Tactical Variation in Core Policy Formation by the Front National

Home , Michel Poniatowski, Nouvelle Droite, Pierre Vial, Yvan Blot

RADICAL OR NOT SO RADICAL? Tactical Variation in Core Policy Formation by the Front National

James Shields Aston University

Some General Tenets

It is conventional wisdom among analysts of political parties that the more radical a party is in its policy positions, the less likely it is to alter those positions; conversely, the more moderate a party is, the more it is prone to shift its policy stances in relation to the median voter.1 Thus parties that locate themselves outside the mainstream Left or Right (communist, ultra-nationalist), or that promote themselves along single-issue axes cutting across traditional Right-Left cleavages (ecologist, regionalist), show a low degree of responsiveness to variations in public opinion or to changes in the policy orientations of their mainstream adversaries. The “dynamic representation” model of policy responsiveness2 does not apply to parties thus defined as “radical,” presenting a far-left, far-right, or single-issue ideology and program. This policy rigid- ity―or “policy stability”3― is seen as a defining feature of such parties, while policy shifts in relation primarily to public opinion are a defining feature of their mainstream, catch-all opponents. A further aspect to this distinction is that, even when radical party elites might be inclined to moderate their party’s policy orientations for electoral or tactical gain, the activist base is likely to resist such a move. Activists in radical parties tend to be strongly policy-focused and disposed to resist ideological compromise as a “sell-out” of the party’s values. This can provoke internal dis- sension, demobilize activists, and damage the party as a coherent political unit. Ideological stability, or stasis, therefore constitutes not a choice but an imperative, and policy radicalism a pragmatic strategy. As has been argued elsewhere, these parties can quickly become “prisoners of their ideologies,”

French Politics, Culture & Society, Vol. 29, No. 3, Winter 2011 doi:10.3167/fpcs.2011.290306 Radical or Not So Radical? 79

having “no real choice other than to cling to the policy ground they have staked out for themselves.”4 Yet another general observation in relation to such parties is that ostracism by their mainstream opponents tends to perpetuate their radicalism. The exclusion of these parties from “normal” politics is a structuring factor in their self-definition as radical outsiders, leaving them often dominated by their most hardline factions and with little incentive to deradicalize, while parties that are allowed to participate in the political process tend to adjust their policy stances, attenuate their radicalism, and appeal to a wider potential electorate. Egregious historical exceptions notwithstanding, a variant of this tendency to “deradicalize” goes back to the classic formulation of Robert Michels: that as parties extend their organizational and electoral reach beyond an ideologically committed core, they will moderate their more radical goals in order to consolidate and expand their wider base.5 The conclusions of recent research into the effects of political exclusion on far-right anti-immigration parties suggest that strategies of ostracism act as a stimulant to the policy radicalism of these parties and an obstacle to their becoming less extremist, while cooperation with mainstream parties has a moderating effect on their internal dynamics and policy orientations.6 Whether mainstream parties cooperate or not with a radical challenger, they can be susceptible to ideological or policy contagion and can in turn lend legitimation to the latter’s positions. As pressure from radical parties grows (historically, on the French center Left from the Communist Party; more recently, on the center Right from the Front National), so the dilemma for proximate moderate parties grows too. By refusing to engage with the threat from their flank, they might seek to reduce the competitive space and dis- qualify an issue from public debate, but they risk leaving that issue for others to exploit. By adopting an oppositional stance, they might raise the issue in public awareness to the radical challenger’s benefit. Finally, by assuming a more radical position themselves, they might hope to appropriate a mobilizing issue and thereby neutralize the threat from their flank; but they risk, too, increasing the salience of the issue, endorsing its importance, and strengthen- ing rather than weakening that threat.7 Where mainstream parties succeed in such an attempt at cooptation, they may ensure a degree of ideological penetration to the ideas or policies they appropriate; but if they overstep the bounds―or “region of acceptability”8― for their own voters, they risk themselves being penalized. The dilemma is therefore whether―and how far―to dismiss, oppose or accommodate the core issue of a radical challenger, with dangers attendant on all three strategic choices.9 In the light of these general tenets, this article examines the case of the Front national (FN) in relation to what has throughout been perceived as its core policy issue: immigration. To what extent has this party in its immigration policy been defined from the outset by its radicalism? Has that radicalism been a constant or has it varied with time and circumstance? What has been 80 James Shields

the relationship between the FN and the center-right parties in terms of influ- encing or moderating the FN’s stance on immigration? And what has been, in turn, the effect on the center-right parties of an FN mobilizing strong support on this issue? The article will argue that, far from being a “prisoner of its ideology,” the FN has exercised a sometimes surprising freedom to review, revise, and at times revoke important aspects of that ideology in relation to the core issue of immigration. This variation on immigration policy has largely escaped analysis and even detection, since the FN is widely viewed as an unreformed, and unre- formable, anti-immigrant party that has remained essentially on the same policy continuum over its near forty-year existence. Examination of its programs and pronouncements over that period, however, reveals a more nuanced picture, while also showing a reciprocal dynamic of influence between the FN and the parties of the center Right. By focusing on a number of election campaigns, manifestos, and defining moments in the FN’s development, the article will show how the party has expanded or contracted its radicalism in response to contextual factors and tactical considerations. It will reveal an FN less bound to a fixed policy and more prone to seek accommodation (with changing circumstance, public opinion, or its center-right adversaries) than the foregoing observations would suggest. The article will conclude by con- sidering whether the first change of leadership undergone by this party in Jan- uary 2011 might confine it to the radical fringes of the Right or see it adopt a more center-oriented course.

The 1970s: The Cultivation of a Core Issue

For a party founded in 1972 to unite the diverse currents of the French far Right, the FN did not contest its first legislative election in 1973 on a particularly radical platform. Its electoral program, Défendre les Français, declared France to be in a moral and political crisis and, with recent memories of May ’68 and a newly signed “Union de la Gauche,” called for the restoration of traditional values and mobilization against a French Communist Party (PCF) that was already “aux portes du pouvoir.”10 What may be most surprising for today’s reader is the program’s very limited reference to immigration, evoked in terms that do not anticipate the later importance of this issue for the FN. In its political charter of 1970, the FN’s predecessor, Ordre nouveau, had defined the goal of the “combat nationaliste” as “la défaite nécessaire du marxisme,” without the merest reference to immigration.11 The early FN retained this anti- Marxist focus, demanding “un contrôle strict des interventions politiques et économiques des puissances étrangères” in French public life.12 In only the briefest references to immigration, it denounced “une immigration sauvage, dans des conditions matérielles et morales désastreuses pour les intéressés et déshonorantes pour notre pays,” and “la constitution de véritables quartiers Radical or Not So Radical? 81

