(French Politics Society and Culture Series) Frankreich Staatspräsident - Gaffney, John - Political Leadership in France - From Charles de Gaulle To Nicolas Sarkozy-Palgrave Macmillan (2012) 4

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PARTIES, GENDER QUOTAS AND CANDIDATE SELECTION IN FRANCE
Gino G. Raymond
THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY DURING THE FIFTH REPUBLIC
A Crisis of Leadership and Ideology
Paul Smith
THE SENATE OF THE FIFTH FRENCH REPUBLIC
Francesca Vassallo
FRANCE, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM
Sarah Waters
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THE EUROPEANIZATION OF FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY
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Political Leadership in
France
From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy
John Gaffney
Professor of Politics, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
© John Gaffney 2010
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First published 2010 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaffney, John, 1950–
Political leadership in France : from Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas
Sarkozy / John Gaffney.
p. cm. – (French politics, society, and culture series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-230-00181-7 (hardback)
1. France–Politics and government–1958– 2. Presidents–France–
History–20th century. 3. Presidents–France–History–21st century.
4. Political leadership–France–History–20th century. 5. Political
leadership–France–History–21st century. 6. Presidents–France–
Election–History–20th century. 7. Presidents–France–Election–
History–21st century. I. Title.
DC417.G33 2010
944.083092’2–dc22 2009048510
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
To the memory of my mother and father
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowledgements x
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 1958: The Gaullist Settlement and French 6

Politics
The elements of the new republic in 1958 6
The birth of the new republic 11
Understanding the new republic 21
The characteristics of the new republic 29
Chapter 2 1958–68: The Consolidation and Evolution 37

of the Fifth Republic
The 1962 referendum and elections 40
Gaullism and the Gaullists 45
De Gaulle on the world stage 47
Left opposition 55
The new conditions of the republic 58
Gaullism and government 59
De Gaulle 60
The left 61
1965–67 63
Chapter 3 1968 and its Aftermath 67

Sous les Pavés, la Cinquième République 71
‘Opinion’ 82
The unmediated relationship escapes to the streets 83
Personal leadership (and its rejection) 83
Chapter 4 1969–74: Gaullism Without de Gaulle 89

The 1969 referendum 89
The 1969 presidential election 95
The Pompidou presidency: 1969–74 96
Pompidou and the institutions 98
Pompidou and foreign affairs 103
Left opposition, 1969–74 107
vii
viii Contents
Chapter 5 1974–81: The Giscard Years 113

The 1974 elections 113
Slowing down the ‘Marseillaise’ then speeding 116
it up again
Giscard and his presidency 120
Gaullism and Giscardianism 123
The left 130
1978–81 134
Chapter 6 1981–88: From the République Sociale to the 138

République Française
The 1981 elections 140
The 1986 election 146
1986–88 148
Chapter 7 1988–2002: The Long Decade of Vindictiveness, 154

Miscalculations, Defeat, Farce, Good Luck, Good
Government, and Catastrophe. The Presidency
Right or Wrong
1988–93: System dysfunction and occasional chaos 155
Rocard 155
Cresson 159
Bérégovoy 162
1993–95: Balladur. Almost President 163
1995–97: Balladur out, Chirac in; Jospin up, 168
Chirac down: Politics as farce
1997–2002: The eternal cohabitation. Good 171
government, and catastrophe
2002: Jospin snatches defeat from the jaws of 173
certain victory
Jospin and the 2002 campaign 174
The republic saved – by presidentialism 176
The left, lost again 176
Beyond neo-Gaullism 177
Chapter 8 The Presidential Election of 2007 179

Ségolène Royal 179
The trajectory 179
The Mitterrand years 180
The Jospin years 182
From the local to the virtual 184
Contents ix
Ségolène Royal and ‘Ségolène’ 185

From virtual to presidential 186
The campaign 187
Nicolas Sarkozy 191
The trajectory 191
Neuilly’s favourite son 192
Balladur’s favourite son 193
Return from the wilderness 194
Sarkozy and ‘Sarko’ 195
Sarkozy the hero 195
Sarkozy the minister 195
Sarkozy the lover 196
The campaign 199
Conclusion 206
Notes 215
Bibliography 237
Index 252
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank a number of colleagues for reading all or parts of the

manuscript of this book. David Bell and Graeme Hayes read the whole
draft, and their comments and criticisms have been extremely helpful
and truly appreciated. Others who read various chapters have helped
me enormously to focus my ideas and produce a better book than I
would otherwise have done. So my thanks also go to Alistair Cole,
Catherine Fieschi, Cressida Gaffney, Nick Hewlett, Angela Kershaw,
Andrew Knapp, Amarjit Lahel, Rainbow Murray, Paul Smith and Hélène
Stafford. My thanks also go to Robert Elgie for his support throughout
the writing of this book, and to the editorial staff at Palgrave. I should
also like to include in my thanks the late B.D. Graham, my former
supervisor, whose kindness and intellect were always an inspiration to
me. None of these people has any responsibility for any inaccuracies,
which are my own.
x
List of Abbreviations
CD Centre démocrate
CDS Centre des démocrates sociaux
CERES Centre d’études et de recherches socialistes
CFDT Confédération française démocratique du travail
CGT Confédération générale du travail
CIR Convention des institutions républicaines
CNIP Centre national des indépendants et paysans
CPE Contrat première embauche
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CRS Compagnies républicaines de sécurité
CSG Contribution sociale généralisée
EEC European Economic Community
EFTA European Free Trade Association
ENA Ecole normale d’administration
EU European Union
FDS Fédération démocrate et socialiste
FGDS Fédération de la gauche démocrate et socialiste
FLN Front de libération nationale
FN Front national
FNRI Fédération nationale des républicains indépendants
GPRA Gouvernement provisoire de la république algérienne
ISF Impôt sur les grandes fortunes
MDC Mouvement des citoyens
MLF Mouvement de libération des femmes
MRG Mouvement des radicaux de gauche
MRP Mouvement républicain populaire
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OAS Organisation de l’armée secrète
ORTF Office de la radiodiffusion télévision française
PACS Pacte civil de solidarité
PCE Parti communiste d’Espagne
PCF Parti communiste français
PCI Parti communiste italien
PDM Progrès et démocratie moderne
PR Parti républicain
PS Parti socialiste
xi
xii List of Abbreviations
PSA Parti socialiste autonome

PSU Parti socialiste unifié
RI Républicains indépendants
RMI Revenu minimum d’insertion
RPF Rassemblement du peuple français
RPR Rassemblement pour la république
RS Républicains sociaux
SFIO Section française de l’internationale ouvrière
SMIC Salaire minimum interprofessionel de croissance
SNESup Syndicat national de l’enseignement supérieur
UCRG Union des clubs pour le renouveau de la gauche
UDF Union pour la démocratie française
UDR Union des démocrates pour la république
UDSR Union démocratique et socialiste de la résistance
UDT Union démocratique du travail
UFD Union des forces démocratiques
UGCS Union des groupes et clubs socialistes
UGS Union de la gauche socialiste
UMP Union pour un mouvement populaire
UNEF Union nationale des étudiants
UNR Union pour la nouvelle république
Introduction
On 1 June 1958, Charles de Gaulle returned to power in France as the

last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic. In the preceding three
weeks, the country had experienced a series of events that seemed to
be dragging it towards civil war or a military coup. The regime itself
seemed to be collapsing, and the political elites were unable to impose
their authority on the deteriorating situation. Twelve years earlier, in
January 1946, de Gaulle had resigned as Prime Minister, leaving the
new Fourth Republic to its fate. He returned to his country home in
Colombey-les-deux-églises, about 200kms south east of Paris, to write
his Memoirs and observe politics sadly from a distance. His modest
home and the village of Colombey became a kind of mythical site and
place of pilgrimage. He was considered a controversial figure by many
during the 1940s and 1950s,1 but for a brief, crucial moment in 1958,
he was seen as the only person who could prevent the country from
descending into chaos.
The Algerian War had begun four years before in 1954, and in 1958
the government was still searching for a solution to the continuing
crisis. Most of the French army was in Algeria trying to suppress the
rebellion. The main problem for government was that the French
state’s authority in Algiers was weak. Successive and unstable govern-
ments in Paris had been unable to impose reform or to defeat the
independence movement or to satisfy the European Algerians, who
regarded these successive governments as vacillating and untrustworthy.
De Gaulle’s return therefore had two related aspects. On the one hand,
he was to solve the Algerian problem, and, it was assumed, keep
Algeria French. On the other, he was to restore the integrity of the state
and the effectiveness of the government. It took him four years for
the former, and his solution, Algerian independence, was the opposite
1
2 Political Leadership in France
of what had been expected, the opposite of what he had been brought
back to do. The latter saw him, in the space of six months, introduce
a new constitution and a new republic which exists to this day, over
50 years later.
Why was de Gaulle seen as legitimate? Why was he seen as able to
solve both the problem of Algeria and the problem of France’s political
instability? What were the effects of conferring authority upon this
individual? And what effects did he then have upon French republic-
anism and the regime he created in 1958?
De Gaulle’s claim to legitimacy in France’s crisis in 1958 did not arise
only from his having been France’s Prime Minister between 1944 and
1946, nor even from his having, Cassandra-like, predicted and warned
against the ‘immobilisme’ and instability of the Fourth Republic, and
gone unheeded. An even greater source of de Gaulle’s claim to legit-
imacy – and this was why he had been Prime Minister in 1944 – was
that he had been a kind of warrior-philosopher of French national
pride, embodying, personifying almost, French national identity
through World War Two. On 18 June 1940 de Gaulle, then a 49 year-
old General and junior government minister, flew to London to con-
tinue France’s struggle against the invading German army. He refused
to accept the conditions of the armistice imposed upon France, or the
legitimacy of the new Vichy regime, led by his former superior officer,
Marshal Pétain.
In the summer of 1944, de Gaulle entered Paris as the commander of
the Free French forces, the liberator of the nation and the hero of the
Resistance. He had been right when most others had been wrong, and
as the head of the provisional government he saw himself as a kind of
personalized expression of the nation as it emerged from the trauma of
the 1939–45 period. This was the ‘persona’, the character, and the man
who came back to solve France’s dire problems in 1958. Another aspect
of this persona – his own perceived view, his philosophy, his ‘vision’
– would have crucial influence upon the nature and development of
the Fifth Republic. One of the essential characteristics of de Gaulle’s
approach was his attitude to how a republican regime should be organ-
ized, given France’s history and political culture. More importantly,
this attitude was based upon a fundamental conviction that certain
individuals – in this case, himself – were endowed with the wisdom and
the duty to impose their view, their will, upon reality. The lone indi-
vidual based his action – and this framed his political ethics and self-
justification – upon a love for France and a devotional commitment to
its well-being.
Introduction 3
There were of course others who had different views about the organ-
izing principles of the republic. In the Resistance period and the post-
war provisional government he had to work with political parties and
individuals who saw good governance very differently from him, and
disapproved of his emphasis upon personal leadership and upon
himself as the solution to France’s problems. The antagonism between
him and the political parties was one of the most divisive issues in
French political life. In the main, the political parties were based upon
the democratic process and upon gradualism rather than the exalted
individual and an envisioning personalism. Many felt that Europe had
seen quite enough of that in the preceding decades. This difficult rela-
tionship between competing conceptions of democratic republicanism
would be formative of the Fifth Republic.
The political actor who came to power therefore in 1958 was a com-
plex, composite, and although acclaimed, controversial character. He
was seen as singular, even unique: professing a philosophy of the state
and of national pride; in an ambivalent relationship to republicanism
and to the political parties; in personal terms was proud, brave, intelli-
gent, self-certain, devoted to a romantic notion of France – for many,
had been anointed by history or some historical or mysterious force;
and, finally, he was the man, the character, who had saved France
(1940), returned in triumph (1944), then been as if rejected (1946), and
was returning, vindicated, in dramatic circumstances, to save France
once again (1958).
He was in a constructive relationship with the new regime he set up,
but a destructive one with the regime he replaced. What was his sym-
bolic significance in the Fourth Republic as it unravelled? And what
was his symbolic significance as he stepped up onto the political stage
to construct his own new Fifth Republic? This ambivalence is the focus
of our study, how this integrating of an individual persona into the
mainstream functioning of a new regime established in dramatic cir-
cumstances affects politics, and how such a beginning and the decisive
presence of an individual within the newly configured political institu-
tions goes on affecting the regime as it evolves through his presidency,
then on into the post-de Gaulle period up until the present day.
De Gaulle brought to French politics not simply Gaullism but, as
it were, himself; that is to say, by bringing his political ‘self’ and polit-
ical persona to the heart of the Fifth Republic’s institutions, he changed
French politics completely, and introduced elements into the French
polity whose dynamism is still there. De Gaulle’s character and com-
portment meant that, in 1958 and thenceforward, both the real
personality and the ‘imagined’ political persona would inform politics

