The imminent election is one of the most exciting in French politics since 1981: the outcome is very open, the candidates are young, and they all promise change. But in a country in desperate need thereof, is it pure spin or will there be a sea-change?

The imminent election is one of the most exciting in French politics since perhaps 1981 and the first change in power in the fifth republic with the election of the socialist François Mitterrand: the outcome is very open; the favourite candidates are young (in their early fifties), and running for the first time in the presidential election (second time for François Bayrou); and they all claim to embody change in a country severely in need thereof. But is it pure spin or will there be a sea-change? The country is in desperate need for reforms.

The fifth republic and the presidential election

It is well know to French social science students that France experienced almost all the possible political regimes since 1789 before finally finding stability with the fifth republic. From 1875 to 1940, France lived in the third republic, a regime marked by governmental instability due to a powerless president and an assembly elected by a proportional suffrage that had too many different parties without a clear majority to govern on. After WWII, the fourth republic perpetuated this model of unstable coalitions and alliances, which plunged France in a political crisis that only the historical figure de Gaulle could resolve. His fifth republic was accepted by referendum in 1958. It ensured stability by giving great powers to the president and an assembly elected by the majority system. In order to perpetuate the stability after his retreat from power de Gaulle subjected to referendum in 1962 the proposition that the president shall be elected by direct universal suffrage in two rounds.

This election changed French politics radically. In the second round two candidates face each other. This has had the effect to polarise French politics essentially around two camps, which took the form of the left/right divide. For one thing, parties are forced to alliances and unions, and another thing, the political landscape is clearly visible for the voters with two sides to choose from.

Left/right bipolarisation and political realities

The expression of “left” and “right” is actually coming from the French national Assembly that sat in 1789 with the king's partisans on the Assembly president's right and its opponents on his left.

When the world was also artificially divided into two ideologies, the left/right divide was clear and obvious and it was naturally around this spectrum that the French political landscape polarised, with the help of the presidential election system.

The relevance of the concept has been under discussion since the 1990s and the main figures to theorise the end of left/wing divide were Anthony Giddens and Norberto Bobbio. Social democracy in Europe went under debates for their reformation. The third way between left and right has been experienced in Britain and transformed the rest of Europe’s socialist parties. All of them? No. “For one small village of indomitable Gauls still held out against the third way invaders”. During the nineties, the French socialists (PS) debated as the rest of Europe on the future of social democracy, and the traditional left was undermined in favour of a more centre left view. The “third way” rhetoric was however explicitly rejected by the PS, leaving it to others. The PS, however, imploded into an internal old left wing and a new left one that dominated.

It is thus common knowledge that the left/right divide is something of the past. The French left organised privatisations when it was in government and does not think that there is any other economic model than liberalism, albeit crossed with social corrections to address market failures. The right also moved away from neoliberal temptations, and does not hesitate to take social themes as electoral bait. The right has not done much to cut public expenditures. All in all there are few differences to debate on in left/right policies. Everybody applied in fact the “Third Way”, but nobody used it as a political communication strategy. Until today.

Political marketing

In an ever increasing commodification of society, even politics becomes a good, and parties are brands providing services, which want to acquire markets of voters by positioning themselves through political communication. So even if the left/right divide no longer exists, no one has an interest in openly stating this fact in a bipolarised political system, except someone who would like to sneak in between.

When Ségolène Royal was elected in the socialist party to represent it at the presidential election, she was depicted as the most to the right possible, and her adversaries compared her to Nicolas Sarkozy. Learning from the Labour in Britain, she claimed that the PS should also be tough on crime, a rhetoric traditionally abandoned to the right.  Sarkozy, when he was economy and budget minister, committed himself not to privatise the national energy company dealing with electricity and gas.

When the presidential campaign went well underway, the two candidates that were naturally thought to be the main opponents in the second round applied some Cournot-Nash equilibrium  (according to which competitors have nothing to gain in changing their strategy), and based their communication strategy on the clearly visible left/right divide, although flirting with the extremities of the spectrum: one could see Royal turning "red" on a factory site supporting a workers’ demonstration, and hear Sarkozy "brown" voice suggesting a “ministry for immigration and national identity”. The left/right divide is thus a born again Christian for this election.

In this game of communication and spin, came suddenly a third man to disrupt this Nash-equilibrium. François Bayrou’s rhetoric of being beyond the left/right divide clearly found a favourable ear in the French population eager for reforms and change. Recycling his “third way” rhetoric, inoccupied by the PS, of the last election in 2002, he positioned himself skilfully (in terms of political communication) as the only true reformer, taking advantage of the archaic positioning of Royal and Sarkozy in a left/right divide from the nineteenth century - Royal with the leftist class struggles, and Sarkozy with a concept of the nation dating from the “Printemps des Peuples”.  