ou villes étrangères en France, élément d’éclatement et de remise en cause de l’unité et de la solidarité de notre peuple.” Proposing measures to increase the national birth rate, this earliest of FN programs lamented that “la France, par manque de main-d’œuvre nationale, est obligée de faire appel, chaque jour davantage, à des travailleurs étrangers dont la culture d’origine ne permet pas l’intégration dans la société française.”13 Here the FN did little more than reiterate the conclusions of a government advisory report of 1969―the Calvez Report on “Le Problème des travailleurs étrangers”―which had distinguished between immigrants who were “facile- ment assimilables” (European) and those who might constitute “un îlot inas- similable” (North African).14 The party had not yet coined the crude equation between immigration and unemployment that economic recession would later allow it to exploit. In a letter to Le Monde in February 1973, Le Pen even recognized a real need in France for immigrant workers, though he called for “la réglementation sévère de l’immigration des étrangers et, en particulier, de ceux d’origine extra-européenne,” who should be subject to “des critères quan- titatifs et qualitatifs” in order to “protéger les travailleurs français et la dignité des travailleurs étrangers dont le pays a réellement besoin.”15 Here again Le Pen merely echoed the above report, which had advocated “une politique nettement sélective de l’immigration, à la fois dans sa composition et dans son adaptation aux besoins réels de main-d’œuvre.” The same official report had judged it “souhaitable de donner de plus en plus au flux d’origine non-euro- péenne, et principalement au courant maghrébin, un caractère d’immigration temporaire de travail,” given “les changements intervenus ces dernières années dans l’origine des migrants, les difficultés d’accueil et de logement, l’évolution de la situation de l’emploi en France.”16 Though the immigration question in France had already long been racial- ized,17 this discriminatory distinction between European and non-European immigrants was thus given new and powerful endorsement by French offi- cialdom before the FN came into being. Such, moreover, was the apparent moderation of the first FN program that the soberly perceptive René Chiroux could find little of substance to distinguish it from that of the mainstream Right.18 One did not have far to look, however, to discover a more radical FN voice. In its monthly Front National, the new party warned against immigration in unrestrained terms:

Il n’est pas tolérable que notre pays soit devenu un dépotoir ouvert aux bons à rien, aux tarés, aux délinquants, aux criminels. Il n’est pas tolérable que l’insécurité règne dans tant de quartiers où les commerçants vivent dans l’inquiétude, où les agressions sont quotidiennes, où il est dangereux pour une femme de sortir seule à la tombée de la nuit. Il n’est pas tolérable que notre budget social et hospitalier soit dilapidé au profit des indésirables. À ces périls croissants, une seule solution: la stricte surveillance aux frontières des candidats à l’immigration enfin soumis à un triple contrôle―sanitaire, professionnel et judiciaire.19 82 James Shields

It is clear from these two different orders of discourse―one for internal FN consumption, one to project the public face of the party―that an effort was being made from the outset to temper the external message. This was in keep- ing with the FN’s founding mission to become a respectable parliamentary party with broad popular appeal, showing the required deference for the norms of electoral competition in a liberal democracy and (as a journalist from Le Monde noted of the first public meeting of the FN in November 1972) concerned to dissociate itself from “une image de marque qui risquerait d’in- quiéter le corps électoral.”20 However shallow the commitment to democracy, it imposed constraints and called for tactical choices. Hesitation over the tactical wisdom of trumpeting immigration as a core electoral issue was also a feature of the FN leader’s first presidential campaign in 1974. In a press conference in September 1973, Le Pen declared France to be “à la limite” in terms of immigration; he argued that “les Français ont vocation en France à passer avant les autres” and claimed that Algerian immigrant workers constituted an army of “quelque cinquante divisions d’infanterie” waiting to be mobilized against France.21 Yet Le Pen chose not to lay stress on immigration in his 1974 presidential campaign. Like his party in 1973, he focused his official campaign on traditional values and anti-communism, with immigration absent from the ten priority points of his manifesto.22 The meagre returns on these first campaigns of 1973 (0.5 percent: 108,616 votes) and 1974 (0.7 percent: 190,921 votes)23 showed the difficulty for a far- right party of embarking on a new electoralist mission. Its campaign theme of anti-communism was shared by parties across the center Right; so too the insis- tence on France’s national interests, on traditional values, on law and order. The FN had abandoned the more radical historical references of the extreme Right (anti-Republicanism, anti-parliamentarism, intransigent colonialism) without finding any distinctive message with which to replace them. Calls for renegotiation of the Évian Agreements granting independence to Algeria, com- pensation for rapatriés, and an amnesty for all offenses committed in defense of Algérie Française were among proposals bearing the stamp of the party’s activist heritage―but these played to a diminishing audience by the early 1970s. In the wake of the 1974 election, and under the influence of its then chief strategist, François Duprat, the FN proceeded to harden its stance on immigration, particularly in publications addressed to its militants. In the Decem- ber 1974 issue of Le National, it warned of the dangers facing Europe and anticipated the “troubles sanglants d’une guerre raciale généralisée”; in May 1975, the same publication called for a systematic reduction in “le nombre de travailleurs étrangers en commençant par ceux entrés illégalement en France.”24 In the legislative election campaign of 1978, with a worsening economic recession, a sharp rise in unemployment, and a more susceptible public opinion, Le Pen and the FN gave fuller expression to their anti-immigrant message through election posters proclaiming “Halte au chômage, le travail aux Français.”25 In an interview on national radio in February 1978, Le Pen Radical or Not So Radical? 83

warned of the “crise démographique” stalking France and, anticipating his party’s later policy of “préférence nationale,” called for a hierarchy “plus favo- rable aux Français qu’aux étrangers”: “Il n’y a absolument aucun racisme dans le fait de constater, d’abord, qu’il y a cinq millions d’étrangers en France, ensuite, de se demander si le million de Français qui sont sans travail n’ont pas plus de droits que les étrangers à occuper ce travail dans leur propre pays.”26 The defining slogan of the FN’s 1978 election campaign―“1 million de chômeurs c’est 1 million d’immigrés de trop! La France et les Français d’abord!”―would later be modified as unemployment passed the two-million then three-million marks in the 1980s and 1990s. Again it is important to note that the FN was not setting the agenda here; nor was it even being particularly radical: it was embracing an agenda already set by governments of the day. In January 1976, then Prime Minister Jacques Chirac had declared: “Un pays dans lequel il y a 900,000 chômeurs, mais où il y a plus de deux millions de travailleurs immigrés, n’est pas un pays dans lequel le problème de l’emploi est insoluble.”27 This notion of a zero-sum competition for jobs between French nationals and immigrants permeated government thinking. In February 1976, the minister for employment, Michel Durafour, wrote in the daily France-Soir that France had “un million de chô- meurs” but also “deux millions de travailleurs immigrés,” asking “Qui ne voit pas qu’il y a là une contradiction?”28 In April 1977, a subsidized repatriation scheme (Aide au retour) was set up by the government of Chirac’s successor, Raymond Barre, with the purpose of encouraging the return of immigrants to their countries of origin. Following the failure of this initiative, the Barre government attempted to legislate for the mass repatriation of non-Europeans surplus to labor requirements, while clamping down on illegal immigrants by increasing police powers and easing expulsion procedures. It set a target in 1979 of reducing immigrant numbers annually by up to 100,000 (and even, provisionally, 200,000) before its proposals were opposed by the Council of State, parliament, and human rights groups.29 With unemployment now the primary public concern, the FN’s national congress in November 1978 latched onto and amplified the equation between joblessness and immigration, identifying “la cause première du chômage” in “la présence massive de travailleurs étrangers sur notre sol.” A special issue of Le National devoted to immigration in February 1979 demanded the immedi- ate expulsion of illegal immigrants and those in breach of the law, together with a further systematic expulsion of over a million immigrants a year to reduce the level from “plus de cinq millions” to “500,000 personnes dont 200,000 actives.” It claimed that the cost of immigration was greater than the revenue from income tax and called for the abrogation of the 1972 Pleven Law on racial discrimination, a special tax on companies employing immigrants, and “priorité au chômeur français.”30 By this point, too, the FN was moving beyond a state nationalism focused on the practical problems of illegal immigration, the effects of cheap foreign 84 James Shields