in fundamentally new ways; and this would continue to be the case
in the aftermath of de Gaulle’s return and in the aftermath of his
departure.
What all the French Presidents share is a set of circumstances in
which both their real attitudes and actions and their symbolic selves
have inordinate significance within the Fifth Republic because of the
way that the political performance of individuals within a particular
configuration of institutions resonates within politics and the political
culture. This is the real nature of the Gaullist settlement. Political ‘per-
formance’ (of individuals – in action, in language, through ascription,
and through the projection of a particular image) takes place within a
particular configuration of institutions (e.g. of the presidency, Parlia-
ment, the parties, the media). The institutions are embedded within
the political culture, and in the wider culture’s institutions, traditions,
attitudes, memories, shared expectations, hearsay and experience, shared
political past, shared understandings and misunderstandings of the
meaning and significance of discourse and rhetoric and its place within
the culture and within political relationships. Given the attitude and
relationship of the French to de Gaulle in 1958 and subsequently, his
own attitudes and behaviour, and those of each of his successors and
contenders for leadership, and their relationship to the electorate, to
the ‘people’, to the ‘nation’, and to ‘opinion’, the role and influence of
culture upon the polity and institutions has been all the greater. The
culture, in turn, is informed by myths and memories (for example,
about France, about leadership, about past leaders, about imagined rela-
tionships between leaders and regime or nation, and between people
and leaders). One could say this perhaps of all regimes: the wider
culture and history and historical memory inform the institutions, and
the configuration of these frames action, allowing political personae to
act, perform and speak to political purpose and with a range of polit-
ical outcomes. What makes the French case so compelling is the degree
of ‘performance’ allowed to political actors given the configuration and
the culture, and this because of the Fifth Republic’s dramatic begin-
nings and the performance of its first President. In order to demon-
strate this, we shall take a narrative and analytical approach and
show how the nature of the Fifth Republic has unfolded over the last
50 years. We shall analyse the narrative of the Fifth Republic through
the prism of person and persona.
De Gaulle’s stamp upon French politics meant that his own inter-
vention not only took place in highly dramatic circumstances, but also
Introduction 5
brought drama itself inside the parameters of the republic, and that in
various forms, and in crucial relation to persona and to institutions, it
remains there dynamically informing the republic. ‘Personality politics’
therefore develops both dramatically and dynamically, in particular in its
relation to political relationships and imagined political relationships
within the polity and culture, so that it becomes in many ways the
motor, the driving force of politics and the organizing principle of polit-
ical activity. After the Third Republic, the Fifth is the longest surviving
regime in France since the Revolution. In those 200 years and more,
when compared to the UK or the US, for example, the French polity has
been chronically unstable and fragile. In part, the longevity of the Fifth
Republic is due to the Gaullist settlement; itself arguably unstable, that is
to say, the bringing to the heart of the institutions and practices of the
regime a romantic and chivalric notion of a leader being needed and
called forth by history and the nation to reaffirm the strength of the state
and the integrity of the body politic, and develop a very particular rela-
tionship with the ‘people’, themselves a composite – as is the leader
himself or herself – of both real and imagined characteristics.
Once the presidency of the Fifth Republic was established and took
on the shape it did, it began to inform politics significantly. The
President became the main political actor in the regime, with very dif-
ferent modes and styles of political action from other regimes, whether
presidential or not. Even though the President was the principal polit-
ical actor, he also used all the ceremonial, ritual, and symbolic aspects
of the new office to assert his position and the authority and legit-
imacy of the new regime. The presidency began to have decisive influ-
ence, and the political parties began to respond in a series of ways. The
Gaullist settlement did not just confer upon the President the authority
to act in dramatic circumstances. By bringing the President to the heart
of the institutional configuration, the Fifth Republic made the President
central in all circumstances, and the character and comportment of the
President also became central and formative. After de Gaulle, all the
Presidents, in a variety of ways, asserted and reasserted the centrality of
themselves and their persona as decisive political agencies within the
configuration of institutions and in relation to opinion. This scope for
presidential initiative and its emphasis upon the personal, and the con-
sequences of these, link Charles de Gaulle through Georges Pompidou,
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, to
Nicolas Sarkozy. Let us narrate the Fifth Republic from this perspective.
1
1958: The Gaullist Settlement and
French Politics
The elements of the new republic in 1958
De Gaulle’s new Republic had two essential characteristics: the central-

ity of the personal, and the emergence of complexity. First, it intro-
duced into the new configuration of political institutions the primacy
of the President and all that flows from this as regards personal power,
executive authority and decision making and its relation to public
policy and the influence of the political parties. In so doing, it
increased the significance of the interplay of the personal and the insti-
tutional. This is why strictly constitutional or institutional approaches
to the Fifth Republic are inadequate, for what de Gaulle did was to add
as a permanent and complex feature of the Republic the influence of
the personal within the institutional. And the personal is not just per-
sonal, but cultural and relational, as we shall see. Beyond giving the
President political primacy and importance within a given protocol, de
Gaulle brought a dramatic but marginal political style and set of rela-
tions within republicanism into the heart of its institutions thereby
transforming it.
Personal authority for de Gaulle meant the authority to act, based
upon an imagined (inter)relationship between a visionary individual
called forth by history, and the people who ‘recognize’ him and his
authority to act. This brings us to a major consequence of this new and
central relationship. At the very moment that the mass media itself
comes into the mainstream of modern society, ‘opinion’ takes on a
privileged role.1 ‘Opinion’ is a contested term, and we shall use it here
in a wide sense, in its most diverse range of meanings and categories,
in order to show how it, or perhaps rather, they – opinions, become
central players in the regime. Opinion is appealed to by political actors,
6
1958: The Gaullist Settlement and French Politics 7
referred to by the media; it is ‘imagined’ and given discursive reality. It

also has in many forms a reality or realities of its own. Opinion may
be the nation, as perceived by de Gaulle, as the ‘Françaises, Français’ he
always addressed in his broadcasts, or as a series of opinion polls, or
the expressed result of an election or referendum, or an extrapolated
population based upon consumption, or opinion as expressed through
trade unions, associations, street demonstrations (orderly or disorderly),
or newspapers, TV viewers, or anxious parents, disaffected youth, or
any range of measurements and frameworks, ascription or assertions.
Opinion may be pro or anti de Gaulle (or indifferent), pro or anti
politicians; or it may be a movement large enough or bold enough to
claim affinity with the country’s revolutionary, or anti-revolutionary
traditions, or with ‘la France profonde’. However it is manifested or
imagined as manifested, opinion becomes from 1958 onwards a major
player in French politics (irrespective of whether it itself has any real
power). A range of opinion/s and especially opinion as evoked in the
imagination and discourse of the leader, and opinion as mediated
through the mass media, floods into the institutions, practices and
political exchanges in the republic, bringing the wider mass culture as
well as the myriad of more discrete cultures to political prominence.2
Introducing the cultural3 in this way into the mainstream of the
political and the institutional meant that the discursive and rhetorical
also became central; and unlike the relative isolation and self-referring
nature of the political discourse of the Fourth Republic, the Fifth
became in many ways a ‘discursive’ Republic (as we shall see below
regarding Algeria, its first discursive-political challenge). ‘Utterance’
(and silence or omission – in the first years almost exclusively that
of de Gaulle alone – and his interpretation of ‘opinion’) had major
impact upon the political process. The media, radio, television, press
conferences, speeches and pronouncements, and language itself, became
decisive in the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle’s Republic was not only created
by his own use of ‘persona’ and its interaction with the dying political
days of the Fourth Republic, which we shall analyse below, it made
persona, its discursive performance, and its relation to opinion an
essential feature of the new republic. It is true, as we shall see, that
there was an assumption that this compelling aspect of the new regime
would disappear when the Algerian crisis was overcome or else when
de Gaulle left office; this was far from being the case and underscores
once again how party political or constitutional interpretations are
inadequate. The personal within the institutional configuration brings
the discursive and rhetorical to the fore. And their often direct appeal
to opinion ‘mobilizes’ opinion, in discourse at least and often in

reality.
The second and related characteristic of the new regime was that the
first characteristic – the centrality and ‘play’ of opinion and of the per-
sonal/discursive/cultural – would render politics in the Fifth Republic
extremely complex. Many polities can be relatively accurately described
in a quite straightforward way: a socio-economic base upon which
parties are structured and where politics, within the framework of a
set of institutions, allocates/distributes resources, structures political
debate, and – through parties and their interactions with opinion
– creates cycles of political power and the possession of political office
and the elaboration and application of policy. In Fifth Republic France,
because of the unusual and dramatic nature of its advent and the cen-
trality of the personal referred to above, seven elements interact con-
stantly, often creating dynamic ‘rushes’ of very consequential political
activity, as we shall see. The seven elements are: first, the institutions
themselves and their configuration and interaction. Any analysis of
politics in the Fifth Republic has to appraise the powers and activity of
the presidency, National Assembly, Senate, Constitutional Council and
so on at any given moment.
Second, analysis needs to involve appraisal of the exalted notion of
personalized leadership in the Fifth Republican French imagination, as
well as the actual comportment of the President (and later a whole
range of political leaders and aspirant leaders), and the effect of character,
personality, persona and personal initiatives upon the political process.
Third, accompanying the institutionally central role of character will
be a consequential series of discursive and rhetorical resources such as
visions, envisioning, a ‘high’ rhetorical register about France and its
history/role/destiny; and a discourse upon the relationship of political
activity/envisioning to the ‘state’ and its health and integrity; and the
role of the ‘people’, the ‘nation’, the rally or ‘rassemblement’ (e.g. a
rassemblement d’idées), the ‘electorate’, ‘la France profonde’, and later a
series of additions to these rhetorical resources, often tied to other
mythologies, such as ‘projets’, ‘projets de société’, ‘le changement’, other
kinds of ‘rassemblement’, ‘les forces vives’ and a continually evolving
vocabulary, but, and this is the essential point, a vocabulary which
has influence upon political developments. This elevated vocabulary
will also have a significant effect upon personal leadership, and upon
France’s self depictions, upon interpolations of ‘grandeur’, upon polit-
ical protocol and diplomatic protocol, and therefore upon foreign policy
and France within a system of international relations.
Fourth, ‘opinion’ in a myriad of real or imagined forms will be a

major factor in the evolution of the political process, and in more dra-
matic form: strikes, demonstrations, civil disorder (or their memory)
will take on mythic qualities, or if not mythic then psychological.
French street demonstrations, coordinated strikes, even tipping vege-
tables or wine onto roads, can have political effects well beyond those
seen in comparable countries, and in fact, normally well beyond
the financial or strategic power of the section of the workforce or
community taking action. Because of the personal nature of the
Fifth Republic, there is wide scope for reference to what opinion
really feels, truly wants, demands, desires, and so on. Ironically, we
should stress that in spite of or perhaps because of the fact that
‘opinion’ has taken on such significance in the Fifth Republic, it
remains time and again politically unpredictable in so many of its
manifestations.
Fifth, the political parties (and other forces politiques like the trade
unions) remained major players into the Fifth Republic, structuring its
politics, its evolution, and its discourse, and in turn being structured
and transformed by it. This irony was lost on many, though not all,
political actors, analysts and observers, perhaps the most dramatic
example being de Gaulle himself who overestimated the strength of
the political parties and underestimated their mutability.
Sixth, all of these interactions take place in the context of a rapidly
changing society.4
Seventh, the dramatic nature of the Fifth Republic’s creation, and
the political dramatization of self and of events by de Gaulle, became
a constituent element of political life; and whether real or imagined
or rhetorically constructed, drama becomes continual (perhaps if it
became continuous it would cease to be drama), in perceptions, in lan-
guage, and, because of the often discordant other six elements, in
reality. In the case of the Fifth Republic one cannot overstate the way
in which the first six elements – the political institutions (and we
would need to add to this, the ‘given moment’ of the cycles they find
themselves in), personal leadership, discourse, opinion, the political
parties, and societal changes – interact, particularly at political moments
such as elections (but also referenda, second-order elections, moments
of social protest, or events telescoped into the run-off period between
elections) to produce what we might call storms of political activity in
which a series of related developments occur and which have deep and
far reaching effects upon those involved and upon the political process
more generally. The events often occur in such a closely packed and
dramatic series, that they appear to be stunningly choreographed and

follow consequential sequences like moments of revolution.
It is the interaction of the above elements in the context of a
dramatic origin – the Fifth Republic truly began not on 28 September
1958 when it became a juridical entity but on 13 May 1958 (with the
dramatic events in Algiers then Paris) – that accords a kind of dramatic
license to French politics. Most observers see the referendum confirm-
ing the new republic (28 September 1958) as the act that domesticated
the drama of 13 May. The opposite is equally true: 28 September
brought the drama of 13 May into the republic. And in drama, perfor-
mance is crucial. And de Gaulle’s was at this moment highly accom-
plished. From reading his Memoirs,5 we would believe, or he would
have us believe, that he foresaw the events of 1958–62, and/or that a
teleology unfolded. In fact, de Gaulle was often either mistaken about
or unaware of issues, e.g. the consequences of the electoral law adopted
in 1958. The apparent teleologies, however, can be explained if we bear
in mind the seven elements constitutive of political action in the Fifth
Republic that we have outlined above. So that, for example, between
June and December 1958, de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic was everything
that the Fourth Republic was not: dramatic where the Fourth was
workaday, problem solving, dynamic, personalized, bold on the inter-
national stage, and as if in touch with the people. In essence, however,
the Fifth Republic was not that dissimilar from its predecessor, which
had itself been trying to rationalize the executive and streamline the
political process. Both were republics (this was the first time in France’s
history that there had been a republican sequence), the state bureau-
cracy remained, much of the political personnel, French foreign policy
did not alter radically, the economy continued to grow and society to
modernize in the same way as before. France’s alliances remained by
and large the same, and so on. We can say that it was in large part in
appearance, style, language and symbolism that the differences needed
to be stressed, if de Gaulle’s difference and therefore justification were
to remain effective, and the new republic was to function. It is this that
explains an important aspect of the character of the young Fifth Republic,
and has so much influence upon the evolution of the republic.
From this we can say that not all political legitimacy was about
republican integrity on de Gaulle’s part, nor about his relationship to
a coup (still argued), but about mythical legitimacy. For de Gaulle to
attain and hold on to mythical legitimacy, both republican integrity
and distance from the coup were necessary although not sufficient
conditions. The overriding condition was for both elites and opinion
to recognize the need for – and/or to allow – a (recognized) personal

