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Presidentialism and the Parties in the French Fifth Republic1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Wright Vincent
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Extract

PARTY POLITICS UNDER THE FIFZH REPUBLIC HAVE BEEN COMPLEX AND confused. New parties such as the Independent Republicans and the Centre Démocrate have appeared, and old ones such as the MRP and the CNIP-two of the great pivotal parties of the Fourth Republic - have disappeared as national forces. The Gaullists have grown, the communists have stagnated, the radicals have declined, and the socialists have experienced dramatically changing fortunes. The observer will be bewildered by the appearance and disappearance of party coalitions, by the political dissensions within the parties, by the bitter squabbles between parties which are in nominal alliance, and by the Quixotic waverings of certain party leaders - veritable weathercocks susceptible to the slightest political draught.

Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1975 , pp. 24 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1975

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Footnotes

1

A discussion centring on the following four recent books: ChariotJean, Quand la Gauche peut gagner, Alain Moreau, Paris, 1973;AndersonMalcolm, Conservative Politics in France, Allen & Unwin, London, 1974;IrvingR. E. M., Christian Democracy in France, Allen & Unwin, London, 1973;LaurensAndre and PfisterThierry, Les Nouveaux Communistes, Stock, Paris, 1973.

References

2 Malcolm Anderson, op. cit., p. 266.

3 See especially his Cartes sur table, Paris, 1972.

4 See Colliard, J. C., Les Républicans Indépendants, Paris, 1971.Google Scholar

5 The most recent opinion poll gives the UDR only 13 per cent of the voters. See Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 July 1974.

6 Jean Chariot, op. cit., pp. 216–17.

7 IFOP poll published in France Soir, 16 May 1974.

8 See especially his recent speech to the Conseil politique of the party, reported in Le Monde, 25 June 1974.

9 See the text of this remarkably moderate speech made on television in L’Humanité, 18 June 1974.

10 See Wright, V. and Machin, H., ‘The French Socialist Party in 1973: Performance and Prospects’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1974, pp. 123–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar