5 - France: Party System Change and the Demise of the Post-Gaullist Right

Summary

The 2017 French presidential and legislative elections constituted a crisis point for the mainstream right. Since the mid-1980s, the mainstream right had proved remarkably adept at exploiting the political opportunity structure of the French political system, balancing the centripetal forces of the silent revolution with the centrifugal pull of the silent counter-revolution. This chapter analyses how 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 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 which were largely accepting of progressive silent revolution cultural values.