figure to restore the (fallen) state; and for a whole series of players to
imagine the scene and their own parts, and enact their roles, or at least
to stand back and allow those who felt they had these roles to do so.
De Gaulle’s return to power in May 1958 (and the concept of ‘return’
was important) began, therefore, not only in real time but also in
mythical time. This is crucial to an understanding of how the Fifth
Republic then developed. In the context of our analysis, the immediate
conditions of de Gaulle’s return were three: that he had been the war
hero who, in 1944, had restored the state’s integrity from within a
republican framework; that he had dramatically abandoned this
ungrateful nation in January 1946 and had withdrawn to his home in
Colombey; that by 1958, the state’s authority was again faltering.
The birth of the new republic
The ‘real’ event that began the return of de Gaulle to power in 1958
was the May rising in Algiers.6 Until this moment, he had either been
almost forgotten or was seen as a potential leader but one who would
probably not return to politics. A first point to note is that the event
was characterized as much by emotion as by political/strategic calcula-
tion. Algerian nationalist fighters of the FLN executed three captured
French soldiers. In response to this, one group, a comité de vigilance
(which had organized a successful demonstration three weeks earlier),
called upon the Algerian population to strike between twelve noon and
8pm, and to demonstrate at 5pm against the new government in Paris
and its Algerian policies (at the same time as the National Assembly in
Paris was setting up a new government to be led by the young and
reformist MRP figure, Pierre Pflimlin). There was an assumption in
Algiers that only a government committed to a major campaign against
the FLN in the context of an unequivocal commitment to keeping
Algeria ‘French’ was acceptable. In metropolitan France too, parti-
cularly among MPs, there was an overwhelming sympathy for this
view. This is worth bearing in mind: that the aims of the Army and the
Algiers crowd coincided with the general view. The demonstration was
nevertheless ‘insurrectionary’ in as much as it hoped, from Algiers, to
block or interfere with the nomination of a government in Paris (as it
had continually and politically consequentially interfered for several
years). Exactly how this would be done and to what political purpose
was, however, unclear (to all). What was clear was the complete suc-
cess of the strike call. Everything stopped: transport, cafés, cinemas,
schools, and the university and the civil service all took action. By
early afternoon, thousands of people (estimated at 100,000) were con-
verging on the centre of Algiers, animated by young people on motor
scooters exhorting the growing crowd. A minute’s silence for the three
dead was followed by calls for the army to take power. Government
buildings were besieged and, after the riot police were replaced by sol-
diers, the demonstrators stormed the gates unhindered, in fact, were
helped by soldiers, and proceeded to occupy the government offices
(throwing paper out of windows essentially, an insurrectionary gesture
always highly symbolic of political attitudes and relationships but of
no strategic interest). Irrespective of 30 years of right wing plots and
disdain for elected politicians in the French military, it is worth under-
lining the spontaneous, almost ‘now-what-do-we-do?’ flavour of these
events of 13 May in Algiers.
In the confusion and brouhaha, the demonstrators set up a commit-
tee of public safety (Comité de salut public) headed by General Jacques
Massu, who himself, although a hero for and sympathetic to the local
pieds-noirs population, was acting out of a desire to control the turmoil,
with the help of other military and civilian activists (among them some
Gaullists). Massu telegrammed Paris urging that a similarly minded
government be sworn in there. Comités sprang up across Algeria’s main
towns, and it is worth stressing here that a kind of pieds-noirs/Muslim
solidarity and fraternity also seemed to accelerate over the next days
in a kind of revolutionary celebration. In Paris, by the evening, the
events in Algiers had (possibly predictably) the opposite effect to their
intention. Many parallels have been made with the riotous events of
6 February 1934 in Paris,7 but one needs to stress that however poten-
tially dangerous were the events in Algiers they posed no immediate
danger to Paris. In a kind of republican, ‘étatiste’ solidarity (actually
too late to stabilize the regime’s legitimacy), Pflimlin’s premiership/
government was endorsed by an impressive 274 to 120 against (with
137 abstentions which in Fourth Republic terms was akin to a vote
in favour). Only that morning had the newspapers predicted that if
Pflimlin won it would be by only a handful of votes. Pflimlin’s govern-
ment endorsement came after a period of four weeks where, effectively,
the country had had no government. The Algiers revolt was like an
electric shock into the French body politic. The French government
gave orders not to open fire on the demonstrators, and soon (both out-
going and incoming Prime Ministers agreed) accorded civil powers
to the senior General in Algiers, General Raoul Salan, already in pos-
session of military powers. In terms of our subsequent appraisal of
de Gaulle’s actions, that Salan’s authority conflated civil and military

powers is crucial. Salan, moreover, had been urged by Massu, himself
at pains to avoid accusations of outright rebellion or mutiny, to take
overall command in Algiers. Many commentators have quite rightly
commented that Paris’ recognition of General Salan, and therefore a
certain complicity after-the-fact with the Algiers events, was simply
realistic: he already held the power, and therefore could help stop an
escalation into a military coup (most of the French army was in Algeria
at this time) or even a civil war. All of this is true. As regards legit-
imacy, however, the ambivalence of attitude by Paris would simply find
a certain echo in de Gaulle’s failure to condemn. The following day,
14 May, there was a kind of stand off, with the massively endorsed
Pflimlin forming his government. The government reached from Mollet
and the tough-minded Socialist Jules Moch (who had faced down the
Communists and Unions in 1947) across to Gaullists and the strong
Algérie Française supporter, Georges Bidault. The problem for this, perhaps
the strongest government of the Fourth Republic, was to know what
to do.
There were two other ‘actors’ in the frame: de Gaulle himself, and
public opinion, and the actions and reactions of these would also
be decisive in a situation where the Algiers demonstrators were reluc-
tant to embrace a Franquist putsch if they could still enjoy even tacit
approval or acceptance, however reluctant (in the form even of silence),
from Paris. Early on 14 May, the President appealed to the Army to
remain under the authority of the Republic. Interpretations of legit-
imacy, therefore, could still at this time be ‘stretched’ by the actors
involved. The government too did not want to provoke the army, but
had a very unclear view of how much authority it itself possessed.
What both sides (Algiers and Paris) needed was for the other side to act
the way it wanted so that it did not need to act itself. Time itself, there-
fore, was the worst enemy of each as its passing demonstrated that
neither side was taking the initiative. Into this almost freeze frame
stepped de Gaulle the following day. We shall come back to the true
nature and significance of de Gaulle’s actions below but should stress
here that the condition of de Gaulle’s initiative was the (true or appar-
ent) moment of inaction of 14 May by both sides. And inaction (true
or apparent) by others was essential to de Gaulle’s fortunes.
Before looking at de Gaulle we should stress that ‘public opinion’,
the other ‘actor’ in France over this whole affair (Algeria, the fall of the
Fourth Republic, the return of de Gaulle) was an enigma. It seemed
rather unconcerned with the events (the war in Algeria had been going
on for four years); holiday weekend plans went ahead, there had been
few demonstrations outside trade union demonstrations for some
years, no groups were pouring on to the streets; confidence in ‘the
system’ and in politicians was very low, but few expected ever to see
de Gaulle again, who was becoming a memory for many of the French,
indeed for some not even a memory. Newspapers on the 14th expressed
attitudes that ranged from seeing the events in Algiers as a coup, to
seeing them as a passing protest, to stressing the huge confidence
placed in Pflimlin by MPs, to (very few) calls for de Gaulle’s return. The
media coverage was wide ranging yet was beginning to canalize opinion,
making it more aware that, whatever it was, something dramatic seemed,
this time, to be happening. It is also worth mentioning here that
‘opinion’ was quiet partly because although having little faith in the
Fourth Republic, it was, right across the spectrum, overwhelmingly in
favour of keeping Algeria French, from the die-hards to those who
simply did not want to abandon a people heartlessly. Into this strange
scene where none of the actors – Army, Government, Opinion – were
mobilizing, stepped de Gaulle. We can say outright, therefore, that
whatever may have happened subsequently, his own initiative was the
product of nothing at all but his own personal gamble, and was ini-
tially a series of initiatives (almost exclusively discursive) that had no
substance to them at all, and relied utterly on the perceptions of others
(of each other and of him), and upon the inaction of others who, like
bystanders or a theatre audience, watched him perform.
On 15 May, Salan,8 recognized as the only authority by the mush-
rooming Committees of Public Safety, and as the legitimate voice of
Paris in Algiers, finished a speech to the crowd with the words ‘Vive de
Gaulle!’. It is clear that a lot of demonstrators saw de Gaulle as their
best or only, or only legitimate, way of attaining their aims, even though
many pieds-noirs disliked de Gaulle, regarding him as a liberal. This
included Salan. It is also true that a tiny group of conspiratorial de
Gaulle supporters in Algiers were working overtime, and possibly even
prompted Salan to utter these words.
Salan’s call echoed a certain shift towards de Gaulle in French public
opinion, in the Army, in the Algerian population/s and by a growing
trickle of party politicians. We have here the first and a classic illus-
tration of de Gaulle’s significance: that different and opposing groups
could see in him, some through devotion, respect or allegiance, others
through cooler appraisal, the person who could help them achieve
their aims or solve their problems. It is clear that in such a situation,
de Gaulle had to respond, both by what he said and what he did not
say. At five o’clock on the 15th de Gaulle put out a press release, his first
significant public intervention in politics in three years. He commented,
in fewer than 100 words, that the state had faltered, the people were
alienated, the army was in turmoil, and that the country had lost its
independence. He added that the political parties were unable to stop
the slide to disaster, and that the country had once put its trust in him.
As the country once again was threatened, he was ready to assume the
powers of the Republic:
‘La dégradation de l’Etat entraîne infailliblement l’éloignement des

peuples associés, le trouble de l’armée au combat, la dislocation
nationale, la perte de l’indépendance. Depuis douze ans, la France
aux prises avec des problèmes trop rudes pour le régime des partis,
est engagée dans ce processus désastreux.
Naguère le pays, dans ses profondeurs, m’a fait confiance pour le
conduire tout entier jusqu’à son salut.
Aujourd’hui, devant les épreuves qui montent de nouveau vers
lui, qu’il sache que je me tiens prêt à assumer les pouvoirs de la
République’.9
Four things are worth mentioning here about this crucial ‘moment’:
de Gaulle makes no specific reference to Algiers, therefore leaving it
and his reaction to it open to interpretation; he identifies everything as
a symptom of the troubles (even the parties are not a cause but are
simply inadequate); he puts the exclusive focus upon himself as the
only solution; and he declares his willingness to ‘assume’ republican
power (there is ambivalence as to who is to give him this power and
authority – the candidates being the people, the public authorities but
also almost destiny itself), but the Republic he will inherit, not (yet)
overthrow.10
The effect of de Gaulle’s declaration was to offer a solution in the
form of himself being brought centre stage. The situation now involved
not just the power of the army but the legitimacy of de Gaulle, so that
the site of possible legitimacy now involved three places: Algiers, Paris
and Colombey. The reaction of the parties in Parliament was to strengthen
for a time their support for Pflimlin by condemning de Gaulle’s inter-
vention, in particular for his failure to condemn the actions of 13 May.
We can say here that de Gaulle was adding his ‘site’ to the duality Paris/
Algiers, the latter already (however coercively) acceded to by Paris. The
condemnation of de Gaulle’s not condemning Algiers therefore added to
de Gaulle’s authority by implicitly urging him to take on, as it were,
‘Paris’’ status. And Paris’ own condemnations of Algiers had been

extremely equivocal. Much more importantly, de Gaulle had placed his
own ‘site’ (Colombey) symbolically between Paris and Algiers. There
were to be two more weeks of this gavotte.
De Gaulle’s ‘I am ready’ communiqué of 15 May indicates how,
rhetorically, he enters the Paris/Algiers relationship. The immediate
effect however was to strengthen opposition to him among politicians,
in fact to reverse the developing change in their attitudes. On Friday
the 16th, the first to engage de Gaulle in discussion in order to domes-
ticate the Gaullist threat, and perhaps profit from it, even use it to
the republic’s advantage, was Guy Mollet, perhaps the key figure of
the Fourth Republic in the ultimate transfer of power to de Gaulle – for
several reasons. As both vice-premier and leader of the Socialist Party
(SFIO), he asked de Gaulle (via answers to journalists and – significantly
in terms of the developing rhetorical matrix of May–June 1958 – without
consulting his Prime Minister): did de Gaulle recognize the legitimacy of
the Pflimlin government? Would he condemn the Algiers insurrection?
And would he, if he, de Gaulle, were himself appointed Prime Minister,
observe republican conventions? Such questions clearly constrained de
Gaulle in terms of containing him within the Fourth Republic’s legality,
but the logic of Mollet’s questions brought dramatically into the dis-
cursive framework the idea that if de Gaulle passed these tests, funda-
mentally of his own legitimacy within the republic, then he (in discourse)
became eligible for leadership of France (in reality).11
De Gaulle’s response was to maximize his own symbolic significance,
in that he did not answer Mollet’s questions, but stated that he would
hold a press conference the following Monday, the evening of 19 May.
A weekend of deferred anticipation followed, and on the 19th, in front
of the national and international press, with thousands of police and
gendarmerie on the streets, limousines arriving and camera bulbs flash-
ing, and in the context of demonstrations and actions by the Com-
munists and the Unions (e.g. cutting electrical supply in the metro),
de Gaulle arrived at the press conference. By announcing but deferring
his press conference de Gaulle had slowed down the pace of the dramatic
unfolding of events, while making the protagonists (Paris and Algiers)
critically dependent upon his awaited words (and we have already stated
that neither Paris nor Algiers, the first to hide its impotence, the second
to hide its aggression, enjoyed or profited from the passing of time itself).
He also did the opposite, that is – while bringing himself centre stage
– speeded up discussion, debate, activity, and speculation to an extreme
level, thus transforming the conditions of subsequent events. We have
seen how opinion was still not politically mobilized, but it is worth
noting that in this two-week period sales of portable transistor radios
quadrupled.12
At the press conference, a fundamental shift takes place in that de
Gaulle’s style as well as what he says (and does not say) become cru-
cially important. It is also worth remembering (essentially via photos,
journalists’ descriptions and newsreels) how de Gaulle looked would be
consequential. Many had not seen him for years. In 1958 (compared to
January 1946), de Gaulle was a significantly older and more portly
man, here in civvies (he would soon wear military uniform when visit-
ing Algeria), and he used humour, generosity (towards Mollet and
others), and a sense of care and concern that are crucial to understand-
ing the unfolding events. Given, especially over the weekend, the PCF’s
depiction of him as dangerous, and a generalized concern about de
Gaulle’s anti-republican and monarchical comportment, his style and
friendliness (he was rarely to be so relaxed in his many subsequent
press conferences – arguably not until between the two rounds in
1965) had a dramatically relaxing effect. The prevailing virtual notion
of violence pervading the events of the previous week was transformed
into an easy and friendly exchange. This was the press conference where
he asked, to much shared amusement, whether people really thought
that at 67 he was going to start a career as a dictator.13 What is
significant and rarely commented on is that the question was not
only humorous but rhetorical – the answer could only really be
an embarrassed one of – of course we never thought that, or else
laughter.
As regards answering Mollet’s other questions about his republican
probity, first, de Gaulle was able to make reference to his republican
integrity both as France’s liberator but also as premier of one of its
most reformist republican governments, where he had observed legal-
ity and convention between 1944 and 1946. In so doing, de Gaulle was
not only justifying himself, he was focusing upon himself as France’s
hero. He acknowledged the concerns of the military without condemn-
ing them. We shall come back to this, but can say here that his defence
here was, crucially, to stress that the government itself had not con-
demned outright the military insubordination and its alliance with the
civil disobedience. De Gaulle’s demeanour, moreover, was such that he
was behaving as the equal – at least – of the government itself. This
conference was a didactic, highly publicized lesson to government
by an individual in Paris who was not himself in government. This
kind of thing had never happened in French history. De Gaulle again
portrayed the Algiers events as a symptom rather than cause, stressing

