the extreme-Right

but also the system' s general resistance to the processes of

realignment and decomposition observed elsewhere. Since 1984, plummeting turn-out rates, electoral volatility and party

fragmentation have aIl brought France into line with the

processes that characterize the party systems of other Western

European democracies. The capacity of aIl the major parties,

particularly but not exclusively those of the moderate Right, to

retain and expand their electorates has been severely diminished.

For example, along with the dramatic breakthrough of the Greens,

( 112 a 1 i ttle-noted development of the recent European elections was the success of a minor right-wing list called • Chasse, pêche et tradition' . winning just over four per cent of the vote nationally, the 'Chasse, pêche et tradition' list surpassed 11% of the vote in six de~artments and finished in third position in nine departments. 7 As i ts name would imply, i ts support was concentrated in rural departments and villages: while it surpassed 14.5% in Gironde, Landes and Somme, it scored less than

1.5% in almost every Paris-area department. Al though 'Chasse, pêche et tradition' had little impact on the urban-based Front National (in only one of the eleven departments where 'Chasse, pêche et tradition' surpassed 8% has the Front National ever exceeded its national average), it penetrated a previously faithful electorate of the moderate-Right: rural dwellers engaged in tradi tional occupations 1 such as fishing, hunting and agriculture. Whether this erosion of support to a rural, tradition-based party would occur in a more significant election is unknown, but the experience of the Front National suggests that the possibility should not b~ discounted. The Left, meanwhile, is experiencing its own difficulties, despite its success in the last presidential, legislative and municipal elections. The Parti Socialiste, which once aimed to solidify its support at fort y per cent of the electorate, could do no better than 23.6% in the European elections: its rigid factionalized structure is widely seen to limit its capacity te

7Electeral results from Le Monde, 20 June 1989, 8-24. 113 attract new members and mobilize new constituencies. 8 The breakthrough of the Greens may have an impact on the PS simi1ar to that of the Front National on the RPR and UDF, although cooperation, if feasible, wouid be more easily justified. For fifteen years, the Parti Socialiste under Mitterrand has been successful in great measure due to their remarkable adeptness at manipulating and exploi ting the PCF, but the pol i tical game between these two parties is barely rel evant any more. The Socialists' ability to deal with new challenges is less clear. What cannot immediately be answered is whether the Front National triggered the decomposition and realignment of the established party system, or whether it simply heralded a process of change that would likely have occurred, in a different forro, anyhow. Further study would aiso be needed to determine if and how the factors identified as responsible for party failure in

the comparative studies of adv~nced Western democracies by Berger, Lawson and Merkl, and others apply to the French case, or whether the causes of party failure are specifie to France. The second issue relates to our argument about the persistenc' of the extreme-Right tradition. It was argued that the Front National and its hard-core electorate belong to a distinct extreme-Right tradition, and we attempted to identify the history and the values that define this tradition. While the Front National has given this tradition a modern guise,

8see Lewis and Sferza, 105-12; Pfister, 13; and Patrick Jarreau, ilLe score de M. Laurent Fabius limite sa marge de manoeuvre au sein du PS", Le Monde, 20 June 1988, 3.

( 114 accepting the practices of modern democracy and capitalism, the 1 core of Front National ideology and support is anchored in an urban-based xenophobia, nationalism, populism and authoritarianism that harkens back at least to the anti Dreyfusards of the turn of the century and the Leagues of the 1930's. There is much in this mixture that resembles both the Bonapartist and counter-revolutionary 'Ultra' traditions identified by René Rémond in Les droites en France, yet the tradition represented by Le Pen seems fundamentally urban-based, in distinction to Bonapartism, and far less monarchist, aristocratie and Catholic than the 'Ultras'. Further study is needed to better define and distinguish the urban, xenophobie strand within the extreme-Right heritage and to identify more precisely how in its contemporary forro it corresponds to and differs from previous incarnations. Finally, the eurrent study leaves us with the question of how to account for the noted persistence of extreme-Riqht political traditions. Until five years ago, with the partial exception of Italy, the extreme-Right seemed effectively eliminated as a credible, autonomous political and ideological tendency in Western Europe. Now, more th an fort y years after the end of the Second World War, the extreme-Right has regained representation in each country where it was strongest during the 1930's and 1940's: in France, in Germany, as we have discussed, in Italy, where the MSI is stagnant but alive with a consistent five to six per cent of the popular vote, in Belgium, where the 115 Vlaams Blok won 6.3% of the Flemish vote to the European ParI iament , and in Austria, where the extreme-Right Liberal Party scored from fifteen to thirty per cent in three regional elections in March. How and why has this political tradition survived, despite the massive political, economic, social and cultural transformations undergone during this period? Why does thpre remain an eleetorate reeeptive to parties conunitted to xenophobie, nationalist, populist and authoritarian values within the advaneed Weste-rn democracies? The persistence and revi val of the extreme-Right tradition is especially intriguing eonsidering that the cornrnunist tradition, whieh would have seemed to be more widely and deeply rooted, has been greatly eroded everywhere but in Italy. This question clearly relates to matters of pol i ti cal

culture and ideology, and only by carefully considering theories in this domain could it be properly addressed.