labor on jobs and wages, and the social difficulties of integrating large numbers of North African immigrants. Under the growing influence of the Nou- velle Droite, immigration as a threat to national identity, the French genetic pool, and “Western” civilization was also becoming part of an expanded ethnic nationalism for the FN. At its 1978 national congress, the FN called for “la défense de l’Occident” and argued that the immigrant presence in France “représente un danger pour la sécurité et la santé de nos compatriotes, et risque à moyen terme de mettre en cause, la dénatalité aidant, l’existence même de notre peuple.”31 Writing in 1979, Le Pen went further, articulating a conception of human aptitude as “99.999 pour cent” inherited, of the world as “fondamentalement inégalitaire,” and of human progress as “fait de luttes, de sélections.”32 The sociobiological and neo-Darwinian overtones here marked a qualitative change in the FN’s assessment of the immigration problem. In an interview published in Le Quotidien de Paris in October 1980, Le Pen again showed how far the arguments of the Nouvelle Droite, with their stress on ethnocultural differentialism,33 were permeating the FN. There were, he declared, “des races différentes, des ethnies différentes, des peuples différents, et qui ne sont pas superposables,” and these diverse races should preserve “leur identité comme des richesses irremplaçables plutôt que de se confondre dans un métissage généralisé.” He was not xenophobic, he protested, “mais je proclame mon droit et mon devoir de préférer les Français et d’affirmer qu’ils ont en France des droits supérieurs aux étrangers.”34

The 1980s: A Conducive Environment

Whereas the 1970s had seen the FN gradually cultivate immigration as a core issue under center-right governments inclining increasingly to a restrictive stance, the election of François Mitterrand and the Socialist Party in 1981 opened up a new avenue of opportunity. In a conspicuous break with the previous regime, the incoming Socialists suspended all deportations and redefined expulsion as a judicial rather than administrative procedure. With the emphasis shifting from repatriation to integration, random identity checks were halted, and the assisted repatriation scheme was abolished. Some proce- dural obstacles to family reunion were removed, and full rights of association were granted to immigrants. This enabled a plethora of new associations to defend the rights and promote the culture of immigrant communities in France, and opened the way for a building program that saw the number of Muslim places of worship rise from under a dozen in 1970 to almost 1,000 by the end of the 1980s.35 Liberalization of the broadcast media also raised the public profile of France’s immigrants, as radio stations began to air the views and address the diverse tastes of France’s ethnic communities. Amid the reforms put forward by the Socialists, two proved most contro- versial. While seeking to block the further entry of illegal immigrants, the Radical or Not So Radical? 85

government offered an amnesty to those who had entered France before 1981 and were in stable employment. Of an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants in France, 132,000 thus legalized their status.36 More potentially far-reaching still was “Proposition 80” of Mitterrand’s 110-point manifesto, which envisaged voting rights in municipal elections for immigrants resident in France for five years or more. This proposal was denounced by the mainstream Right and more emphatically by the FN as a “projet insensé” that would accelerate “le processus de défrancisation de la France.”37 At the same time, polls showed public opinion to be largely hostile to the government’s pro-immigrant initia- tives.38 Following the municipal elections of March 1983, which saw immigration emerge as a major campaign theme, the government proceeded to tighten the conditions for entry, residence, and family reunion. The identity spot-checks that had been halted in 1981 were reintroduced and stiffer penalties were imposed on employers of illegal immigrants. A law now authorized the urgent deportation of illegal immigrants by court order. This was followed by the reintroduction (as Aide publique à la réinsertion) of the Aide au retour scheme that had been abolished in 1981.39 With an increasingly unpopular Socialist administration in retreat on its immigration reforms, the center Right hardening its opposition, and public opinion suggesting the electoral viability of an anti-immigrant stance, the FN’s breakthrough (with almost 11 percent) in the European elections of 1984 and its program for the 1986 legislative elections reflected the new political climate. Whereas immigration had warranted only two brief references in 1973, it now constituted the centerpiece of a much radicalized program. Adding its voice to a public debate whose terms had also by now been sharply radicalized, the FN warned of “une invasion―provisoirement pacifique―du territoire national” and argued for aggressive application of “un principe simple: la préférence nationale.” It called for:

la révision du code de la nationalité, l’abandon de la pédagogie inter-culturelle à l’école, l’interruption du regroupement familial, l’expulsion des clandestins et des délinquants, le retour des chômeurs dans le pays d’origine, la réservation des al- locations familiales et de l’aide sociale aux ressortissants français, [et] la mise en place d’une véritable priorité d’emploi pour les nationaux.

The program urged that the renewable ten-year residence and work permit introduced by the Socialists be abolished, opposed any move to grant immigrants political rights, and pledged to restrict access to French nationality. The Nationality Code, it claimed, “fabrique davantage de Français ‘malgré eux’ ou de Français par intérêt, que de Français par le cœur.”40 While the 6.8 percent of the population recorded as foreign in the March 1982 census was scarcely higher than that of 1931 (6.6 percent), the nature of immigration itself had profoundly changed. In 1946, almost 90 percent of the foreign population in France were European, and fewer than 2.5 percent North African; by 1982, the proportion of Europeans had fallen to under 50 percent, 86 James Shields

while that of North Africans had risen to almost 40 percent.41 The FN’s 1986 program focused squarely on this demographic shift. In so doing, it returned to the distinction laid down by the Calvez Report of 1969, which had called explicitly for “une politique nettement sélective de l’immigration” based on essentially ethnic criteria. That report had also sounded a warning about the “caractère très prolifique des familles algériennes” and the “seuils de tolérance à ne pas dépasser aux plans de l’habitat, de l’école ou du travail, pour mainte- nir un équilibre convenable de la vie sociale fondé sur le rapport de certaines proportions de présence étrangère, variables selon les ethnies.”42 This notion of a “seuil de tolérance” became common currency in the immigration debate of the 1980s.43 It was a notion on which the FN insisted in terms that could have been lifted straight from the above-cited Calvez Report, arguing the need to “distinguer les étrangers d’origine européenne faciles à intégrer et ceux issus du tiers-monde difficilement assimilables en raison à la fois de leur importance numérique et de leur spécificité culturo- religieuse qui les incite à refuser l’assimilation.” The Nouvelle Droite, too, had been busy intellectualizing this concept of a critical “seuil,” again with an explicit ethnocultural distinction between “Europe” and “Tiers Monde.”44 The political expression given by the FN to that distinction recognized “les obliga- tions que nous avons à l’égard des ressortissants de nos partenaires européens en application des accords communautaires et en raison de la solidarité indis- pensable à la défense commune de l’Europe.” Accordingly, the FN proposed that family allowance and associated benefits be open to EEC (European Eco- nomic Community) nationals, while unemployment benefit should be restricted to French nationals and assisted housing reserved for French fami- lies.45 Lastly and crucially, it envisaged the repatriation of some two million immigrant workers and dependents over a five-year period. These proposals were accompanied by dire warnings about the loss of French national identity, the breakdown of law and order, and the economic consequences of decades of misguided immigration policy. By 1986, the pressure on the center Right from the FN was intensifying. The RPR-UDF (Rassemblement pour la république-Union pour la démocratie française) government of 1986 to 1988 presented a case study in how center- right parties can respond to the combined stimuli of a liberalizing Left and a radicalizing far Right, fashioning policy to shore up their right flank against the FN while seeking to hold the center ground and even draw in some déçus du socialisme. Though this brief government is remembered mostly for its neo- liberal economics and its privatizing agenda that spoke back to the failed neo- Keynesianism and nationalizing program of the early Socialist government, it also instituted a social authoritarianism calculated to correct the “laxism” of the previous left-wing administration and to take up as much of the far-right agenda as a center-right alliance could bear. Thus the RPR-UDF in their joint program offered legally resident immigrants the stark choice of integration or subsidized repatriation, considered (though did not proceed to) reserving Radical or Not So Radical? 87