that the defect lay in the institutions, that the country’s trials all
flowed from that. Having put the focus upon himself, his achieve-
ments and his views, he then stated that he would go back to his
village and wait for ‘the country’ to come and get him (in so doing also
stressing again this new and alternative reconciliatory site of political
authority, his home, Colombey-les-deux-églises).14
Two contradictory consequences flowed from de Gaulle’s press con-
ference and the rhetorical and symbolic insertion of de Gaulle into the
developing equation, such contradiction illustrating the bewildering
complexity of unfolding events. The first was the further legitimation
of de Gaulle. We should remember that, given his ‘I am ready’ com-
muniqué of the 15th, Parliament had reacted very strongly against him
(and therefore could not simply change its institutional attitude). What
happened were personal responses to his press conference persona of the
19th, a series of reactions by significant political leaders, across the
board – who came out in support of him, by letter or in the press,
or by engaging in meetings and discussions with him or with one
another, thus creating massive impetus to his legitimacy – first Bidault,
then Pinay, then Mollet, and so on, until all the major figures of
the political elite of the Fourth Republic who would then transform
their own parties’ approaches, came out publicly in favour of him. This
was not universal; some significant figures opposed him, in particular
Pierre Mendès France and François Mitterrand; and the parties them-
selves split, but for the most part in favour of de Gaulle a week or
so later.
The second and less commented upon consequence of de Gaulle’s
semi-legitimation was to radicalize activity in Algiers (and thereby
threaten to further de-legitimize government inaction). De Gaulle’s
devoted supporter and Algiers hero, and former Governor of Algeria,
Jacques Soustelle (escaping house arrest in Paris) returned to Algiers
to wild welcome (on the 17th). The Army seemed now to be in
open insubordination, and it was now less likely that the army
and police would obey the legitimate government. It had also become
clear that it and the Algiers comités would obey de Gaulle. Soustelle was
like an ambassador for de Gaulle. The movement of allegiance to
de Gaulle by Algiers was triggered in part by Paris’ according him
potential legitimacy. The consequence of de Gaulle’s becoming
potentially the central player was that he too now faced the prob-
lem, previously only faced by Paris and Algiers, namely time itself
which would strip him of his advantageous ambivalence if events
in Algiers accelerated, and in Paris did not, pushing him towards

sedition. And they did accelerate.
The following Saturday, after several days of de Gaulle’s receiving
and talking to people like Pinay, the Algiers movement was trans-
formed into overt military action as contingents of parachutists based
in Algiers invaded and occupied Corsica with, apart from some very
limited symbolic republican resistance, no significant resistance what-
soever, from the authorities, the police, the CRS, or the population. It
seemed as if the semi-secret operation ‘Résurrection’, a complete mil-
itary takeover, was underway. The government in Paris began to take
some action: press censorship, moving against MPs who seemed to be
involved, and long-awaited constitutional revision in order to set up
mechanisms that would strengthen government in times of crisis. In
a sense, countering a military coup with constitutional revision was
a clear demonstration of the utter ineffectiveness of the government.
Late in the night of Monday the 26th, de Gaulle and Pflimlin met to
discuss the situation. There is disagreement as to whether the principal
instigator was Pflimlin trying to get de Gaulle to denounce the coup, or
de Gaulle’s simply bullying Pflimlin to stand aside. What is significant
is that de Gaulle’s refusal to denounce is understandable both stra-
tegically (the threat of a coup was bringing the republic down) but also
mythically – he had to maintain his symbolic position as observing the
coup as a symptom of the republic’s malaise. De Gaulle could do no
more without either supporting the coup or abandoning his strategic
and symbolic advantage by rallying to the defence of the republic he
detested. The government seemed to have confirmed both its own
powerlessness and his centrality. He too, however, had run out of (his
own invented) time, and therefore would soon face the choice of
becoming a Fourth Republic politician or a putschist.
What he did, once again, was to perform an act of discourse that, once
again, had no base at all in the reality of power, but mercifully for him,
did in the perceptions of all the other actors involved. He simply publicly
pretended, after having left his stalemate meeting with Pflimlin, that he
was in complete political command, whereas he was not in command of
anything at all (except perhaps via some of his wilder conspirator lieu-
tenants such as Delbeque a potentially catastrophic coup attempt). He
pretended the opposite: that he commanded republican legitimacy. On
the morning of 27 May, that is soon after leaving Pflimlin, de Gaulle put
out a communiqué saying that he had the day before begun the process
of setting up a republican government, that any threat to public order
would threaten this, and that all armed forces should show exemplary
behaviour and obey their superiors, who he named, including Salan.

The tone of the press release was as remarkable as its contents:
‘J’ai entamé hier le processus régulier nécessaire à l’établisse-

ment d’un gouvernement républicain, capable d’assurer l’unité et
l’indépendance du pays.
Je compte que ce processus va se poursuivre et que le pays fera
voir, par son calme et sa dignité, qu’il souhaite le voir aboutir.
Dans ces conditions, toute action de quelque côté qu’elle
vienne, qui met en cause l’ordre public, risque d’avoir de graves
conséquences. Tout en faisant la part des circonstances, je ne saurais
l’approuver.
J’attends des forces terrestres, navales et aériennes présentes en
Algérie, qu’elles demeurent exemplaires sous les ordres de leurs
chefs : le général Salan, l’amiral Auboyneau, le général Jouhaud.
A ces chefs j’exprime ma confiance et mon intention de prendre
contact avec eux.’15
It was as if he were the commander in chief of the army and the sym-
bolic Head of State and of government. This symbolic self-depiction
would become a national perception once his own self-legitimizing
had been transferred to the level of the whole polity. In terms of the
text’s content, it was republican, yet responded, for the first time, to
the army, as if telling it to ‘stand down’. This was all the more impres-
sive given that he had no power in either camp. Once again, the polit-
icians reacted against de Gaulle. The socialists voted a motion of 112 to
three against him. Such reactions again increased not his immediate
legitimacy but his symbolic presence. All the left wing organizations
followed suit, and on the next day, Wednesday, a rally of between a
quarter and half a million marched in Paris against the putschists. For
some, though not all, it was also a demonstration against de Gaulle. In
terms of the emerging pattern of ‘moves’ in this series of events, what
is odd is that, at this moment, each of the putschists’ moves was
intended (as a political solution) to bring de Gaulle, and not the army,
to power; each of the government and politicians’ moves was a gesture
of support for Pflimlin, for blocking de Gaulle (but with de Gaulle in
their minds), and for the initiation of reforms, none of which had any
real backing. Each of de Gaulle’s moves was made in a vacuum of
authority and power; and now the ‘crowd’s’ moves were formidable yet
ambivalent. No one’s plan to overcome the crisis, even de Gaulle’s,
were clear and concerted; each was a gesture that provoked each other
actor to react in some way while nothing actually happened. And the
vacation of power was increased on the same day as the demonstration
against the putschists because Pflimlin resigned along with his whole
government.
De Gaulle met in secret, this time with the Presidents of the Assembly
and Senate but, as with Pflimlin, there was no outcome. The following
day, as the result of one act, the Fourth Republic fell, or rather fell into
de Gaulle’s lap. Its President, René Coty, who now had no Prime
Minister and no government, was free to take a crisis initiative. He
decided to call de Gaulle himself to be appointed as Prime Minister and
form a government. He threatened to resign if this did not happen.
De Gaulle of course accepted, and proceeded in an utterly Fourth
Republic manner to meet all the party leaders (except the communists)
and establish a government that included all the party bigwigs, appoint-
ing Mollet, Pinay, Pflimlin and others, and not appointing Soustelle
(at this point – and when he did, not for long).16
On Sunday 1 June de Gaulle was voted in as Prime Minister by 329
against 224 (36 abstentions). All the parties of the right voted for,
those of the centre (Radicals, MRP, UDSR) voted in majority for, the
socialists split down the middle, and the PCF voted against. To have
turned an almost totally hostile political class into a largely sympa-
thetic one in the space of a week was astonishing. And over the next
three days with three more majority votes, de Gaulle got everything
he had (ever) wanted: special powers to deal with the Algerian crisis,
the right to rule by decree on all but the most fundamental rights and
liberties (and electoral law) for a period of six months, and the right
to draw up a new constitution. How had all this been possible? If we
can answer that question it will help us understand the nature of the
republic that was coming into being.
Understanding the new republic
France in 1958 was a rapidly changing society. Based upon an econ-

omic boom that had been going on for over ten years (and would con-
tinue for nearly another 20, although it is true that 1958 was not without
economic difficulties),17 the late 1950s were witness to rapid social
and economic change. This socially, culturally and economically rich
context was the paradoxical setting for a government in paralysis and
under threat of a military coup, and even civil war. Even if the gov-
ernment had had more grip on itself and on political power, it was
extremely uncertain whether it would have the support of the police,
gendarmerie, and CRS, if the situation exploded, let alone the army,
which was threatening to invade its own mainland. What is significant
for our purposes, is how symbolic politics and rhetoric filled the polit-
ical space and gave a dynamism and outcome to four dramatic weeks
in which, apart from symbolism, gesture, and discourse, nothing really
happened; and yet the language and ‘grammar’ of this dramatic sym-
bolic politics seemed to be understood by all the actors involved, even
though no one knew the true significance of what any one actor was
doing or saying. It was as if everyone understood the language but had
different interpretations of the specific gestures and utterances.
The Algiers events seemed immediately readable – once again, force
was being used to move against a weak regime. The nearest parallel
seemed to be 6 February 1934. In this case of course, the Mediter-
ranean would have to be crossed, although this too almost happened.
In many ways, however, the Algiers events evoked left wing traditions
too: the Comité de salut public had echoes of 1793 and a lot of the com-
motion and declarations were reminiscent of 1789; the fraternizing of
the crowds in Algiers and other Algerian cities between Europeans but
also between Europeans and Muslims, and especially between the
‘crowd’ and the soldiers, the sporadic outbreaks of joy, and the sense
of celebration, were reminiscent of French revolutionary tradition.
The declarations and appeals (the ‘appel’ is a very French and dra-
matic political form of address cf. de Gaulle, 18 June 1940) of the main
players like Massu and Salan demonstrate acute historical awareness.
The invasion of Corsica was strategic, cautionary, but also highly
symbolic, and ‘liberationist’ – Corsica had been a springboard of the
liberation of France in 1944 from Nazi rule.
A further element of the grammar that all actors shared and which
played a major role in both thinking and outcome, was the idea of
‘unity’ (‘unité’, ‘unicité’ etc) that pervades French political thinking.
Colonial thought based upon difference and racism is not part of this;
but a strong part of Algérie Française thought was arguably not racist, in
fact, was high-minded (and perhaps unrealistic): and the joyous frater-
nization that went on through May 1958 attests to a desire for a kind
of transcendence of difference. This desire for unity informed all of the
actors: the army, the party politicians even in moments of deep crisis;
and de Gaulle’s political philosophy was based upon the partly Thomist
idea that unity is the constantly to be striven for prerequisite to great-
ness and happiness. And the Rousseauist notion of an all-embracing
General Will underpins French republicanism – distinguishing it from
other forms of democracy. In many ways, this is where legitimacy lies
in the French political imagination, and this in all ideologies; and if

one bears this in mind, we can see that a great deal of the manoeuvring,
the claims, the mises en garde, the reassurances, and so on made by
each and all between 13 May and 1 June are actually about unity
as opposed to division, or rather claims to legitimacy in the name of
unity. Each actor used ‘unity’ and ‘division’ to define themselves
and their opponents and gain symbolic advantage in relation to this
mythical notion. In de Gaulle’s thought the emphasis is upon the
state, but even this is in order that France be maintained and prosper
as a near-sacred unified entity.
This was the aim: that effective politics was to be the expression of
an all embracing mythical national unity. The question was how to
do it in the context of the division of France into two political camps:
military/colons dissent v. Parisian political legitimacy. The represent-
atives of the former were almost illegal but not quite totally; the latter
almost incapable of action and without authority. De Gaulle’s success
would depend upon his being seen to reconcile the two without becom-
ing one or the other. To do this, he had to maintain the coup as part
of that which had to be transcended, and to do this he had to ensure
that it remained in the public’s imagination a symptom of a sickness
created not by the French tradition of virulent nationalism, but by the
absence of the true legitimacy of the political institutions. And having
true legitimacy would depend upon the leader’s relation to ‘the people’
(in some form) on the one hand, and to ‘France’ on the other. De Gaulle
was therefore not a republican in the classic or received sense, but was
no less committed to the republic for that, in that republicanism, the
overwhelming choice of the French at this moment of history, was
necessary to his being on the side of unity. And it is this personally
envisioned notion of unity that would inform the republic henceforth
and become the essential condition of its strength. We can add that
this is an extraordinary political phenomenon – a person who, in a
crisis, refuses to condemn or endorse either side (almost an imperative
in crises) and who posits himself as the transcendent site of legitimacy.
This will become the true source of legitimacy of the new republic.
In the almost empty space opened up to symbolic politics in May 1958,
rhetoric became crucially important, and then a major feature of the new
republic. It is the discourse and rhetoric of individuals, echoing, inter-
polating, bringing onto the scene, the mythologies of unity, greatness,
strength, happiness, extraordinary and exemplary leadership, and so on,
in dramatic and arresting ways, that become, in part, the currency of the
new republic.
For de Gaulle to claim supreme legitimacy and provoke reaction in

this empty space of inaction, meant making rhetorical interventions in
the hope that, recognized as significant in the mythologies informing
French politics, others would react in particular ways so that these
would indeed inform politics. It is essential to our understanding to
recognize that these were all discursive gambles de Gaulle made, and
depended upon the shared mythological grammar in the first instance,
and upon people reacting to them, in the second. De Gaulle knew
better than anyone that the army, the press, the government, and the
public’s failure to respond to him (negatively or positively) would leave
his initiatives lettre morte.
It is a truism in history and political science that ‘what ifs’ have no cur-
rency in analysis, but even though not anything could happen
in 1958, nothing was determined. It is not to speculate fruitlessly to
mention but a few things that could have happened or not happened;
and this not to know what might have happened but in order to under-
score the contingency of what did happen. There was no finality to
Massu’s having become the figurehead of the rebellion, for example, and
if he had not, things would almost certainly have developed differently.
Similarly, if he had not in turn called on Salan to take on the overall lead-
ership of the rebellion, or Salan had refused, or Paris had disowned him,
things would have developed differently; or if de Gaulle had felt his 67
years more heavily, or if de Gaulle had denounced the rebellion, or
identified more closely with it, or if Mollet had not asked his questions
of de Gaulle or had not been persuaded by de Gaulle, or if Coty had
not decided to facilitate de Gaulle’s accession to power; if de Gaulle’s
press conference had been a less masterly performance, and so on,
then things would have developed differently. What each of these
semicounterfactuals shares is that each involved nodal actions by
individuals. And it was the myriad individual actions which were so
consequential. None more so than de Gaulle’s three (discursive) inter-
ventions: the communiqué of 15 May, the press conference of 19 May,
and the communiqué of 27 May. Let us look at these three crucial dis-
cursive acts again, for a moment. They have generally been recognized
in the literature as crucial. Rémond as well as Berstein and Milza note
that what was remarkable about them was that they were each simply
discursive interventions: a first press release, a press conference, and
a second press release.18 What has not been stressed is the nature of
the discursive interventions and their consequences. The first and last
were simply communiqués, press releases, but ones that had the tone of
the leader, the last communiqué especially had the tone of someone
already in power, like the pronouncement of a President or king giving