1 1 APPENO 1 X ONE

Electcqral Results, AlI Part~E's, 1981-8'3 Metrc'pe,l~tan France (r. c,f ballots cast '1

Pres Leg Euro Leg Pres l <='!,;I Ellro 1981 1'381 l'38·l 1'386 1988 1988 1'38'j 1 -, E'dl"eme-Left "w. ':\~J . ~ 3.7 1.5 '::.0 0.4 1.6 C,:,mmun~sts 15.5 16. 1 11. .:: '3.7 6.9 11.3 7.8 PB ~I MRG .28.4 37.5 '::0.8 31.6 33. '3 36 . .2 '::3. b 1 -, .-. C' Other Left 0.8 . - ~ • .J 1.5 UDF ~I RPR 45. '3 41. .:: 4'::.8 4'::. 1 36. ~ 37.7 37.32 -, Other R~gh ~ 3. (1 1.7 3.7 ~. '",J .2.6 4. 1 Ev, t reme -Rl gh t!Ol 0.3 ll. 1 1 (1. 1 14.6 '3. '3 11. 7 Ecc,log~sts 3. '3 :1 • 1 6.7" 1 -, 3.8 0.4 10.6 Others:5 (1. 1 (>. 1 0.1 2.6

:Lpres1dentlal and le>glslC\tlve resl.llts fcor 1'381 and 1'388 aIre for th!? flYS,t balle,t •

.:otlncludes the CE'ntrll:,t llst headE:'d by S~mc,ne Ve~l (8.4%1.

!iaE'd,reme-Rlght results are ttrose clf the FlrClnt NC\t~onë'\ l plus mlscallenous e",treme-Rlght candldates W.157. ~n Leg. 1'381; 0.37. ~n 1'386 and 0.1% ~n Leg. 1'3881.

5Fcqr 1'381, 1'386 and 1988, 'Othey s' refers te, l"eg~,:,nal au tClrTlc'ny cand~datE>s; 1'38'3 J.ncludes an An~mal ProteC"t1e,n 11st (1.0ï.1 and three llsts tl=,ta lllng 1.67. wh'='se placement cl:'I.lld nl:lt be deterrraned.

SOUF~CES: 1981-86: Ellsabeth DUpOU"ler ë\nd Gerard Gn.lnberg, Mars 1'386: la drole de defalte de la gauche (Par1s: PUF, 1'386 1 , 247; 1'388: Gerard Le Gall, "Prlntemps 1'388: rete,ur a une gauthe ma»:lr1talre", RevI.le pc,1~t1g'-'e et parlementa1re, n,:,. '336 (Jl.lly ALlgust 1'3881: 14, 15; 1'389: Le Mo::-.nde, .20 JLlne 1989, 3.

116 l' APPENDIX TWO Electoral Results, Front National, By Department: 1984-89

EURO LEG PRES LEG EURO 1984 1986 1988 1988 1989 Ain 12.53 10.13 16.08 9.88 12.56 Aisne 9.68 9.18 13.41 9.09 11. 08 Allier 7.67 6.58 10.14 5.83 7.86 Alpes-de-Haute Provence 12.16 6.58 16.71 12.01 11.99 Hautes-Alpes ~. 60 6.81 13.69 6.66 10.24 Alpes-Maritimes 21.39 20.88 24.23 19.40 25.05 Ardeche 8.34 8.36 12.89 8.11 8.73 Ardennes 10.99 8.40 15.06 9.61 11.26 Ariège 6.76 4.47 10.29 5.76 7.96 Aube 9.99 9.54 14.41 9.48 12.12 Aude 8.73 8.90 13.71 9.04 10.04 Aveyron 5.23 4.82 8.86 1.08 6.04 Bouches-du-Rhône 19.49 22.53 26.39 24.52 20.76 Calvados 8.36 6.85 11.05 6.22 9.12 Cantal 4.64 3.10 7.10 2.66 4.94 Charente 6.64 4.68 8.89 5.40 7.03 Charente-Mari time 7.94 7.01 11.16 7.40 8.92 Cher 8.61 6.58 11.56 7.80 10.02 Corrèze 4.42 3.39 5.92 3.21 5.56 Corse-du-Sud 17.52 2.39 14.81 2.64 12.45 Haute-Corse 9.84 4.16 12.01 6.02 9.66 Côte-d'Or 11.70 9.44 13.91 8.52 11.45 Côtes-du-Nord 5.21 3.87 8.23 4.35 6.21 Creuse 4.81 3.96 7.78 4.78 5.97 Dordogne 6.83 5.77 9.81 5.80 7.73 Doubs 12.95 10.35 14.41 8.80 10.09 Drôme 11.28 11.36 16.69 10.94 11.77 Eure 10.35 a .13 14.04 8.91 11.62 Eure-et - Loir 12.03 10.15 15.39 10.54 12.98 Finistère 6.65 5.71 9.91 4.94 8.05 Gard 12.71 15.07 20.58 14.53 14.75 Haute-Garonne 9.56 7.98 13.15 8.46 11.32 Gers 7.83 4.82 10.68 5.93 7.90 Gironde 9.17 8.84 12.29 8.10 10.01 Hérault 15.33 15.55 19.91 14.44 15.90 Ille-et-vilaine 6.50 4.38 8.63 4.83 6.72 Indre 7.41 5.88 11.34 6.97 8.65 Indre-et-Loire 8.86 7.01 12.22 7.73 9.88 Isère Il.62 10.86 16.09 10.23 12.59 Jura 10.05 8.70 14.52 8.38 9.73 Landes 7.12 5.08 8.96 5.69 7.05 Loir-et-Cher 8.23 7.33 12.87 7.70 9.27 Loire 13.11 12.87 17.36 11.49 12.68

