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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2021

Party System Change and the Demise of the Post-Gaullist Right

Résumé

The 2017 French presidential and legislative elections constituted a crisis point for a mainstream Right which, since the mid-1980s, had proved remarkably adept at exploiting the political opportunity structure of the French political system to balance the centripetal forces of Silent Revolution value change and the ‘liberal consensus’ with the centrifugal pull of the Silent Counter-Revolutionary Front National (FN) on the populist radical right. This chapter will analyse how, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the conservative Gaullists and their centre-right liberal coalition partners constituted competing but stable bloc components within France’s two-round majoritarian electoral system, while pursuing weak accommodative strategies vis-à-vis the FN. The absence of an effective centre-located competitor ensured that the Gaullists’ increasing encroachment upon the centre-right’s support, culminating in the formation of the UMP in 2002, did not threaten the bloc’s stability. Conversely, from 2007 onwards, a more conservative mainstream Right faced challenges from both the populist radical right, reviving Silent Counter Revolution values which were again salient in the wake of the economic crisis, and renewed centrist formations largely accepting of progressive Silent Revolution cultural values. The chapter demonstrates that significant, simultaneous electoral challenge from the centrist and populist radical right compromised the Right bloc’s integrity, and recast the French party system, pulling liberal Republicans wing towards cooperation with the centrist government, and leaving conservative-authoritarian Republicans wing to drift towards the Radical Right.
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Dates et versions

halshs-03277396 , version 1 (03-07-2021)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-03277396 , version 1

Citer

Jocelyn A.J. Evans, Gilles Ivaldi. Party System Change and the Demise of the Post-Gaullist Right. Tim Bale, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. Riding the Populist Wave. Europe's Mainstream Right in Crisis, Cambridge University Press, pp.112-145, 2021, 9781009009058. ⟨halshs-03277396⟩
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