family allowances for French nationals only, and proposed (but did not man- age to implement) restrictive reform of the Nationality Code. They introduced new police powers for identity checks, surveillance, arrest, and detention. Entry controls for non-EEC foreigners were tightened, as were conditions for political asylum, while expulsion procedures were administratively eased. The application of court sentences was stiffened and special tribunals without juries were set up to deal with terrorist offenses.46 A return to Vichy France this was not, despite the intemperate remarks of some on the Left; but the flurry of restrictive measures did show how much the political climate had changed since 1981. The new security measures met with little resistance in public opinion, as a wave of bombings in Paris height- ened anxieties over radical Islamist groups. They repositioned the center-right alliance on the social policy axis and confirmed the move by the RPR-UDF towards a more concerted strategy of cooptation vis-à-vis the FN; they also set off a vexed debate within the center-right parties about the boundaries of the acceptable in courting FN supporters;47 but their appeals to those supporters fell largely on deaf ears. The claim in 1988 by Interior Minister Charles Pasqua that the RPR-UDF and FN shared not just a programmatic agenda but “[les] mêmes préoccupations, [les] mêmes valeurs” merely brought from Le Pen the defiant assurance that the French would always prefer “l’original à la copie.”48

The 1990s: A Radicalized Agenda

Following the success achieved by the FN in 1986 (9.8 percent, 2.7 million votes, 35 National Assembly seats)49 and by Le Pen in the 1988 presidential election (14.4 percent, 4.4 million votes), the party entered the 1990s in tune with a significant section of public opinion on the issue of immigration. Part of the impetus for this was provided by events, with the fatwa issued in 1989 against the author Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, the first affaire du foulard in a French school, and rising violence in Algeria all suggesting the growing threat of radical Islam. Part was also provided by the right- wing press, as publications open to the influence of the Nouvelle Droite (like Le Figaro-Magazine) gave a gloss of intellectual respectability to the FN’s calls for “la préférence nationale,” or priority for French nationals in jobs, housing, education, and welfare support.50 By the early 1990s, some influential voices on the center Right (Jean- Claude Gaudin, Michel Poniatowski, Gérard Longuet) were calling for an electoral alliance with the FN. Others who ruled out such an alliance on principle were not above seeking in practice to steal the FN’s thunder. The rhetorical excesses of neo-Gaullist RPR leader Jacques Chirac (on “le bruit et l’odeur” of immigrants in social housing estates) and of former UDF President Valéry Gis- card d’Estaing (on the “invasion” of the country by immigrants) attracted headlines in June and September 1991; but their accompanying policy pro- 88 James Shields

posals were more significant still: for Chirac, an end to family reunion, a thor- ough review of asylum, a debate on welfare benefits for foreigners, reform of the Nationality Code, and an end to talk of votes for immigrants;51 for Giscard, the restriction of nationality to a blood right, a “quota zéro d’immigration,” automatic expulsion of illegal immigrants, heavier penalties for employers of clandestine labor, a review of family reunion, increased powers for mayors over housing for immigrants, and, in the interests of “notre identité française,” the restriction of childcare provision and tax concessions to fami- lies of French or EEC origin.52 From the two most senior figures of center-right parties accustomed to denouncing the excesses of the FN, these were extraordinary proposals. Nor was the contagion confined. The PCF published a tract characterizing immigrants as clandestine workers, criminal offenders, and welfare dependents, while Socialist Prime Minister Edith Cresson proposed charter flights to deport illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers together with stiffer measures against clandestine foreign labor.53 At the same time, a poll in October 1991 showed the highest recorded approval ratings for Le Pen and the FN, with 32 percent of respondents agreeing with their ideas, and 38 percent agreeing on the specific question of immigration.54 Importantly, polls also recorded the wider ideological penetration of the FN as its priority issues of immigration and law and order rose in salience for voters of other parties.55 Little wonder that the FN chose this moment, in November 1991, to pub- lish its most radical policy document to date on immigration. In the form of a 50-point program drawn up by the party’s chief strategist Bruno Mégret, this called for: summary expulsion of illegal and unemployed immigrants together with criminal offenders as part of a systematic “retour des immigrés du tiers monde dans leur pays d’origine”; repeal of anti-racist legislation; restriction of nationality to a blood right; review of all cases of naturalization since 1974; practice of “national preference” in employment, housing, and welfare provision; restriction of family allowance to French nationals; conversion of immigrant hostels into housing for French nationals; removal of the “incessantes références mondialistes” from schoolbooks; quotas for immigrant children in schools; a special tax on employers using immigrant labor; and a ban on the building in France of “édifices religieux étrangers à son identité.”56 Some of these proposals defied the Constitution of the Fifth Republic and stirred memories of the Vichy regime. They also contravened a number of international conventions signed by France, notably the 1966 United Nations Con- vention on Racial Discrimination. While the policy document held immigrants to be the gravest threat to “l’identité française” and “la communauté nationale,” it took care to exempt “les ressortissants de la CEE et au-delà, ceux de notre communauté européenne de destin, de culture, de religion et de civilisa- tion.” Here was confirmation, again, that the distinctions propounded by the FN were not national, but ethnic and cultural. With their references to “l’iden- tité,” “le sang,” “la communauté,” and the differentialist rationale informing Radical or Not So Radical? 89

the entire document, the FN’s “50 mesures” gave policy expression to ideological positions shared with the Nouvelle Droite. In December 1989, the Club de l’Horloge had launched the association SOS-Identité (a ripost to the anti-racist SOS-Racisme) for the defense of French heritage against a “société multicul- turelle sans racines nationales.”57 In the same year, the Club’s honorary president, Yvan Blot, had left the RPR to join the FN, following the same path as Mégret in 1985. The growing affinities between the Nouvelle Droite and the FN were confirmed by other high-profile recruits such as Pierre Vial and Jean Varenne, who joined Mégret and Jean-Yves Le Gallou in positions of promi- nence within the FN. Blot, Vial, and Le Gallou, with Mégret in the lead, would be among the most influential pens drafting the new 430-page FN program for the 1993 legislative elections.58 Mégret had published in 1990 a political memoir that foreshadowed this program, inveighing against “le cosmopolitisme,” or “la volonté de faire disparaître les différences, les identités et d’exalter le brassage, le métissage, le melting-pot, le déracinement culturel et ethnique.”59 If Mégret and his Nouvelle Droite associates favored this more coded language to denounce “les illusions de l’égalité,” Le Pen would move the boundaries of the sayable still further in 1996 by declaring outright his belief in “l’inégalité des races.”60 None of this had a detrimental effect on the FN’s electoral fortunes. Through the 1990s, the party consolidated its strength―winning 12.7 percent (3.2 million votes) in the legislative elections of 1993, 15 percent (4.6 million votes) in the presidential election of 1995, and 15.2 percent (3.8 million votes) in the legislative elections of 1997. It also won control of a number of towns (Toulon, Orange, Marignane, Vitrolles) and extended its influence in France’s regional councils with 15 percent (3.3 million votes) in the elections of 1998. If these successes proved anything, it was that fitful attempts by the center- right parties to coopt the FN’s mobilizing themes had done nothing to stem the electoral pressure from Le Pen and his party, and might even have served to give them increased legitimacy. The 1995 presidential election seemed to bear this out. In a campaign dominated by unemployment (at over 12 percent, or 3.3 million) and social deprivation, Le Pen’s program, Le Contrat pour la France avec les Français, promised to create four million jobs over the seven-year presidential term, to repatriate three million immigrants (up from a million in 1979 and two million in 1986), to ensure priority for French nationals over foreigners in employment, housing, social welfare, and education, and to protect French jobs and products against international competition. The FN leader’s first act as president, he pledged, would be to found a Sixth Republic with a Constitu- tion enshrining “la règle de la Préférence nationale.”61 Among other proposals was the promise to withdraw France from the Schengen Convention and Maastricht Treaty and restore full French border controls. The 15 percent of votes won on the first round concealed Le Pen’s much wider appeal on the specific issue of immigration. In a survey published two weeks before, 36 percent of respondents judged Le Pen the candidate most capable of dealing 90 James Shields

