05/04/12
Midnight in Paris: The Implosion of the French Right David A. Bell
To understand the state of the right wing in France,
start by considering the name of Nicolas Sarkozy’s political party, the
country’s major conservative political force. Founded a decade ago by Jacques
Chirac as the Union for the Presidential Majority, it is currently known as the
Union for a Popular Movement (French acronym in both cases: UMP). It descends
from another party, also founded by Chirac, in 1976, called the Rally for the
Republic (RPR). The RPR in turn took the place of the Union of Democrats for the
Republic (UDR), which was earlier known as the Union for the Defense of the
Republic (UDR), the Union of Democrats for the Fifth Republic (UDVR), and the
Union for the New Republic (UNR). That party was founded at the start of
the Fifth Republic, in 1958, by supporters of Charles de Gaulle, who had
previously led the Rally of the French People (RPF). Everything clear?
As this history might suggest, for the last half century the French right has suffered from something of an identity crisis. Now, especially if Sarkozy loses in this month’s presidential runoff, the right appears on the verge of imploding altogether and reassembling itself in a different form. And the worrisome result could be that a far-right grouping achieves major party status in the country for the first time since World War II.
Sarkozy himself is often referred to as a “Gaullist.” He shouldn’t be, however, and not just because the institutional threads linking him back to de Gaulle are so ragged. Ironically, while he is the first of de Gaulle’s successors not to give the party a formal facelift, he has broken far more clearly than his predecessors with de Gaulle’s legacy. He is less a Gaullist than a Sarkozist. But of what does “Sarkozysme” consist? Therein lies the root of the current mess.
Gaullism itself was always notoriously difficult to define, and Charles de Gaulle did not make things any easier by insisting that the movement should float magisterially above mere politics and ideology. Still, at the start, it was associated with a number of distinct positions. The first was a policy of national grandeur—maintaining an independent role for France as a great power and also insisting on France’s leading position in the European community. The second involved dirigisme, meaning state direction—although not control or ownership—of the economy. A third was a dedication to national unity, symbolized by a powerful chief executive. And Gaullism also implied a degree of social conservatism, although distinct from the xenophobic, reactionary variety that had flourished before the war and come to power under Vichy.
Sarkozy’s predecessor, Chirac, sometimes chafed at various aspects of the Gaullist legacy. As leader of the opposition to Socialist President François Mitterrand, he embraced free-market positions at odds with dirigisme, and, as president himself (from 1995 to 2007), he tried to chip away at pieces of France’s often-glacial system of social regulation, albeit with little success. But, in foreign policy, he followed de Gaulle’s example, notably in leading the international opposition to America’s invasion of Iraq.
Sarkozy made a stronger break. He reintegrated France into the NATO command structure from which de Gaulle had removed it and has cooperated closely with the United States. To the extent that he has carved out an independent profile for French foreign policy, it has centered less on national glory than on human rights and humanitarian intervention, notably in Libya. In Europe, Sarkozy has tacitly accepted the position of partner to Germany—even junior partner. While he has not accomplished much more domestic reform than Chirac, he has talked loudly about the need for a “rupture” with French social and economic traditions. And he has placed “national identity” above national unity, insisting that immigrant groups assimilate to French norms and posing as the scourge of those who supposedly refuse (for instance, by wearing burqas). But, in the end, he never developed a program that brought these different initiatives into a coherent program. Sarkozysme never gelled.
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