orders to the political class, the people, and the army. These framed the
perceived character of de Gaulle, but they remained just that, frames in
which his authoritative ‘character’ was portrayed. We should add that
both communiqués triggered the momentary ire of the political class,
particularly the National Assembly and most of the political parties. The
alternative, however, would have been his irrelevance. It is also the case
that the ire was, in large part, from those who wanted him to denounce
the rebellion, but by demanding that he do so, legitimated him, ascribing
to him power over the rebellion, and a potential republican legitimacy.
The truly consequential discursive intervention, however, was de
Gaulle’s press conference of 19 May. We have to understand it as a per-
formance. The contexts of the performance were four: 1) that de Gaulle
had almost been forgotten by the public and was being dramatically
reintroduced into the public’s imagination;19 2) even physically his
appearance was novel – he was older and greyer than he was remem-
bered. He had withdrawn almost totally from the public’s view cer-
tainly for three years, but for many the memory of de Gaulle was
that of 1944–46, and to a lesser extent of the creation of the RPF in
1947; 3) the received view of de Gaulle was that he was aloof, austere,
unsmiling, monarchical, indeed old fashioned by 1958 standards, and
his somewhat frightening image had recently been confirmed by the
first communiqué, and had been continually stressed throughout the
Fourth Republic by the opponents of personal power; 4) the events of
the previous week and the calling of a press conference themselves
conferred upon de Gaulle enormous significance, as well as injecting
further drama into the series of events. These made up the context.
The performance itself brought the question of perceived character
decisively into the (beginnings of) the Fifth Republic; for de Gaulle was
not at all as people expected him to be: he was relaxed, urbane, gen-
erous, spirited, funny, and responsive, and this was the persona that
the French and the political class, and the military, and the national
and the international media20 saw and heard (on newsreels, on radio
and in papers and in magazines, and through personal exchanges and
hearsay). It was this new aspect of character, this new persona, that
accompanied, replaced, vied with, complemented as it were, the high-
minded aloof character that would have himself the incarnation of
France itself. The ambivalence associated with character and with dis-
course, and the performance of persona, brought so consequentially
into the mainframe of politics, would play a central role here, in the
aftermath, and then throughout the Fifth Republic.
The near totality of political debate about de Gaulle in 1958 and sub-
sequently has revolved around four ambivalences: was he involved more
than he ever admitted in the 13 May rising and its aftermath (even the
possible coup against the republic, ‘Opération Résurrection’)?; was he
always going to give Algeria independence?; was his Republic in the
true tradition of republicanism or was it a distortion of it?; where
does or should power and authority truly lie in the Fifth Republic? All
of these questions are necessary and their answers informative of the
nature of 1958 and the republic (although none of them has ever been
answered with clarity). What these debates have ignored is the new
political significance of ambivalence and ambiguity themselves, for in
all four cases the answers need to include the fact that de Gaulle’s
ambivalence had major effects: upon the coup, upon developments in
Algeria, upon the nature of republicanism, and the nature of power in
the republic. Ambivalence feeds into the political process at the found-
ing moment and then at every moment. Ambivalence and ambiguity
do not just lie in the actor or spectator, they lie in the language itself:
this is in part why de Gaulle could be all things to all people; and the
register he used quite naturally involves striking, yet ambivalent, con-
cepts: France, greatness, the nation, and so on, but even apparently
more straightforward terms such as Republic are rich in ambiguity. Add
to this the desire on the part of a listener, member of the public, party
leader, putschist etc that he say something they wish to hear, and
ambiguity, paradoxically, is increased. The ambivalence or polyvalence
of intention, accident, of language itself, and of listener reception, are
all made more consequential by the emphasis that was put, during the
drama of 1958, upon what individuals said, should have said or did
not say. We should remember the formative role not just of words but
of silence too, again, de Gaulle’s case being the most important.
Williams refers to his silences at this time as ‘delphic’.21 De Gaulle
himself as early as 1932 in his writings on leadership22 had stressed the
importance of silence. In terms of his persona, his not condemning the
Algiers rising was significant, but more so was that he had been silent
(more or less) for a decade, so that his stepping back into the (dis-
cursive) arena and performing so (rhetorically) dramatically meant that
a communiqué, a press conference, would confer upon him the image
of a returning saviour (or that of a fool if circumstances had been
different). We can add on the question of character that – to the extent
that it is ever truly known to observers – actual character will also become
significant: de Gaulle’s pessimism, his overblown view of himself, his
depressions, his coolness towards even those who devoted themselves
to him, his ingratitude, his higher calling, and so on also play into the
early republic informing the nature of executive authority.23
We can make two observations. The first is that for the early Fifth
Republic, a series of extremely important factors other than insti-
tutional and constitutional change had critical influence: a sense of
drama, the role of exceptional individuals, a sense of the complexity of
politics, ‘crisis’ as a political concept, the mainstream role and ‘fore-
grounding’ of myths about France, an emphasis upon unity, the role of
rhetoric and political image, and the imagined relationships between
things and people; all these will be formative, and understanding the
republic will be dependent upon their analysis.
The second observation is that de Gaulle could only have succeeded
in a polity and political culture in which he and the things he believed
in were recognized and understood as existing by others – or these
latter could at least be persuaded of the existence of these things, whe-
ther they be in the military, the political class, or the general population:
that is to say, a polity that subscribes to the notion that the state needs
to be united to be strong, that exceptional individuals exist and can
change history, that the notions of Gaullism had a currency in French
political culture. It was these parts of the culture – in the name of
democracy – that the Fourth Republic had pushed to the margins; in
a sense, even the Fourth Republic itself ‘recognized’ de Gaulle, not as
a has-been but as its own antithesis, so that when he re-entered
the public political arena, it immediately – negatively and positively
– responded to him, both in the context of Algiers, and in the con-
text of its own paralysis, thus beginning a process which over just a
three-week period handed him the possibility of changing the regime.
Two related phenomena must be taken into consideration in any
appraisal, and seen as significantly informative: a relative social sta-
bility and economic expansion, on the one hand, and the role of opinion
on the other. Stability and expansion are usually seen as an infra-
structure that ‘explains’ the transition from the Fourth to the Fifth
Republic (e.g. a new part of the Resistance elite fulfilling the same
socio-economic function, i.e. modernization). This is not wrong, but
to compare the socio-economic and the political in this way explains
very little. What this wrong view does, however, is provide us with a
very interesting question, namely, what was the relationship between
de Gaulle and his context? We can say that social stability and econ-
omic expansion do in fact set a stage for de Gaulle. Unlike other regime
changes in France, there had been no economic collapse, no war, no
massive dislocation, no famine etc. The opposite was true and set the
limits of that ‘stage’ and performance, but facilitated it too, that is to

say that economic stability allowed for instability in politics, and
increased the political system’s ‘tolerance’ of individual performance,
allowing it to claim that it stabilized rather than destabilized demo-
cracy and the regime. This aspect of the Fifth Republic has continued
up to the present day.
The second and related aspect of this is that it brings ‘opinion’ in as
a key player.24 Here ‘public opinion’ and surveys can be real, scientific,
and so on, but they are still just a version of ‘opinion’ playing a sig-
nificant role. ‘Public opinion’ with or without inverted commas may
be ‘real’, may exist in society or as an object in and of discourse, or
both, and inform politics. We are interested in how the ‘informing’
informs the politics. For example, as we have noted, commentators
often refer to public opinion as late as January 1958 assuming de
Gaulle would never return to power. How are we to appraise the value
of public opinion if it can change so rapidly? What does it mean for
our understanding of opinion if it can go from near ignorance to devo-
tional followership in a few months? What is the value of de Gaulle’s
relationship to the French if he can be acclaimed so soon after being
ignored? What should we think? Perhaps ‘opinion’ can step on to
the stage where a stage is there for it to step on to, and then it, and
de Gaulle, can perform. Perhaps the ‘stage’ must be discursively created
before it can be ‘real’. This means that three things happen: the first is
that the politics of drama, the politics of ‘the sudden and unexpected’
(although ‘recognized’) becomes politically significant.25 The imagining
of alternative (previously imagined) politics has increased salience. The
‘unexpected’ moves into a more privileged relationship to the insti-
tutional political process, and takes on a more active role, and will
become the foundation for politics in the post-1958 republic. Second,
given the ‘January polls’ idea – that de Gaulle was expected never to
return – the notion of inevitability actually becomes absurd, or else
in the French case we need to include the unexpected in any definition
of the inevitable. Third, a further consequence is that all the actors
– the Army, the communists, individuals, activist groups, the Algerian
crowds, and participants and observers (‘opinion’, the electorate, the
media) start to ‘live’ politics as drama.
The overall result of this was to alter the nature of political legit-
imacy in the closing months of the Fourth Republic and the opening
months of the Fifth Republic. In a great deal of literature on 1958 – and
this becomes the standard for analysis of the Fifth Republic from
then onwards – there is great emphasis upon understanding the juxta-
position of the parliamentary and the presidential, and on a wider

scale, republicanism and personalism or personal leadership. These pre-
occupations have often masked the truly interesting point about the
events of 1958 and their aftermath, namely the evolving nature of
French political legitimacy. It remains within republicanism generally,
but its modalities are fundamentally altered. The dramatically height-
ened level at which political relationships are imagined and enacted
through symbolic politics is carried into the new republic.
The characteristics of the new republic
The regime became something other than its architects had assumed it
would become because of the way de Gaulle (mis)interpreted his own
constitution, often, in fact, ignoring it, ‘inventing’ the presidency after
he had taken office.26 This is something of a puzzle: that the architect
of a constitution would treat the constitutional settlement he had
striven for, for almost 20 years, with a cavalier attitude, so that it took
on new characteristics. The answer lies in the constitution’s introduc-
tion, that is to say that Algeria and the collapse of the Fourth Republic
provided a dramatic context in which the persona now in the frame
would have relative freedom of action that would have far-reaching
constitutional and political consequences. We could almost argue that
the constitution and its elaboration became but a moment of a much
more wide-ranging process which elaborated simultaneously an
unwritten constitution based upon de Gaulle’s comportment. We shall
analyse the reasons for this below, but can say that procedurally also
the constitution was part of a dynamic and dramatic process. On
2 June de Gaulle had the special powers (voted since 1956 to the Prime
Minister) to try to deal with the Algerian crisis, new full powers for
six months, and the go-ahead for a government-led constitutional law
to be ratified by referendum.
De Gaulle maintained an enigmatic distance from his own consti-
tution. It is equally the case that his distance from everything was
an imperative. This often excruciating aspect of de Gaulle’s – we can
say real – personality all his active life was crucial to the development
of the regime. De Gaulle kept a distance not only from the political
parties, from constitutional obedience as we have mentioned, but
also from the army, from the media (very formal press conferences/
broadcasts), distance from the political activists of Algeria, and, as we
shall see, from his own Gaullist supporters. These latter, however, are
key: his distance is both real and apparent, that is to say that his own
‘army’ of support had to act utterly in accordance with his views

in order for him to behave as if he were not in any relation to them,
or to anything else apart from a mythical relation to France, and a
highly-contrived equally mythical relation to ‘la nation’.
De Gaulle’s first government was like one of national unity, like
1944, and the drafting of the constitution throughout the summer of
1958 replicated his probity so that conflict could not arise. The four
ministers of state, like deputy Prime Ministers, included Mollet (SFIO)
and Pflimlin (MRP). The others were an independent (Louis Jacquinot,
who had been in London with de Gaulle) and a Radical/UDSR African,
Félix Houphouët-Boigny. Three Gaullists held portfolios, Malraux,
Debré, and Michelet, but it was Debré as Garde des Sceaux (Justice)
with a team of legal advisors in control of drawing up the new consti-
tution who was crucial. This is not to say that there was no input from
others, particularly Mollet, but the true significance of all this lies else-
where. Many writers allude to the fact that ‘real’ power lay with de
Gaulle (and with his cabinet run by Pompidou). The point of wider
significance, however, is that republicanism as a doctrine could not
really fault de Gaulle at this point. If a doctrine (parliamentary republic-
anism) does not understand that it – and its rivals, here Gaullism – is a
discourse as well as a doctrine, that is, has potentially far wider con-
notations and implications than its formal elaboration, it is vulnerable
to discourse itself. This means that the question: will you maintain a
parliamentary regime?, can be answered, and was. The far more con-
sequential question: will you by your complex comportment introduce
what we might call romanticized mythical leadership into the centre
of the new institutional configuration and its practice? cannot even
be asked, because for parliamentary republicanism only a very rudi-
mentary understanding of this – related to Louis Napoleon and ancient
Roman notions of tyranny – exists; and de Gaulle had already demon-
strated that he was neither a Bonapartist nor a tyrant.
From its June 1958 beginnings, the constitution was drafted, debated,
modified, submitted to referendum and became law within three months.
De Gaulle was called to give evidence to the consultative committee,
chaired by Paul Reynaud. Once again, there is clear evidence here of
republicanism’s (all doctrines’) forensic concern with doctrine, which
almost by definition (because it is there to focus meaning rather than
encourage ambivalence) could not ask the fundamental questions of
the political use of leadership persona and character, nor interrogate
the issue of the mythical establishment of an imagined, politically
transcendent relation between leader and people. On this last point, of
course, the constitution would – in true republican fashion – be sub-