117

( 118

EURO LEG PRES LEG EURO 1984 1986 1988 1988 1989

Haute-Loire 7.82 7.49 14.08 7.07 8.37 Loire-Atlantique 7.77 6.07 10.03 5.96 7.67 Loiret 10.18 9.07 14.92 9.05 11. 79 Lot 5.23 3.57 8.33 4.40 6.64 Lot-et-Garonne 9.66 8.91 15.41 9.21 11.22 Lozère 6.69 5.79 11. 63 5.11 7.98 Maine-et-Loire 7.17 5.87 9.52 5.80 6.77 Manche 6.77 7.73 10.77 7.67 7.84 Marne 11.14 8.94 14.02 10.18 12.21 Haute-Marne 10.63 9.69 15.63 8.88 11.98 Mayenne 6.22 3.60 8.19 3.65 6.11 Meurthe-et-Moselle 11.59 10.06 14.84 9.34 11.38 Meuse 10.93 9.29 14.99 6.85 10.76 Morbihan 9.13 6.84 12.98 6.32 9.78 Moselle 14.04 13.30 19.90 11. 84 14.56 Nièvre 8.09 6.15 9.72 7.69 8.81 Nord 10.51 11.35 15.15 11.24 11.65 Oise 12.77 10.75 16.72 10.82 13.69 Orne 7.74 6.49 11. 79 6.81 8.79 Pas-de-Calais 6.65 7.82 11.39 6.99 8.71 Puy-de-Dôme 7.98 6.06 11.57 6.26 7.18 Pyrénées-Atlantiques 8.09 7.65 10.68 6.45 8.88 Hautes-Pyrénées 6.69 5.12 9.93 5.88 7.76 Pyrénées-Orientales 15.86 19.08 20.52 16.83 18.67 Bas-Rhin 11.54 13.05 21.93 15.08 13.56 Haut-Rhin 13.89 14.46 22.15 15.51 13.75 Rhône 15.86 13.24 18.03 13 .84 15.36 Haute-Saône 11. 24 8.66 13.85 8.09 10.15 Saône-et-Loire 8.55 7.05 11.11 7.25 8.35 Sarthe 5.88 5.32 9.34 5.85 6.69 Savoie 11. 37 8.32 15.20 7.51 11.25 Haute-savoie 13.75 9.81 15.47 9.29 11.44 Paris 15.24 10.99 13.38 10.14 14.07 Seine-Maritime 8.38 6.72 11.22 7.73 9.46 Seine-et-Marne 14.62 11.90 17.75 12.67 15.51 Yvesline 14.37 10.40 15.05 12.26 14.06 Deux-Sèvres 5.35 4.21 7.49 2.98 5.29 Somme 9.72 8.11 13.79 8.21 9.13 Tarn 9.65 10.12 14.77 9.91 10.65 Tarn-et-Garonne 9.72 7.66 15.18 11. 07 11.20 Var 19.95 17.98 25.08 20.91 22.86 Vaucluse 16.44 19.16 23.15 18.03 17.75 Vendée 6.09 5.20 8.69 4.96 6.46 Vienne 6.52 5.33 9.30 5.51 7.10 Haute-vienne 5.12 4.22 7.83 5.54 6.63 Vosges 10.99 8.01 14.88 7.55 10.67 Yonne 12.63 10.36 15.72 10.45 13.00 Territoire de Belfort 14.77 11.09 16.76 12.41 13.43 119 l' EURO LEG PRES LEG EURO 1984 1986 1988 1988 1989

Essonne 12.43 9.45 14.98 11.40 13.56 Haute-de-Seine 14.14 11.29 14.77 10.88 14.37 Seine-Saint-Denis 15.98 14.52 19.81 15.91 17.47 Val-de-Marne 13.91 11.61 15.62 11. 33 14.52 Val-d'Oise 14.97 12.51 18.07 14.08 16.26

SOURCES: 1984, 1986, Pres 1988: Le Monde. Dossiers et Documents: LI élection présidentielle de 24 avril et 8 mai 1988, May 1988, 34: Leg 1988: Le Monde. Dossiers et Documents: Les élections législatives de juin 1988, June 1988, 32; 1989: Le Monde, 20 June 1989, 4.

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