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Unit 13: Political Parties

to cast their votes in favour of small parties which have a divergent stand that sometimes coincides Notes
with their wishes. The National Front is an organisation of those who want France for the French’.
They find the cause of growing unemployment and increasing number of crimes in the immigration
of the foreign people. Hence, they are branded as ‘racists’. Its leader Jean Marie Le Pen contested the
presidential election in and, though he was defeated, the pro-chirac voters hoped that his ideas would
be taken seriously into account by the newly elected President.
Then, there is a party of the environmentalists called the ‘Greens’. They are critical of nuclear
experiments and of all measures that pollute the environment. It has no commitment to any ideology
and so it is neither rightist nor leftist. Its leaders as Waechter and Brice Lalonde have often laid stress
on the prime need for maintaining a healthy and polution-free environment. These parties have no
chance to be in power, but they play a notable part by raising crucial issues and soliciting the sympathy
of the people by exploiting their sentiments. Their voice has its effect on the working of the governing
coalitions.

What do you mean by Gaullism and Fascism?

France is under the de Gaulle constitution. Despite de Gaulle’s opposition to political parties on the
ground that they nurture divison, instablility, and paralysis, the emergence of powerful political
parties has played a key role in buttressing cohesion, stability and leadership within the Fifth Republic.
An important development has been the emergence of governning coalition of political parties.
Moreover, there has been a powerful tendency for parties to coalesce into two opposing coalitions
facing each other across the left-right divide.”
Critical Appreciation: As a matter of fact, the party system of France defies characterisation on certain
specific lines. Though it is a model of multi-partyism, it is not so in the strict sense of the term. It offers
a unique case where several political parties and groups, including splinter and fringe organisations,
called ‘clubs’ and ‘families’, play the part of actors in the stasiological drama of the country without
having permanent commitments to certain social, economic or political norms that may make them
identifiable with the political parties of other democratic countries. One is struck with the fact that there
is no party in France that may be identified even with the Liberal Party of England known for its
flexible political attitudes. And while one may appreciate the trend of integration after the electoral
reform of 1961 resulting in the simplification or configuration of political parties, it cannot be said with
confidence that this trend would last so as to become the normal feature of French party system.
A student of French politics is, however, beset not with the multipliplicity of parties or groups, what
really agitates his mind is that he cannot find himself safe in making precise, even general, statements
about the policies and programmes of a party, excluding the Communists, showing its permanent
commitments—something that constitutes the hallmark of a political party. It has become all the
more important ever since Gaullism has dominated the scene. So loose is the movement of Gaullism
that its frontiers or implications cannot be drawn with any degree of confidence. A leading French
leader Chariot endeavours to place the doctrinaire Gaullists into three broad categories—a group
whose ideas centre on the State, a group whose central idea is the ‘common good’ and the left-wing
social Gaullists, each of them drawing on de Gaulle himself for their distinctive inspiration.
Even in this too general a version of the dominant movement of France, its real implications cannot
be traced out. In fine, a study of French party system presents both a matter of special interest and
peculiar difficulties aggravated more since the inauguration of the reformed electoral system in 1962
the reason for which should be traced in the fact that all political forces of this country relate themselves
to a certain concept of the French nation-state as well as to a particular attitude to their history. All
political parties, groups and their sub-parts, big or small, as Stead says, “like to claim themselves
sound strand of French tradition,” The result of all is that analysis of French Political Parties “is a rich
subject of study which was has not ceased to fascinate the French; but the entry into the study is
difficult and can be painful.”

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