with immigration, a much higher confidence rating than for any other candidate. In a similar survey published in early March 1995, 44 percent of respondents judged Le Pen’s immigration policies to be credible, while 40 percent believed in his capacity to enforce law and order; on all other issues, the FN leader’s ratings dropped sharply.62 These high confidence levels on immigration denoted both the strength and the weakness of Le Pen and the FN a decade on from their electoral breakthrough. The strength was that they had positioned themselves to capitalize best on immigration as a rallying issue; the weakness was precisely the same, that they had not been able to shed the label of a single-issue party. Yet analysis of Le Pen’s support in 1995 showed unemployment, not immigration, to be the major mobilizing issue, while socio-economic profiling of the Le Pen vote revealed the emergence of a strong current of what Nonna Mayer would call “ouvriéro-lepénisme,” with markedly high levels of support among economi- cally disadvantaged working-class and unemployed voters.63 This would prompt a revision in FN strategy and, to a degree, policy. Immigration had served its purpose in bringing the party to a 15 percent share of the national vote; but more was required to take it on from there. As FN strategists pondered how to broaden the party’s appeal beyond its core issue and core voters, an acrimonious split between Le Pen and Mégret over per- sonal and strategic differences, while severely damaging the party’s infrastruc- ture, brought an opportunity for renewal. Mégret had been one of the most doctrinaire voices in retaining the FN’s focus on immigration; his departure with many of the party’s national, regional, and local officials together with a cohort of Nouvelle Droitistes (Le Gallou, Vial, and others) left Le Pen able to claim that, purged of its most radical ideologues, the FN could now cast off the “extreme Right” tag and extend its appeal.64

Immigration Policy as Tactical Variable: 2002, 2007, and Beyond

The 2002 presidential election, which saw Le Pen elected to the run-off, was the occasion for a new approach to campaigning. The updated program, Pour un avenir français, rehearsed some of the FN’s longstanding policies, calling―in self-consciously Gaullist tones―for French national sovereignty within a “Europe des Patries”; tighter restrictions on immigration, asylum, and nationality; full employment for the French, partly through “national preference”; an extensive program of family support, again through “national preference” and a “parental income.” The most radical pledge was to pull France out of the EU (European Union) and reinstate the franc as national currency, decrying the treaties of Schengen, Maastricht, and Amsterdam as the foundations of “une entité supra-nationale postulant la fin de la France.”65 Despite these continuities, there were also important changes. Running against another far-right candidate in Mégret, whom he had labeled “extrémiste” Radical or Not So Radical? 91

and “raciste,”66 Le Pen now sought to project a comparatively moderate image. Declaring himself “un homme de centre droit,”67 he modified his proposals on immigration. Though repatriation should remain for certain categories of unwelcome foreigners (illegal immigrants, criminal offenders, long-term unemployed), the FN leader dropped his 1995 pledge to deport three million non-European immigrants over the course of the presidential term. This was a major departure from the policy―mass repatriation of immigrants―that had been fundamental to the FN program since the late 1970s. That policy had begun to look suspect even to the FN as far back as 1985, when it had con- ceded in its electoral program Pour la France that French nationals would not simply step into jobs vacated by immigrants, arguing instead that the removal of immigrant labor would deliver a stimulus for technological modernization which would in turn create new job opportunities. By 2002, the logistical difficulties of setting targets for mass repatriation, the lack of public support for such a policy, and the badge of extremism that it carried had all determined its discreet abandonment as formal FN policy. The Le Pen campaign of 2002 surprised in other ways too. In the policy review that had followed the departure of the Mégret faction in 1999, Le Pen’s son-in-law and former head of the party’s youth movement (Front National de la Jeunesse, FNJ), Samuel Maréchal, had argued the need to recognize the “car- actère multiconfessionnel” of a France where one could be both Muslim and French (just as Marine Le Pen would go on, in defiance of the FN’s traditional- ist Catholics, to argue for “un islam français”).68 In a similar spirit of accommodation, Le Pen in 2002 refused to denounce the booing of the Marseillaise at a France-Algeria football match in the Stade de France, and he even expressed some regret now for his notorious remark made in 1987 about the gas chambers being a “detail” of Second World War history.69 All of this was a calculated attempt to cultivate a new respectability―an attempt that was, paradoxically, stymied when Le Pen achieved the unexpected feat of winning through (with 16.9 percent) to the run-off against an incumbent President Chirac rallying the forces of “the Republic,” and 82.2 percent of the run-off vote, against him. Again this election showed the limits of Le Pen’s appeal; but it also sug- gested that, by attenuating his radicalism, he might hope to mobilize a wider electoral base. While the change of tone and policy evident in 2002 seemed to mark an important development, these shifts were less new than they appeared. In the 1990s, the FN had already shown growing tendencies towards “normalization” and progressive institutional adaptation as it increased its electoral representation at different levels, with immigration policy―though core to the FN program―becoming more and more a tactical variable in its political decision-making. Just as the parties of the center Right―and, to a degree, the Left―had shifted towards the FN on this issue, the FN too showed itself willing, with the right incentives, to move some way towards the Center. In those few localities where the party governed alone, it tested the bounds of constitutionality in putting its program into practice. It flexed its 92 James Shields