mitted to referendum, for sanction by the people. But, once again, this
referendum would also and simultaneously be a plebiscite (as were
all de Gaulle’s referendums). More, in fact, than a plebiscite: an act of
anointing by the people. Subscription to doctrine precludes discursive
attention to the wider symbolic implications of a political act, and the
new space given to persona meant it would now influence greatly what
was actually meant by republicanism itself.
In the Fourth Republic’s constitution, the section on the presidency
came only sixth. In the Fifth it came first, immediately after the sec-
tion on ‘De la souveraineté’. This discursive arrangement of the Fifth
Republic’s constitution was far more telling (though constitutionally
inconsequential) than any of the issues debated. Having said this, yet
another ambivalence – paradox, in fact – emerges, in that, ultimately,
as the non-Gaullist drafters assumed (and doubtless Gaullist ones too,
especially Michel Debré), the Fifth Republic’s constitution, particularly
as regards the President, was not that different from those of the Third
and Fourth Republics.27 For example, and here we come back again to
the crucial role of (ambivalent) language, the President of the Fifth
Republic – like the President of all republics, has as his/her mission
to maintain the integrity of the state, and of the nation, to uphold
national independence, and the constitution itself, and ensure that the
state’s institutions function. For de Gaulle, such a charge probably
meant just about everything (excluding concern for the price of arti-
chokes). We can see that the debate (still lively, 50 years later) sur-
rounding the true meaning of ‘arbitre’, for example, is necessary within
the forensics of constitutional law, but, as we have seen, to paraphrase
Durkheim, all that is in the constitution is not constitutional. Most
constitutional lawyers and political scientists at the time debated the
interpretation of the term ‘arbitre’. Few identified the ambiguity in the
language then, and in relation to which meaning is elaborated. Upon a
de Gaulle, that is to say a leader who is allowed to establish a particular
kind of political authority based upon a mythical relation with several
entities (France, people, nation, state, destiny), the words of a consti-
tution bestow magical powers. ‘Arbitration’ can be interpreted as relating
to anything. Authority to act is conferred not only upon the office of
the presidency but also upon the persona of the President.
There was further ambivalence in the public presentation of this
constitution. De Gaulle, at a grandiose event ‘staged’ by Malraux, pre-
sented his draft constitution to ‘the people’ (with a lot of the ‘people’
– and in particular PCF protestors, kept well away from the action by
the police). In many ways, the event was what all observers said it was: a
republican spectacle, of a kind not seen since the late nineteenth century.
The date was the anniversary of the Third Republic (4 September). The
place was Place de la République, a huge ‘RF’ adorning de Gaulle’s podium
which was fronted conspicuously by Republican guards, and the whole
square surrounded by huge ‘Vs’ denoting the Fifth Republic. Observers
stressed how carefully republican all this was. The symbolism, however,
is all this and more. In fact, film and photographs of the event do not
seem republican at all to the Anglo-Saxon eye, but, rather disconcertingly,
darkly imperial, as do the towering podium and the, as if, praetorian
guard. Over and above this spectacular symbolism, moreover, we need to
stress that this was the public celebration not just of a constitution but
of personal leadership. The two would be difficult to counter because
(in part, recovered) memory of de Gaulle was now that of a man who
through courage, fortitude, and lonely certainty, was now, at last, cel-
ebrating his mystical union with France as public spectacle. Over and
above this, de Gaulle used this occasion as a very personal plea, a warning
that for him, and France, and the republic, this referendum on the consti-
tution had to win. De Gaulle made this, like most of his ceremonial
moments, one in which emotion was fired, but with a sense not only of
the magnificence but also the fragility of his envisioned France and the
necessary centrality of himself.
Opinion polls at the time suggested that 50 per cent of the French
– as with most texts of this kind – had not even looked at the draft
constitution they would vote upon, and only 15 per cent claimed to
have properly read it at all.28 The text itself had a significance, but
more as an object that symbolized de Gaulle rather than as a consti-
tutional text that defined the workings of the republic. We should add
that the success of the constitution was also seen – irrespective of alle-
giance to de Gaulle or a ‘strong man’ – as a means to avoid a return of
the ill-loved Fourth Republic, a communist takeover, or even a civil
war. Cast in this way, except for the PCF (and minimal intellectual
opposition), it became a text that almost could not be voted against.
On what grounds? And of course the political parties had themselves
helped make this constitution, even though, in reality, they were almost
all split over it and the events surrounding it. Not for the last time
in fact, not for the last time by any means, would either opposing or
supporting de Gaulle really only benefit de Gaulle himself.
The Radicals, because of the vicissitudes of the previous few years,
were in pieces, and called for a ‘yes’ vote. The SFIO would probably
have voted against but for the efforts of Mollet and latterly Gaston
Defferre of the powerful Bouches-du-Rhône federation who supported

the ‘yes’ and came through with a (September 1958) 69 per cent con-
ference vote.29 The MRP, de Gaulle’s natural allies, also recommended
a ‘yes’ vote. Little good fortune would it bring them. This first storm
of events in favour of de Gaulle would go on through October and
November like a developing rally, a rassemblement, a phenomenon
more associated with de Gaulle’s RPF rally of the late 1940s.30 Surge
politics, rally politics, normally on the margins of political life, parti-
cularly of non-revolutionary republican polities, was brought right into
the mainstream, with ‘opinion’, now on a national scale, fuelling it. It
was as if the surges of opinion were now right in the centre of politics,
aggravating the stresses the parties were under and in some cases,
tearing them asunder.
A further feature of these developments was the fact that the stresses
and strains that were fracturing the parties (often, as a result of the
Algerian War itself as much as de Gaulle’s return) had a long term
effect upon some of them. Reduced to virtual electoral annihilation,
many little groups, the PSA, UGS, and so on, and a myriad of indi-
viduals would criss-cross one another through political clubs and little
think tanks, and small political parties, and become the seeds (albeit
at this time without seedbeds) of doctrinal renewal of the left, of left
Catholicism, of the trade unions, and of the right, and the extreme
right, in the post-de Gaulle Fifth Republic. Many of the brightest, most
modernizing and forward thinking political actors were against the
now apparently unstoppable tide of political renewal.31
The univocal nature of the referendum was symbolized by thousands
of posters exhorting ‘Oui à la France’, implying that a No was tanta-
mount to treason, or to allegiance to a communist party that was sus-
pected of solitary allegiance to a foreign power. The turnout was 85 per
cent (France throughout this period had a 20–25 per cent average
of abstentions for elections and referenda), and 80 per cent of that
85 per cent voted ‘yes’ (including an estimated third of the PCF’s
voters).32 The Fifth Republic became a juridical entity on 28 September,
less than four months after de Gaulle’s re-emergence into mainstream
politics.
From the referendum triumph, the political process then moved
immediately into its next phase, one that would tie the non-Gaullist
political parties even further into the contradictory situation they
found themselves in. On 1 October, that is, immediately after the refer-
endum, the Gaullists created a new party, the Union pour la Nouvelle
République (and there is ambiguity even in the word ‘pour’). Distant as
ever, de Gaulle forbade his name to be used in the party’s title. We

should add that his apparent distance was only apparent. He was now
synonymous with the new republic. His will, his intentions, however,
were ambivalent. The party had, therefore, to become a party that had
no views of its own, because even his anticipated views could not be
depended upon. The first casualty was his greatest supporter, Jacques
Soustelle. From the beginning, the strongest Algérie Française supporters
were replaced by Gaullists whose Gaullism either resembled a kind
of state bureaucracy mentality or else was a kind of vacuous pensée
gaulliste. Soustelle would happily have taken the presidency of the
party, but de Gaulle himself imposed an administrative secretary
general (Roger Frey). And it was Frey and his entourage who chose the
candidates for the forthcoming legislative elections (as would Malraux,
another utter devotee, four years later).
The voting system chosen during the course of the summer (and
therefore very hurriedly put in place) resembled that of the Third
Republic. Any of the many forms of proportional representation was
excluded because it might reproduce the Fourth Republic (and favour
the PCF). The two round, single-member constituency system with a
run-off one week later and usually leading to standings down and there-
fore run-offs between two candidates, had strange but very formative
effects on the Fifth Republic. It is arguable that de Gaulle himself was
unaware of the effects it would have. It gave him his highly successful
Gaullist party, and would establish the party political basis of a
bi-polar, and potentially bi-partisan and stable political regime in which
the political parties would play a role that was far more positive than
de Gaulle could have imagined. The scrutin d’arrondissement uninominal
à deux tours also maintained or brought back a kind of Third Republican
style local and personal element to legislative politics that de Gaulle
did not envisage either. Such local fiefdoms, and local politics gen-
erally, became the breeding ground for a new breed of personalized
politicians, even though at this time they gained their seats solely
through association with de Gaulle.
The newly formed Gaullists were the real winners. Their success was
amplified dramatically by the two round system; and the Gaullists
controlled most of the state machinery for distributing publicity, com-
mandeering the airwaves, and had the means to finance their cam-
paign. And the UNR stood unequivocally for the new republic. The
other parties who had stood for the constitution now had to campaign
as if against it. On the first round of 23 November, the PCF vote (as
in the referendum) fell by one third to just above 19 per cent. The
socialists and the MRP held on to their 1956 vote of just over 15 per
cent and 11 per cent respectively. Ahead of all three came the UNR,
only two months old, with over 20 per cent. The ‘moderates’, the
CNIP, a loose but large conservative federation that had supported
de Gaulle (and had a lot of Algérie Française supporters) gained just over
22 per cent. The Radicals (depending on how the party now in pieces is
measured), the Mendésists, and non-SFIO socialists, and the Poujadists
were virtually wiped off the map. The abstention rate was 22.9 per cent
– a sign perhaps of the uninterested, the very confused, the very hostile,
the anti-parliamentarian, and those who having given de Gaulle his
republic were not interested in legislative politics.
One week later on 30 November 1958, in round two the PCF was
decimated. In 1956, it had 150 seats. With the electoral loss we have
indicated, one might assume therefore a fall from 150 to 100. They
won ten seats only, such was the new logic of round-two désistement,
and the need for alliances, agreements, and some ideological affinity
between neighbouring parties. By the same or similar token, the social-
ists and MRP who as we have seen remained steady in round one com-
pared to 1956, lost respectively, 50 and 30 (they held, respectively,
44 and 57) seats. Of the 475 sitting MPs 334, including figures such
as Pierre Mendès France, François Mitterrand, Edgar Faure, Gaston
Defferre, and other leading Radical and MRP figures lost their seats
(over and above the 475, there were 87 seats that represented Algeria,
the Sahara, and the overseas Departments and overseas Territories).
Between them, the UNR now with 198 seats, and the Moderates (CNIP)
with 133, held a commanding majority.
On 21 December to crown this tumbling series of victories, de Gaulle
was elected President by the new electoral college of 80,000 elected
‘notables’. He took office with 75.5 per cent of the vote against the PCF
candidate who gained 13.01 per cent and the leftist UFD candidate
with 8.4 per cent.33 The UFD candidate, an academic, did rather well
considering the ramshackle UFD had only gained 1 per cent in the
legislative elections, an early though forgotten sign of how presidential
elections can amplify a vote. But the hour was de Gaulle’s. A year
earlier he had himself assumed he would never return to power. On
8 January power was formally handed over to him by the outgoing
President Coty, whose decision the previous May had helped bring de
Gaulle to power. Together they laid a wreath for the Unknown Soldier
at the Arc de Triomphe, and de Gaulle left him standing on the pave-
ment, and had himself driven down the Champs-Elysées without
him, as if the Fourth Republic had never existed. It had, of course, and
de Gaulle can only be properly understood with reference to it. Several