However, with time, Bayrou’s rhetoric proved its limits as well. Positioning himself as an innovator also requires true innovations. But instead of inventing a new political vocabulary, Bayrou also stands semantically in the nineteenth century by suggesting a sixth republic that closely resembles a return to the third or fourth republic. Perhaps as a result, his popular success is now stagnating in opinion polls.

A thirst for change in a society in crisis

There is something very unusual happening in France today. It is one of the very rare times in her history that her 64 millions inhabitants all agree on one thing. De Gaulle famously asked “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheeses?” What the French all agree on is that France is in a deep crisis. The economy is stagnating: persisting high unemployment since the oil crisis; historically high balance deficit this year; stagnating growth for decades; unbearable public debt. The society is also in crisis: integration is not working; too many are poor, homeless, and excluded; the famous “social elevator” model of the republic is out of order and elites are reproducing themselves whereas the rest does not have the same chances. Worse yet, people have the feeling of being left outside the democratic process.

The next thing all the French agree on is that there is a strong need for radical reforms. And all the major candidates are presenting themselves as the one that embodies change and reforms. Success or failure for the next president will depend on his/her capacity to carry out the necessary reforms that the country is in desperate need of.

The coming revolution - so they say

Whatever the outcome of the election, France will experience a change in her politics because all the three main candidates incarnate a mini revolution, each in his/her own way.

François Bayrou considers himself as the only true reformer who wants to blow out the left/right divide. If elected, he wants to form a government with personalities from both the left and the right. This type of Italian grand coalition is unprecedented under the fifth republic and its bipolarisation. Furthermore, he wants to abolish the fifth republic and submit the project of a sixth republic in which the president’s powers would be dramatically restricted, and the national assembly will be elected with a proportional suffrage, better representing the French people’s votes. Critics reproach him however to propose a return to the political turmoil of the fourth and third republics that would inevitably immerse the country in an even more severe crisis.

If Royal is elected, she will be the first woman president in the history. In a country like France, with its Latin latent male chauvinism, it is a little revolution in itself. But furthermore, Segolène Royal would incarnate a new way of governing, resolutely participative with her plan to install a form of democratic governance at all levels. She put this in practice for herself and for the first time, a candidate made extensive use of the potential of the internet and by asking socialist activists and French citizens for their opinions on diverse issues. Her programme was based on this participatory method, taking all these opinions into account after a synthesis of all the debates organised in France, either on the web or in socialist local unions. Critics claimed however that it was pure “spin” and “communication” and that she decided the programme alone anyway.

If Sarkozy is elected, it will be for the right a fracture with the Gaullist tradition. Sarkozy’s foreign policy programme is, for France, unprecedently pro-Atlantic. Already as a minister/candidate (a lump of functions which provoked a mini scandal at that time), Sarkozy visited the USA last September and made a key speech on the future of Franco-American friendship. Furthermore, he wants to embody a tough leader who reestablish republican values in a society in crisis, a figure departing from former presidents. Critics claim, however, that Sarkozy is a danger for the country because he is exciting social tensions and creating a climate of fear with his harsh rhetoric, dangerously preaching on the lands of the far-right. His alleged irascible character is also in question. Recently, a former minister delegate in the same government accused him of having insulted him and threatened his physical integrity.

Reality check

But no matter how novel the programs and personalities are, these reforms will have to pass the reality test. In any given country, reforms carried out by politicians face e.g. “path dependency” problems, civil servants’ divergent conceptions, the country’s traditions in matters of foreign policy, and of course social resistance, which in France is a Pavlovian reflex to any policy change.

It is also to hope for the country that all the reforms they propose are not pure communication spin but real, because the country acutely needs reforms.

This campaign is extremely open and, this week, an opinion pool showed that 42% had not yet made up their mind. One week before the election, the gap between the three favourites is very small in the opinion polls, and they are competing in a “pocket handkerchief”, as they say in France: Sarkozy is around 26%, Royal around 23% and Bayrou around 21% of voting intentions.

All this has erased in the collective memory the fears of the 2002 election repeting itself with the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round. He is still surfing on a cosy 15% wave though. Everyone seems to have forgotten this danger, when the hot topic for the past couple of days has already been about alliances and future coalitions between Royal’s PS and Bayrou’s UDF for the second round. Let us hope that there will be no bad surprise next Sunday 22 April, and that the indecisive voters eager for change will not see in Le Pen the true reformer that Sarkozy, Royal, or Bayrou’s political marketing would have failed to convince of representing.

Bild 1: Francois Bayrou c) Antonin Borgeaud
Bild 2: Ségolène Royal c) Marie-Lan Nguyen
Bild 3: Nicolas Sarkozy c) www.presidencia.gov.ar