muscle over artistic events, cinema schedules, and library holdings, cut back on subsidies to multicultural associations, and imposed “national preference” in symbolic (renaming streets) or more pointed (halting kosher and halal school meals) ways; but it observed a broad commitment to legality and to implementing FN policies without falling foul of the Constitution. The most flagrant break with this observance of constitutionalism was the special 5,000- franc allowance for babies born to parents of French or EU nationality introduced by Catherine Mégret as mayor of Vitrolles in 1997, a measure ruled illegal by a court that sentenced Mme Mégret to a suspended prison term, a fine, and a temporary ban from public office.70 In those localities where the FN did not govern alone but was a partner or would-be partner in government (notably in a number of regions), it showed more readiness to moderate its position and sign up to Republican norms. One of the most striking examples of this readiness to compromise was the formal declaration of allegiance to the Republic and its anti-discriminatory values signed by FN councillors in the Bourgogne regional council in spring 1998.71 Just words, of course, with no guarantees beyond the paper on which they were written by a party whose commitment to democratic compromise had barely been tested; but they did appear to signal an evolution in the FN’s attitude to political cooperation. It was similarly notable that, in its effort to build alliances with the UDF and RPR within regional councils in 1998, the FN was prepared to omit altogether its core policy of “préférence nationale” from the six-point “programme minimum” on which it proposed to cooperate with the center Right.72 In the event, it managed to strike governing coalition deals in four regions and acceded to vice-presidential posts and other administrative portfolios, building on previous collaboration with the center Right in regional councils, on its brief spell in the National Assembly in the 1980s, on its longstanding presence in the European Parliament, and on its experience of governing several towns in the 1990s―all of which had yielded evidence for the “moderating effects of incumbency” on the FN.73 At the same time, an inverse dynamic of influence was felt across the center Right. The Pasqua and Debré immigration laws of 1993 and 1997 were the legislative responses by center-right governments of the 1990s to mounting FN pressure, tightening the conditions for entry, residence, naturalization, and access to social and legal rights, increasing police powers to detain and deport, and even obliging French citizens to inform their local authority about foreign visitors lodging with them (a requirement dropped from the Debré bill before it became law). A different but no less telling response would be put forward by former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur in 1998, when he proposed a com- mission to examine the FN’s key policy proposal: the application of “national preference” in the allocation of certain welfare benefits.74 This influence of the FN on the center Right was felt not just in party programs, legislative reforms or pronouncements by leaders, but also in that most elemental unit of political authority in France: the mayor. Within months of three FN-led municipal Radical or Not So Radical? 93

councils being elected in 1995, a number of center-right mayors began announcing cutbacks in programs to support the integration of immigrants or combat social exclusion; others proposed tougher law-and-order measures and even priority for French nationals over immigrants in the allocation of social housing and welfare benefits. This radicalizing of policy in some center-right municipalities was explained by explicit reference to the importance of such issues in generating support for the FN.75 The partial attempt to “normalize” that had been evident in Le Pen’s 2002 campaign was pushed further in 2007. Where “Immigration” had occupied 14 pages in the FN program of 1986, 26 pages in that of 1993, and 28 pages in that of 2001,76 the issue was accorded merely two pages (out of 68) in the Pro- gramme de Gouvernement de Jean-Marie Le Pen 2007. Here again, as in 2002, the systematic mass repatriation of immigrants that had been a mainstay of FN policy since the late 1970s was conspicuously absent. In place still were the time-honored FN pledges to apply “national preference” in welfare support, tighten the Nationality Code, reimpose full border controls, restrict conditions for entry and residence, and expel illegal and repeat-offending immigrants; but this was not the strident diatribe of programs from the 1980s and 1990s. Where non-European immigrants had once been deemed unassimi- lable, the call was now for “une nécessaire politique d’assimilation de ceux qui respectent nos lois et nos coutumes, acceptent les devoirs qui découlent des droits accordés, et considèrent la France comme leur Patrie.” The distillation of this program that served as Le Pen’s official presidential manifesto was a stu- died exercise in inclusiveness, addressed to “chaque Français, quels que soit sa race, sa religion, ses choix personnels ou sa condition sociale.” The emphasis here was squarely on respect for “les valeurs de la République française” and on Le Pen as “rassembleur de tous ses fils et filles.” For a far-right leader to declare such fealty to the Republic and its values―stressing his “attachement aux libertés de chacun” and his undiscriminating appeal to French citizens of all origins―was indeed new and significant.77 For longtime observers of Le Pen, this was the most novel, and at times the most surprising, of his presidential campaigns. Under the influence of his daughter Marine, the “republicanizing” of the FN leader gained new impetus. The launch of his campaign in September 2006 at Valmy, a historic landmark to the Revolution and Republic, was a symbolically laden gesture to project the FN leader as a Republican in tune with French history. So too the invo- cations by Le Pen of “la liberté, l’égalité, la fraternité”―a trilogy historically anathema to the far Right―and his expansive appeal to all French people including, he stressed, “Français d’origine étrangère.”78 Again, as in 2002, he declared himself “un homme de centre droit,”79 showing reluctance to use immigration as his major campaign theme. As he paraded his friendship with the black comedian Dieudonné, the image on one campaign poster of a mod- ish young “beurette” represented an appeal to second- and third-generation North Africans as a potential reservoir of support. This unprecedented move 94 James Shields

generated controversy within the FN, where it was seen by some (tradition- alist Catholics in particular) as a compromise too far with inclusiveness. Marine Le Pen’s defense of the poster said much about the new strategy being tested in this campaign: “Sur cette affiche, on évoque la nationalité, l’assimilation, l’ascenseur social, la laïcité, qui sont des domaines dans lesquels la droite et la gauche ont absolument échoué. Un certain nombre de Français d’origine immigrée sont conscients de cet échec et entendent obtenir des réponses. Beaucoup d’entre eux se tournent vers le candidat Jean-Marie Le Pen pour en obtenir.”80 The dynamic of influence between far Right and center Right was also quite different in this election. In each of the two preceding presidential elections, Chirac had been forced to hastily recenter his campaign: in 1995, the murder of a young Moroccan man by FN-supporting skinheads caused Chirac to expunge from his speeches all reference to immigrant-related criminality and to call instead for “une politique d’intégration généreuse”; in 2002, Le Pen’s election to the second round instantly transformed Chirac (who had expected to face a Socialist candidate accused of being weak on public order and immigration control) into the unpartisan champion of “nos traditions de tolérance et de respect.”81 The 2007 election imposed no such constraints on Nicolas Sarkozy, who revelled in pushing his populist campaign rightward with the express purpose of competing with Le Pen. Sarkozy promised tough law and order policies with harsher penalties for juvenile and repeat offenders, and an “immigration maîtrisée” with annual quotas, stricter conditions for family reunion, and a requirement to respect French values.82 An abrasive former interior minister, Sarkozy eagerly embraced the themes of public order, immigration, and national identity (“Si certains n’aiment pas la France, qu’ils ne se gênent pas pour la quitter”).83 He proposed a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, and argued the need to recapture “la nation française” from the FN. Questioned by journalists from Libération about the right-wing tenor of his campaign, he declared himself “plus à droite que Chirac,” adding pointedly: “celui qui est moins à droite qu’avant, c’est Le Pen.”84 The results of the first round of the 2007 presidential election told the damage inflicted on Le Pen by Sarkozy’s strategy of adversarial engagement. Whereas Le Pen had come within 6 points of Chirac in 1995 and some 3 points in 2002, he trailed Sarkozy by over 20 points (10.4 to 31.2 percent). In 2007, ownership of the immigration issue, in association with law and order, thus partly changed hands―a shift compounded by the FN’s fall to 4.3 percent in the legislative elections of 2007, and its subsequently poor performances in the municipal elections of 2008 and European elections of 2009.85 Drawing lessons from the failed policy of deradicalizing, Le Pen and his party proceeded to re-radicalize their discourse―denouncing “l’immigration- invasion,” equating immigrants with insécurité, and warning of a “France fel- lagha” in tones reminiscent of the Algerian War.86 Their signature poster for the 2010 regional elections featured not a well integrated beurette as in 2007 Radical or Not So Radical? 95

but a burka-clad woman and a map of France covered by an Algerian flag and minarets in the form of missiles, with the stark message “Non à l’islamisme.” The tracts displayed on the FN’s website confirmed this return to immigration as privileged theme, in conjunction notably with insécurité,87 a formula held dear by those traditionalists within the FN who judged Le Pen’s campaign in 2007 misguided and a betrayal, inspired by Marine Le Pen and her “mo - dernistes,” of some of the party’s long-held positions.