more events marked the end of the sequence. Michel Debré was
appointed as Prime Minister on the 9 January 1958. The socialists soon
moved into opposition. The moderates (CNIP) remained (with Pinay
still at Finance), as did some MRP and non-partisan ‘technical’ minis-
terial appointments. A shift would begin however that would event-
ually push all but the Gaullists and their close supporters out of the
nest, some of them for a decade, some of them forever.
2
1958–68: The Consolidation and
Evolution of the Fifth Republic
Between 1958 and 1962, de Gaulle moved from one matrix of support
to another. In the case of the army and public opinion, he went from
having particular elements support him for one set of reasons to others
supporting him for a different set of reasons, arguably the opposite
ones. He moved to and fro across support from the parties, the army,
his own supporters, ‘opinion’, the electorates: legislative, presidential
and referendary, Algérie Française, both in Algeria and in France, the
trade unions, intellectuals, small town and village France with its local
allegiances, the female vote, republican/legalistic opinion, eventually
to a new configuration of sources of support. By 1962, he had almost
got to the other side, as it were. As regards the parties, certain sections
of the army, the media, the pieds-noirs, and some parts of fluctuating
opinion, most of these had been ‘for’ him (for a range of reasons, and
this is crucial). By 1962, all of them were now against him (for a range
of reasons, and this is still crucial). It was certain, moreover, that the
parties that had brought him to power to solve Algeria would, once it
had been solved, try to, if not abandon him, then ‘domesticate’ his
republic, bringing it much closer to a UK model (Debré’s preference),
or a Fourth Republic with all the safeguards that figures like Coty,
Mendès France, Faure, Mitterrand, Pflimlin and Defferre (and Vedel
and Duverger and others) had striven for, largely in vain, in the months
and years running up to May–June 1958.1
The political support de Gaulle enjoyed from the UNR was unequiv-
ocal. By 1962, its Algérie Française element had more or less been sifted
out. It is worth pausing here to note that the bitterness felt by some
bordered on the heartbreak of those who had been the most devoted.
The emotional intensity of allegiance to de Gaulle by many cannot be
overstated. With the loss of its right wing, the UNR nominally gained a
37
left wing. The Union démocratique du travail was made up of left wing
Gaullists such as Louis Vallon, Léo Hamon and René Capitant. It
formed in April 1959, bringing together many of those who had sup-
ported him since the Resistance years, some of whom, like Jacques
Debû-Bridel, were even close to the Communist party. Many of them
were the most intelligent, theoretically informed and intellectually
interesting exponents of Gaullism. The UDT fused with the UNR in
1962. The left of the party, however, never really developed into a
significant force, perhaps because of a fundamental contradiction
between a left wing philosophy and the focus on an individual, but
mainly because by 1962 the nature of the UNR had already been
defined. The two most interesting theoretical aspects of Gaullism –
Soustelle’s Gaullism, and Capitant’s – were almost certainly incompat-
ible with one another but more importantly were incompatible with
the exigencies of political support within de Gaulle’s new Republic.2
The most politically devoted support was already becoming ideo-
logically neutral by the time the UDT joined it. The most loyal
became the least ideological and the most politically practical, acting
unconditionally for de Gaulle, and efficiently on his behalf.
Against the UNR were the communists who, although reduced to
ten seats in 1958, remained a mass party and in clear opposition to
de Gaulle. Having said this we need to recognize that at various moments
they lost swathes of their voters to de Gaulle – up to 30 per cent in the
1958 referendum as well as in later referenda. And even they – against
the putschists in 1961 – came out in support of him.3 In spite of their
likening him to Franco or Salazar and a version of fascism, their task
was hard because he had been the leader of the resistance to Nazi
Germany, and had even gone into resistance before the PCF had. He
had also worked reasonably well with the PCF in the closing stages of
the war; and immediately after the war had communist ministers in his
government, and was on reasonable to good terms with the leaders of
the Soviet Union and was respected by them, and was – increasingly
after 1958 – identified by many Third World states and independence
movements as non-aligned. He was, like the PCF, sceptical about
Europe, had a penchant, like them, for anti-Americanism, and was not
without concern for ‘the social’, unlike some of his contemporaries on
the right. Even within their own ranks, therefore, the communists were
never able to rid themselves of a reluctant respect for their arch-enemy.
Nevertheless, the PCF was able to survive and prosper as the clearest
anti-de Gaulle movement. It did this by portraying him as the new
figurehead of a brutal capitalism, which in France, given the uneven-
1958–68: The Consolidation and Evolution of the Fifth Republic 39
ness of the spread of much of the prosperity in the 1950s and 1960s
was true in part.
As regards other oppositional political forces, the PSU (first called the
PSA) was formed in April 1960 from dissidents from SFIO Algerian
policy in 1956, then from progressive opposition to de Gaulle’s coming
to power in 1958. It was vociferously anti-Gaullist and vocal in intel-
lectual circles (essentially Paris) and in the ‘serious’ press, and had
some of the best minds (including Mendès France and the young
Michel Rocard). Politically and electorally it was insignificant in terms
of the political drama unfolding in 1962. However, many of its members,
via rejoining the big political parties, or founding think tanks and
influencing/forming political opinion, would go on to play major roles
in the post-1962 period.
The CNIP in the early stages of the 1958–62 legislature was the
UNR’s coalition partner. The CNIP or ‘moderates’, however, were not
really a party fit for modern purpose, rather a large conservative coali-
tion of local ‘notables’. They represented a France that at the national
level was about to be overtaken by a rapidly changing society and
polity. Even more internally destructive was its strong support for
Algérie Française. This created great internal ‘stress’ and meant that
once Algeria was lost, it risked being washed away by the next tide.
The socialists, unhappy with the social and economic policy of de
Gaulle’s government, and his own brand of presidentialism – which
Mollet regarded as a deviation from the constitution he had helped
draw up, left government in January 1959. The problem for the social-
ists, and this more or less throughout the following four years, was that
by and large they strongly supported de Gaulle’s Algerian policy. It was
only from early 1962, therefore, that the SFIO could really move against
his government; and one had the sense that when they did move
against him they did so precipitously, and without proper reflection
upon strategy, and even less upon the nature of the republic they
found themselves in.
The MRP was forever in a fragile situation because many of its leaders
were either significantly more right wing or significantly more left
wing than the MRP’s electorate (essentially centre right and centre left
Catholics). On top of this, on many issues, the UNR and MRP (who
had wanted de Gaulle to lead them in 1946, and some of whom were
with de Gaulle in the Resistance) were in broad agreement, and in
terms of electorate were in fairly direct competition with one another.
Moreover, as in the CNIP, Algeria had created serious stress within the
MRP, and several of its ministers were in government in 1962 and in
disagreement with parts of their own party. The MRP, moreover, was
very ‘pro-European’. Any gestures of anti-Europeanism from de Gaulle
would throw the party into further disarray. And de Gaulle’s anti-
European gestures were about to start raining down into the political
arena.
By 1962, it was clear that the Algerian drama was almost over.
De Gaulle had been returned to power to solve Algeria, but had done
the opposite of what had been anticipated. As his strategy moved
towards accepting Algerian independence he took the French popu-
lation with him, strengthening his support over the divided political
parties through two referendums, the first in January 1961 on the ques-
tion of Algerian self-determination (over 75 per cent yes), the second
in April 1962 on independence (over 90 per cent yes). As French opinion
followed him, the parties also followed with varying degrees of enthu-
siasm. At certain points, his most unequivocal support was from the
PCF and SFIO. His shifts in policy involved endless speeches, ambi-
valence, silences, ambiguities, and then action. As the pieds-noirs and
elements of the army saw their own stars waning, they reacted, first
with a week of rioting (January 1960), then a military putsch (April
1961), then with an OAS terrorist campaign of increasing brutality and
nihilism. With the April 1962 referendum, the drama was over. Algeria
gained its independence. Nearly all of the European Algerians returned
heartbroken and bitter to France. De Gaulle then turned immediately
to the political challenges facing his authority, legitimacy and political
capital. The real test for de Gaulle’s new republic, however, was not
Algeria but de Gaulle’s conception of leadership politics. And the test
was about to take place.
The 1962 referendum and elections
On 14 April, de Gaulle replaced Michel Debré as Prime Minister with

the non-parliamentarian and relatively unknown Georges Pompidou.
Debré had remained loyal but had agonized over Algeria. Pompidou
was considered as merely the President’s delegate in Parliament.
One month later, on 15 May at a press conference de Gaulle made
clear ‘anti-European’ remarks, this to the horror of France’s most pro-
European political party:
Dante, Goëthe, Châteaubriand appartiennent à toute l’Europe dans

la mesure où ils étaient respectivement et éminemment Italien,
Allemand et Français. Ils n’auraient pas beaucoup servi l’Europe s’ils
avaient été des apatrides et s’ils avaient pensé, écrit en quelque

espéranto ou volapük intégrés.4
What is striking about de Gaulle’s remark is how personalized it

is with its references to Goëthe, etc; how deliberately provocative it
is – several of his own ministers were pro-European; how insulting
it is – referring to European integration as a kind of volapük is denigrat-
ing and more scornful than the use of the more musical expression
‘Esperanto’; and finally how extremely amusing it is. Here is one of
scores of examples of how de Gaulle used his press conferences as
political performances to consequential political effect. To move away
from some forms of support, to move towards new policy positions, de
Gaulle used himself. Henceforth, the direction of politics would follow
de Gaulle’s press conferences. The six MRP ministers in his government
immediately resigned.
As regards the CNIP, Pinay had resigned in 1960, but the party had
remained silent – rather than support or oppose – over de Gaulle’s
Algeria referendums. Many independents wanted Giscard d’Estaing,
the new Finance minister (and also pro-European) to resign. He had his
own plan for future collaboration with the UNR, and he refused.
Nevertheless, the new Pompidou government was now essentially a
UNR government. On 8 June 1962, this time in a television broadcast,
de Gaulle alluded to the idea of a constitutional reform regarding the
mode of election of the President at the next presidential election. On
22 August, there was another assassination attempt (there had been a
previous one on 8 September 1961). The President was in a car with his
wife and son-in-law at Petit-Clamart just outside Paris when OAS
activists opened fire. Such a dramatic event (and his own calm
response) came at the perfect moment.5 On 12 September following a
cabinet meeting, de Gaulle announced that on 28 October 1962 there
would be a referendum on the election of the President by direct uni-
versal adult suffrage. He repeated this in a message to Parliament on
2 October 1962. This time, all the political parties except the UNR
opposed it.6
They decided in fact to organize a joint ‘cartel des non’ (excluding
the PCF, itself, of course, also opposed). Many leading, now opposing,
figures spoke out against de Gaulle’s plan. Paul Reynaud, for example,
spoke stirringly in favour of the spirit of republicanism. From his April
volapük speech de Gaulle was forcing, daring the parties to oppose him
in a bold move to consolidate what was now his version of the Fifth
Republic. On 5 October, Pompidou’s government was overturned by
280 votes. Instead of replacing Pompidou with a new Prime Minister

who could create a new majority more reflective of the prevailing
majority, the President maintained Pompidou in post and dissolved
the National Assembly. The new elections to the National Assembly
would fall immediately after the referendum that had provoked the
motion of no confidence in the government in the first place (18 and
25 November, the referendum being set for 28 October).
Many in the political parties and the print media believed that de
Gaulle’s act was desperate and misplaced. As well as the parties, he also
now had ranged against him most legal opinion concerning the consti-
tutionality of his proposed reform, the trade unions, all those who
were spokespersons of the ‘republican tradition’, as well as those who
saw themselves as modernizers, but who wanted a kind of updated
Mendésisme, and a Fifth Republic free of the drama of de Gaulle’s pol-
itics. There was no basis in his own constitution for what he was
doing; what he was doing was asserting the centrality of his own
action. The two factors that had helped bring him to power, fear of the
army and despair over Algeria, were, by 1962, no longer issues. In
several of his broadcasts at this time, de Gaulle stated that if he lost (or
even if his majority was an unimpressive one) he would resign and
return to his self-imposed internal exile. Most observers remarked at
the time and later upon the kind of blackmail such declarations exer-
cise; that they amounted to frightening an electorate and almost
threatening it. In fact, what they also did was to focus upon the true
object (target and prize) of the election, himself. In terms of the
regime’s subsequent evolution, 1962 was a dramatic showdown
between de Gaulle wanting to reinforce personality politics and almost
everyone else trying to dedramatize the republic.
With all sectors of political society against him and the threat of a
coup or war now passed, and the fact that this really was a leap into
the unknown for the republic, if de Gaulle were to win, it would be a
stunning victory against the odds. And he won. There was the usual
quarter of abstentions (22.76 per cent) and a majority in favour of
61.75 per cent of votes expressed. This was his lowest referendum
achievement. Nevertheless, nearly 62 per cent, given the opposition
and the audacity of his undertaking, was a breathtaking victory for his
new style republic. It also put the drama of the assassination attempt
into clearer relief: this truly was a personal (although ‘imagined’) rela-
tionship of some intimacy at the heart of a modern republic. With
every element (except the UNR) of the political elite against him, he
had won with the help of the mass of the French, dramatically demon-
strating that the republic was based upon an unmediated relationship

between the leader and the people. In 1958 he had set up the republic
in a kind of alliance with the political elites. In 1962, the people
confirmed through their vote that the republic truly belonged to him.
For the ‘no’s, the defeat was truly significant, for it meant that with
the whole political class against him they had still lost. We should
remember that in the 1958 referendum they were all for him (except
the PCF), and now, without the threat of major civil disorder, the ‘no’s
had only increased their vote by 18 per cent. One could argue that the
totality of political parties that stood between the PCF and the UNR
totalled 18 per cent.7 This is a strong indication of the power of the
personal in the political process. Events had polarized the political
parties; on one side de Gaulle’s supporters (with a few big names – like
Maurice Schumann, MRP but a long-standing Gaullist – who rallied to
the Gaullists), and on the other, virtually all of the political parties
united in a kind of impotent exasperation with de Gaulle’s style of
leadership and its consequences for Parliament and the republic. And
just as in 1958, the dramatic referendum was immediately followed by
legislative elections.
On the Gaullists’ side, Malraux and Frey organized the UNR and now
the left wing Gaullists, the UDT, into an electoral Association pour la
Cinquième république, and, as the new party had done in 1958, selected
the candidates to represent the party on the basis of their unequivocal
allegiance to de Gaulle. Alongside the UNR-UDT were the ‘Giscardians’
who would form themselves in the course of the campaign into a par-
liamentary party, the Independent Republicans. For the opposition,
the ‘cartel des non’ developed a programme of désistements (standing
down for the best placed among them in round two); and the SFIO, to
the annoyance of the other parties, also developed a similar plan with
the PCF, so that all the political parties were ranged against the
Gaullists.
The abstention rate for the first round of the election on 18 November
1962, rose to 31 per cent. Between 1958 and 1962, largely because
of the highly personalized referendums, all elections and participation
in them was seen as an indication of support for de Gaulle. The 31 per
cent abstention rate here reflected perhaps confusion and voting fatigue,
but also perhaps more than a hesitation about de Gaulle’s republic. The
UNR-UDT, however, gained 32 per cent of the vote. No party in the
history of French electoral politics had ever crossed the 30 per cent
barrier. All the other parties, except the PCF who increased their vote
slightly (on 1958) because of the understanding with the SFIO, either
just about held on to their poor 1958 score or did worse, in some cases
far worse. In the second round, the UNR was only nine seats short of
an absolute majority, and Giscard d’Estaing’s new Républicains Indé-
pendants with 36 seats provided it. We should remember that over a
third of the 1958–62 National Assembly majority had been made up of
the now hostile CNIP. This non-Gaullist right almost disappeared, with
in total a disparate 55 seats, hundreds of seats down from its former
glory. It was as if in 1958 de Gaulle had thumped down through the
National Assembly and devastated the left, and now in 1962 had
thumped again and devastated the right. In the run-off, the commun-
ists’ gains quadrupled because of SFIO désistements. The SFIO through
désistements with the PCF and others raised its seats by 20 or so. Former
Radicals and Mitterrand’s fraction of the UDSR gained 39 seats.8 This
was the beginnings of the emergence of a left-of-centre opposition
(between them they held almost 150 seats, with what remained of the
MRP and Independents another 50 or so).
In quick succession, French politics had seen: a series of referendums
favourable to de Gaulle, an unsuccessful coup attempt, (at least) two
assassination attempts, Algerian independence, a change of Prime
Minister and government, a showdown between the political parties
and de Gaulle, a major constitutional revision, the near annihilation of
several large political parties, and the electoral triumph of de Gaulle’s
own party.
Let us look at the post-1962 period under three consequentially
interrelated headings: Gaullism and the Gaullists; de Gaulle on the
world stage; the Left opposition. But first let us examine a paradox
borne of de Gaulle’s 1962 triumph, for it informs the nature of de
Gaulle’s leadership between 1962 and 1965, the nature of the relation-
ship between society and politics, the style of Gaullist party rule, and
the political and discursive context of the left’s response to the Gaullist
republic. The paradox is that a condition of drama is that it cannot, by
definition, be continuous. Dramatic moments, particularly if they end
in triumph, are followed by calm, if not bathos. De Gaulle could now
take on the ‘grandes querelles’ of international politics because he had
‘solved’ the domestic, could go on up to the higher ground where his
historic destiny awaited him. Those left minding the shop seemed con-
sequently rather dull. Such a phenomenon has political consequences,
for negotiating drama (as we have seen in both 1958 and 1962) and
the pauses between it; creating it, responding to it, being ready for
it, knowing how to profit from it or its absence, all these become part
of understanding a now very complex political process. This inter-
relationship between drama and calm would have formative political

influence throughout the next 50 years. And for the present, bathos
descended upon political life. In one sense it was deliberate. De Gaulle’s
appointment of Pompidou was made for all the obvious reasons of
Pompidou’s competence and allegiance to de Gaulle. He was also
affable, down to earth, and unpretentious; a real contrast to the fiery,
tortured, larger than life Michel Debré. Pompidou represented, parti-
cularly after the November elections, the acquiescence of parliamen-
tary politics in presidential politics, in a form of personality politics
that saw the effacing of all personalities bar one. Reynaud’s withering
treatment of Pompidou in the Assembly, treating him as nothing more
than ‘la voix de son maître’, had no effect not only because of the severe
downgrading of Assembly discourse but because that was precisely why
Pompidou was in position.
Gaullism and the Gaullists