Conclusion

In the light of these developments, the FN might seem to fulfill the expecta- tions outlined in the preliminary observations of this article: that radical parties become entrapped in their own policy radicalism; that adversarial opposition and exclusion by mainstream parties perpetuate that radicalism; that deradicalizing from the top through policy compromise is likely to provoke dissent within sections of the party; and that pressure from radical parties on mainstream parties brings with it a risk of policy contagion. Such seemed indeed to be the picture in the period between 2007 and 2010, with the FN reoccupying its familiar ground on the far Right and with a president owing his election to support from far-right sympathizers ramping up his policies on immigration and law and order. The “grand débat sur l’identité nationale,” like the banning of the burka, the forcible expulsion of illegal Roma, and proposals to strip nationality from naturalized citizens convicted of certain violent offenses, were all debts to Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007 and downpayments on his campaign for 2012.88 Blocked from playing an institutional role commensurate with its popular support, the FN had thus achieved much of its founding objective to exert an enduring and radicalizing influence on the issue agenda and on public policy formation.89 Yet, as the foregoing discussion has shown, schematic representations belie the complexity of the FN’s long-term evolution and its variable relationship with its own radicalism. At times it has fully embraced and made a virtue of that radicalism, promoting itself as an outsider party with “priorités radicalement différentes”;90 at other times it has denied its radicalism, protesting itself to be “la droite,” “la vraie droite,” “le centre-droit,” or even “Ni droite, ni gauche―Français.” There is insufficient empirical evidence to judge how far the FN might, if more fully involved in public administration, have replicated, or might yet replicate, the process of “deradicalization” undergone by some parties of far Left and far Right, such as the PCF in France or the Alleanza Nazionale (AN, formerly the neo-fascist MSI) in Italy. Unlike the PCF or the AN, the FN has at no time in its history had to make its political and policy choices under the pressures of a median-oriented alliance; but the restraint it showed in curtailing its radical impulses in instances of cooperation or would-be cooperation with the center Right suggests at least the potential for a similar evolution. 96 James Shields

Over the period covered by this article, immigration in France was fundamentally redefined from a labor market issue to a problem of social integration, economic resourcing, and political management. The progressive radicalization of the immigration debate in the 1980s and 1990s showed the powerful dynamic of influence between the FN, the center Right, the Left, and public opinion. None of the issues fought over by political parties in that period (integration of immigrants, political rights and representation, conditions for entry and residence, treatment of illegal immigrants, reform of the Nationality Code) have been definitively resolved; nor have they been definitively appropriated, as shown by the contest between Sarkozy and Le Pen in 2007. In defining the FN today in relation to these issues, account must be taken of its own evolution, of the evolution of other parties, and of the political self-positioning of those who vote respectively for the FN and the Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) as successor to the RPR and UDF.91 Though spatial boundaries can be treacherously unstable, Robert Andersen and Jocelyn Evans have argued rightly that the FN vote is best located not in a separate extreme Right bloc but “on the radical wing of the right bloc in toto,” with disparities between “moderate-right” and “far-right” voting being essentially “a matter of intensity rather than direction.”92 Where, then, does that leave the FN today? Will the change of leader for the first time since the party’s foundation push it further out on that radical wing or move it closer to the center ground? Over the past twenty-five years, the FN has had a far-reaching impact on the French party system, on the issue priorities of voters, and on the public policy agenda; but it has also encoun- tered the limits of that impact by being excluded from the real locus of national power.93 The election of Marine Le Pen as leader in January 2011 brought a new resolve to bring the party in from the margins, to “de-demonize” it and give it a stake in mainstream politics. That cannot be achieved without a fundamental reorientation of both the FN and the UMP in their attitude to mutual cooperation; but Italian, Austrian, and Dutch precedents show that Realpolitik can impose its own powerful rationale. The partial electoral recovery (11.4 percent) in the regional elections of March 2010, and the stronger score (15 percent) in the first round of cantonal elections in March 2011, with the imminence of a presidential contest in 2012, brought to the fore once again the question of the FN’s bargaining power with the center Right as the potentially critical factor in determining whether the party under its new leader remains excluded from, or finally gains access to, the political mainstream. A further accommodation to “normal” politics would bring benefits but also risks. The benefits might be greater access to institutionalized power and direct participation in policy-making; the risks would be what Martin Schain has called “the perils of systemic involvement” for far-right parties,94 the decentering (structural) effects of accumulating multiple office-holders and the divisive (ideological) tensions of increased policy compromise. It was no coincidence that the schism of 1999 occurred just as the FN seemed poised to Radical or Not So Radical? 97

force the ultimate concession, that of political agreement, from the center- right parties. The proliferation of elected officials at European, regional, cantonal, municipal, then mayoral levels had brought a new institutional pluralism to the party, issued a challenge to Le Pen’s top-down leadership, and created eventually unmanageable divisions over strategy. To that extent, uncompromising radicalism and continued outsider status might offer the safer route to retaining ideological coherence and perhaps party unity; but the new leadership of the FN will be only too aware that it is a route leading ulti- mately to a political dead end.

Notes

1. This view of moderate parties as adaptable seekers after the median vote was most influentially developed by Anthony Downs in his Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper Row, 1957). 2. James A. Stimson, Michael B. MacKuen, and Robert S. Erikson, “Dynamic Repre- sentation,” American Political Science Review 89, 3 (1995): 543–65. 3. James Adams, Michael Clark, Lawrence Ezrow, and Garrett Glasgow, “Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Elec- toral Consequences of Western European Parties’ Policy Shifts, 1976–1998,” Amer- ican Journal of Political Science 50, 3 (2006): 513–29. 4. Ibid., 513–16, 520–26. 5. Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1962 [first German ed. 1911]). 6. Joost Van Spanje and Wouter Van Der Brug, “The Party as Pariah: The Exclusion of Anti-Immigration Parties and its Effect on their Ideological Positions,” West Euro- pean Politics 30, 5 (2007): 1022–40. 7. Kai Arzheimer, “Contextual Factors and the Extreme Right Vote in Western Europe, 1980–2002,” American Journal of Political Science 53, 2 (2009), 264. 8. George Rabinowitz and Stuart E. Macdonald, “A Directional Theory of Issue Vot- ing,” American Political Science Review 83, 1 (1989), 107–11, 116–17. 9. For a detailed theorization of these choices, see Bonnie M. Meguid, Party Competi- tion between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 10. Défendre les Français: C’est le programme du Front National, supplement to Front Natio- nal 3, February 1973, 29. 11. François Duprat, Les Mouvements d’extrême-droite en France depuis 1944 (Paris: Alba- tros, 1972), 275–77. 12. Défendre les Français, 13. 13. Ibid., 13, 20. 14. Corentin Calvez, “Le Problème des travailleurs étrangers,” Journal Officiel de la Répu- blique Française: Avis et Rapports du Conseil Économique et Social 7, 27 March 1969, 316. 15. Le Monde, 27 February 1973. 98 James Shields

16. Calvez, “Le Problème des travailleurs étrangers,” 316. 17. A process explored most recently by Elisa Camiscioli in Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009). 18. René Chiroux, L’Extrême-droite sous la Ve République (Paris: Librairie Générale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1974), 214–16. 19. Joseph Algazy, L’Extrême-droite en France de 1965 à 1984 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989), 119. 20. Le Monde, 9 November 1972. 21. Le Monde, 26 September 1973. 22. Le Monde dossiers et documents: L’élection présidentielle de mai 1974, 59. 23. James G. Shields, The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 171–78, 319. 24. Algazy, L’Extrême-droite en France, 216–17. 25. Gilles Bresson and Christian Lionet, Le Pen: Biographie (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 385. 26. Algazy, L’Extrême-droite en France, 219. 27. Catherine Wihtol de Wenden, Les Immigrés et la politique: Cent cinquante ans d’évo- lution (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1988), 206. 28. Ibid., 206. 29. Le Monde, 15 June 1979; Patrick Weil, La France et ses étrangers: L’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration 1938–1991 (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1991), 107–38. 30. Algazy, L’Extrême-droite en France, 220–22. 31. Ibid., 220. 32. Jean-Marie Le Pen, “Le Front National,” in La Droite aujourd’hui, ed. Jean-Pierre Apparu (Paris: Albin Michel, 1979), 175, 179. 33. Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 143–57. 34. Algazy, L’Extrême-droite en France, 223. 35. Robert Gildea, France since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 139. 36. Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand and Thomas Caudron, “Les immigrés dans la société 1981–1984,” in Les Années Mitterrand: Les années du changement (1981–1984), ed. Serge Berstein, Pierre Milza, and Jean-Louis Bianco (Paris: Perrin, 2001), 554–55. 37. Agnès Hochet, “L’immigration dans le débat politique français de 1981 à 1988,” Pouvoirs 47 (1988), 24. 38. SOFRES, Opinion publique 1984 (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), 125; SOFRES, Opinion publique 1985 (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), 84, 102, 109; Le Monde, 23 April 1985. 39. Dreyfus-Armand and Caudron, “Les immigrés dans la société 1981–1984,” 560–65. 40. Front National, Pour la France: Programme du Front National (Paris: Albatros, 1985), 110–24. 41. Weil, La France et ses étrangers, Appendix VI, 373–75. 42. Calvez, “Le Problème des travailleurs étrangers,” 316. 43. On its use by Chirac and Mitterrand both, see Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 208, 237. 44. Alain de Benoist, Les Idées à l’endroit (Paris: Éditions Libres-Hallier, 1979), 154–56. 45. The 1986 program was inconsistent, proposing on one page that family allowance be open to EEC nationals, then on another that it be reserved for French nationals (Pour la France, 122, 139). 46. Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 217–19. 47. Ibid., 224, 229–30, 246, 276–77. 48. Le Monde dossiers et documents: L’élection présidentielle 24 avril–8 mai 1988, 61. 49. Exceptionally under the Fifth Republic, this legislative election was conducted on a system of proportional representation. 50. Tom McCulloch, “The Nouvelle Droite in the 1980s and 1990s: Ideology and Entry- ism, the Relationship with the Front National,” French Politics 4, 2 (2006): 158–78. Radical or Not So Radical? 99

51. Le Monde, 21 and 22 June 1991. 52. Le Figaro-Magazine, 21 September 1991, 48–57. 53. MRAP, “Non à la dérive du débat politique,” communiqué dated 5 July 1991; Le Monde, 10 and 14–15 July 1991. 54. Le Monde, 29 May 2002; Pascal Perrineau, Le Symptôme Le Pen: Radiographie des élec- teurs du Front National (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 72, 191–92. 55. Martin A. Schain, “The Extreme-Right and Immigration Policy-Making: Measuring Direct and Indirect Effects,” West European Politics 29, 2 (2006), 277–78. 56. Front National, Contribution au règlement du problème de l’immigration: 50 mesures concrètes (1991). 57. L’Evénement du jeudi, 21–27 December 1989, 60. 58. Front National, 300 mesures pour la renaissance de la France: Programme de gouvernement (Paris: Éditions Nationales, 1993). 59. Bruno Mégret, La Flamme: Les voies de la renaissance (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1990), 36. 60. Anne-Marie Duranton-Crabol, Visages de la Nouvelle Droite: Le GRECE et son histoire (Paris: Presses de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1988); Le Monde, 1- 2 September 1996. 61. Jean-Marie Le Pen/Front National, Le Contrat pour la France avec les Français: Le Pen Président (Paris, 1995). 62. La Tribune Desfossés, 11 April 1995; Infomation, 1 March 1995. 63. Nonna Mayer, Ces Français qui votent FN (Paris: Flammarion, 1999), 23–24, 85–89, 214–19; Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 256–57. 64. Gilles Ivaldi, “La scission du Front National,” Regards sur l’actualité, May 1999, 19–20, 26 n.16. 65. Front National, Pour un avenir français: Le Programme de gouvernement du Front Natio- nal (Paris: Éditions Godefroy de Bouillon, 2001); Jean-Marie Le Pen – La France et les Français d’abord!, official presidential manifesto, April 2002. 66. Ivaldi, “La scission du Front National,” 26 n.16. 67. Le Monde, 3-4 February 2002. 68. Le Monde.fr, 26 September 1999; http://www.journalchretien.net/+1487-Marine-Le- Pen-vise-la-tete+?lang=fr. 69. Le Monde, 3-4 February 2002. 70. Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 259–64. 71. Le Monde, 23 May 1998. 72. Le Monde, 18 March 1998. 73. Shields, The Extreme Right in France, 198, 209–10, 216–17, 259–64; William M. Downs, Carrie L. Manning, and Richard N. Engstrom, “Revisiting the ‘Moderating Effects of Incumbency’: A Comparative Study of Government Participation and Political Extremism,” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 17, 2 (2009): 151–69. 74. Le Monde, 17 June 1998. 75. Le Monde, 12-13 November 1995. 76. Pour la France (1985), 110–24; 300 mesures pour la renaissance de la France (1993), 24–50; Pour un avenir français (2001), 45–73. 77. Programme de Gouvernement de Jean-Marie Le Pen 2007 (CLPP: Paris, 2007); Jean- Marie Le Pen – Appel à la France et à tous les Français, official presidential manifesto, April 2007. 78. Le Pen, speech to launch 2007 presidential campaign, Valmy, 20 September 2006. 79. Interview, Paris Match, 4 January 2007; Le Monde.fr, 4 January 2007. 80. NouvelObs.com, 13 December 2006. 81. Discours de M. Jacques Chirac, Metz, 3 May 1995; Le Monde, 5 May 1995; Le Monde, 23 and 25 April 2002. 100 James Shields

82. Nicolas Sarkozy — Ensemble tout devient possible, official presidential manifesto, April 2007. 83. Le Monde.fr, 23 April 2006. 84. Interview in Libération, 12 April 2007. 85. James Shields, “The Far Right Vote in France: From Consolidation to Collapse?” French Politics, Culture & Society 28, 1 (2010): 25–45. 86. Le Monde, 5 June and 25 March 2009; http://www.frontnational.com/?p=3632. 87. http://www.frontnational.com/. 88. See, inter alia, Le Monde.fr, 7 January, 4 February, 7 April, 13 and 31 July, 6 and 9 September 2010. 89. Le Pen, “Le Front National,” 177. 90. Front National, 300 mesures pour la renaissance de la France (1993), 406–407; http://www.frontnational.com/?tag=securite. 91. Shields, “The Far Right Vote in France,” 35–40. 92. Robert Andersen and Jocelyn Evans, “Contemporary Developments in Political Space in France,” in The French Party System, ed. Jocelyn Evans (Manchester: Man- chester University Press, 2003), 183–84; also Evans, “Introduction,” in ibid., 7–8. 93. Schain, “The Extreme-Right and Immigration Policy-Making,” 285–87. 94. Ibid., 285.