One of the striking things about the government and the UNR, given
their single purpose, was how distinct from one another they were.
They were distinct phenomena that were often not that compatible.
The new Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, was not even a member
of the party at this time. Debré was, although he was never its leader.
One of the developmental features of Pompidou’s appointment is
that it shows how the relationship between President and Prime
Minister was an evolving one, with ambivalences on both sides that
made the relationship more subtle than it appeared. It is true that
Pompidou was de Gaulle’s creation in a way Debré was not. But the
relationship was not a capricious one. Pompidou remained Prime
Minister from 1962 until after the 1968 elections. This was unprece-
dented in French history, and although unfaltering service to the
President was a prerequisite to the relationship, Pompidou’s ordinary
style was related to de Gaulle’s as if in a kind of system, as if they were
contrasting aspects of the same thing. It is true that although de Gaulle
could never be publicly opposed, the government often countered
effectively de Gaulle’s arbitrary or misguided initiatives. During the
Algerian War it was counsel that prevailed over de Gaulle’s wanting to
militarily crush the pieds-noirs opposition during the ‘semaine des bar-
ricades’ in January 1960. Similarly, as early as the spring of 1963 de
Gaulle’s impetuous and old fashioned (and ineffective) requisitioning
of the striking miners was countered by a wiser government response
to the problem; and to an extent, the quiet competence of the new
government contrasted not only with its predecessors, and the sorry
state of the opposition, but also with de Gaulle’s own style, and would
begin to be perceived, in spite of itself, as eventually a welcome alter-
native to de Gaulle’s own imperious style, and would become another
aspect of Gaullism.
The nature of power and authority in the new regime, however,
was defined by de Gaulle. His press conference of 1 January 1964
was unequivocal in its stress upon the undisputed supremacy of the
President. He also chaired the all-important Conseil des ministres (Cabinet)
throughout his presidency. Pompidou’s government settled into a full
five-year term, addressing the implications of a booming economy and
the formidable challenges of the sectors of finance, agriculture, edu-
cation, and defence. It is worth noting that Pompidou’s own position
did not change until 1968, but in Education (the ministry dealing with
the issues that would trigger the 1968 events) there were eight changes
of minister. Nevertheless, no government after 1962 was overturned,
and the government had a rock solid parliamentary (presidential)
majority.
The UNR itself, however, faced difficult times, and behind the smooth
public face, had very difficult beginnings. It too saw no less than seven
general secretaries in the 11 year period from 1958–69. In a sense,
maintaining the party as a ‘parti des godillots’ (devoted followers) and
as de Gaulle’s ‘transmission belt’ was imperative, but no less difficult
for that.
First of all was the question of its own identity. It had been born
of a surge of support for de Gaulle in late 1958, immediately after the
referendum on the constitution, and brought together all the small
Gaullist groups and old RPF activists and the Républicains sociaux. It
had 86,000 members in its early days, an impressive figure that grew
from none. Nevertheless, this was akin to the quite small SFIO (80,000),
and nothing like the alleged million-strong RPF (and PCF). It was a
mass party, but one that would group sufficient cadres for the tens of
thousands of elected posts nationally available to the new party.
The UNR had to ‘de-ideologize’ itself while maintaining an identity.
We have seen how its first extremely difficult task was to oust the very
members who constituted its ideological strength and its fervour: namely,
the often lifelong supporters of de Gaulle and of Algérie Française,
which, they had thought, were synonymous. The early years saw much
heated debate, even violence, as the ‘true Gaullists’ like Delbeque and
Soustelle were rejected by Gaullism along with Algérie Française. Nor
did the UNR replace the ideologies it lost – its left wing version never
took hold. This is an extremely problematic issue for a political party,
and it replaced ideology with the pursuit of power itself. In many ways
the UNR became the political ideology of those who wanted to mod-
ernize the French economy, open France up to international trade, and
modernize business and industry. National implantation of the party
became one of the party’s main concerns, particularly after the muni-
cipal and senatorial elections of March and April 1959 and again
during the senatorial elections of September 1962 which demonstrated
the challenges of creating a political presence at local level.9
De Gaulle’s thought, as could be gleaned from his writings and
speeches, could not be ‘developed’ by the party, as the allegiance had
to be to him rather than his ideas. This alters somewhat the view10 of
the UNR as a ‘catch-all’ party. It was ideologically ‘thin’ not for strate-
gic electoral reasons but for reasons of its identity (or non-identity) and
raison d’être. The young cadres of the party, moreover, soon owed their
allegiance and careers not to de Gaulle but to people like the Prime
Minister, and other ‘barons’ of Gaullism; so that by the mid-1960s a
new generation of the Gaullist political elite was emerging that had
few links with the Gaullism of the RPF, let alone of the war. For the
moment, and of necessity therefore, Gaullism, the philosophy of the
most passionate and dramatic of political actors, lost its passion and its
drama. The colonizing of the state machinery, of industry, of all walks
of life by the UNR, turned UDR in 1968, would lead to the accusation,
indeed the generalized perception, that there was, by the 1970s, a
UDR-state.11 The weakness of parliamentary control over this highly
successful party and its government involved a whole series of scandals
that would also become part of the fabric of the regime.12
De Gaulle on the world stage

We are not arguing here that after the victories of 1962, de Gaulle
could proceed to perform unfettered upon the world stage and leave
domestic politics behind.13 He maintained his grip upon domestic pol-
itics right up until the time his grip was broken almost completely in
1968. In spite of his triumphs, the inevitable negotiation with the pre-
vailing political forces both domestically and internationally meant
that even de Gaulle was in a perpetual state of political advance, con-
cession, advantage, and retreat. In certain ways, the domestic situation
became more conflictual after 1962, and ‘opinion’ in a whole range of
manifestations appeared where it had not appeared before. The Fourth
Republic had structured social conflict along classical lines of political
sociology, expressing if not resolving, the myriad conflicts of interests
and class that haunted France as it entered a very rapid period of
modernization and social change after World War Two. Without these
conflicts being properly expressed through Parliament or political parties,
it was to the ‘social’ that politics-society relations would shift, and this
would become a permanent feature of the Fifth Republic, channelling
political activity into a range of contestatory channels, as we shall see.
This was compounded by the Fifth Republic’s reassertion of the state
and its administration’s centrality in political and social life, making it
more than ever the ‘target’ rather than the channel of political protest
and competition.
The relatively stable domestic situation allowed de Gaulle to address
wider foreign policy questions. Conversely, the foreign policy style of
de Gaulle, the ‘politics of grandeur’,14 had major domestic social and
political effects. An appraisal of de Gaulle’s foreign policy lies outside
the scope of our analysis. What we wish to demonstrate is how his
style and some of the effects of his style upon policy were the result of
the nature of his leadership. Domestic political stability was necessary
for France to ‘be itself’ on the world stage in the 1960s, but the way in
which France would comport itself was, in a sense, could only be, the
comportment of its leader, legitimated in drama and legitimating of
drama in the domestic context.
For de Gaulle, economic prosperity was a condition of France’s great-
ness, not an end in itself. This would lead France down paths that could
be argued as being detrimental to its economic well-being. De Gaulle,
himself an austere man uninterested in the pettiness of material well-
being, wanted a rich France devoted to its own greatness, not devoted to
its citizens’ acquisition of hi-fis, Renault Dauphines and fridges. Ironic-
ally, de Gaulle’s success as a grandiose leader representing France’s higher
calling was utterly dependent upon the successes of this consumer society,
a success he himself presided over; and which was a necessary yet contra-
dictory condition of ‘greatness’. Improvements in ordinary life – not least
the acquisition of televisions through which de Gaulle’s political author-
ity was maintained – were preconditions of his ability to comport himself
dramatically as if such triviality were of no consequence. Mundane self-
improvement became a condition of the politics of grandeur, but it is a
contradictory condition which would have consequences.
The international developments and events of the 1960s were, even
by de Gaulle’s standards, dramatic. However, they were not dramatic in
the way de Gaulle would have wanted them to be, for it was a drama
– from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the end of the Vietnam War – that
was ‘played’ by the USA and the USSR, leaving little room for manoeuvre
for smaller actors. It could be argued that de Gaulle’s interpretation of
political action: to use personal (now national) volonté and volontarisme

against fatalité could only take place within the ultimate inflexibility of
the super-power stand-off. It is further arguable that de Gaulle’s exploit-
ation or creation of the spaces within this overall inflexibility was not
in France’s interests; and that a great deal of posturing and diplomatic
noise ultimately led to a series of Gaullist failures. Let us examine our
own contentious suggestions. Measuring success and failure are open
to enormous qualification. It has been argued that de Gaulle’s role and
true function was to make failure look like success.15 We could perhaps
say the opposite, that one of de Gaulle’s greatest successes was, apart
from the Algerian tragedy, the near-pacific loss of Empire. Even though
the 1958 Constitution itself devoted so much space to the ‘Community’,
and all of its members bar one signed up to it, within a year or so,
Cameroon, Chad, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Senegal,
Togo, and Upper Volta were independent, leaving France with just a
few overseas departments and territories. And the most successful
failure was de Gaulle’s bringing an end to the appalling human and
economic costs of the Algerian conflict. Let us not try to measure but
look at some of the consequences of his leadership style in this arena.
From 1962, de Gaulle had a devoted, docile, stable and competent
government, with no internal opposition. And Algeria was over. He
could replace his many Algeria tours at least for new ones. He enjoyed
enormous popularity at home at this point, and he was already seen as
a figure of international status who had put France back on its feet, as
it were. This meant of course two things: that France would be repre-
sented almost exclusively by him alone, and that the representation
would be his own ‘certaine idée’, a definition of French independence,
greatness, and so on, that was only given interpretation through
himself. This romantic view is at once simple and elusive. It was not
only that Gaullism was whatever de Gaulle happened to be doing or
thinking, but rather that France itself and French Foreign policy had
taken on this ‘character’.
Two related themes or factors dominated de Gaulle’s reign. The
first was that his highly personalized and uncompromising almost car-
icatural assertion of France’s national independence followed logically
and inevitably from the assertions he had been making about domestic
politics since the 1920s, but in particular since 1958. The second and
related factor was that the context of this assertion was the overwhelm-
ing world controlling power and might of two other powers, the USSR
and the USA, but as regards de Gaulle’s 1960s foreign policy, in parti-
cular the USA.16 In many ways the whole of de Gaulle’s decade in power
was dominated by his hostile attitude to the United States. In March

1959, he took the French Mediterranean fleet out of NATO control.
This semi-withdrawal from NATO would later include the fleets in the
Channel and the Atlantic, the refusal to allow US nuclear weapons in
France, the taking control of all French airspace and the eventual with-
drawal of France from the integrated command structure of NATO and
the withdrawal of all US and Canadian troops from French soil.
In February 1960, France exploded its first Atom Bomb in the Sahara
(and its first Hydrogen Bomb in August 1968). In March 1960, the Soviet
leader Nikita Krushchev visited Paris. Because of the subsequent U2 spy
scandal,17 this came to little, but the notion of France seeing itself as a
kind of intermediary between West and East had been created. In June
1961, President John Kennedy made a highly popular and highly pub-
licized state visit to France. The public and the media were very taken
by Jackie Kennedy and by the warm and instant mutual admiration
between her and de Gaulle. The irony here was that the ‘real’ enemy
was never the Americans. De Gaulle’s support for the US during the U2
scandal in 1960 and his total support for Kennedy during the Cuban
missile crisis of 1962 were, if one can use such a term in international
relations, almost instinctive. But the logic of de Gaulle’s world view
when faced with US hegemony made his responses almost inevitable.
It proceeded from a symbolic refusal of US domination of the ‘free
world’. The US gave de Gaulle ample diplomatic reason to be such a
difficult ally for the US. It was in part the United States’ utter com-
mand (with, in fact, Soviet backing) and humiliation of both the
UK and France over the Suez crisis, before de Gaulle came to power,
in 1956, that produced such different national responses. The UK’s
lesson learned was never to cross the US again; France’s, and de Gaulle’s,
was to be sufficiently independent to be able not to have to toe the
American line.
De Gaulle had spent a lot of time trying to obtain a particular mode
of treatment as an ally rather than a servant of the United States, but
whether it was over procuring nuclear capability, nuclear related tech-
nology, greater status within NATO strategic decision-making and so
on, from Eisenhower through to Lyndon Johnson, France was rebuffed.
There was also a credible strategic logic to de Gaulle’s analyses, if not
his subsequent politics. The fact that the USA and the USSR could not
embark on total nuclear war, meant that it was likely that the first and
perhaps only (before negotiation) battleground between the super-
powers would be Europe itself which in the event of a Third World
War would be either destroyed, or else overrun, in about three days, by
conventional Warsaw Pact forces. So even though under the US nuclear

umbrella, it was very clear from a military point of view what this meant.
Such strategic concerns allowed de Gaulle to try to develop, in line
with his philosophy, a Metternich-style balance of powers between
several poles of power (even though it seemed that truly there were
only two). For de Gaulle, there was something unreal about trans-
national power blocks acting in unison. This desire to bring other
actors in to rearrange the chess board was the logic behind de Gaulle’s
helping to bring Communist China, ‘Red China’, into the UN in January
1964.
One of France’s most fundamental relationships, indeed the most
fundamental, was its relationship with Germany. Here also, the United
States would influence Franco-German relations. In September 1958, the
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and de Gaulle met at Colombey-
les-deux-églises. Their mutual admiration and subsequent friendship
was the quintessence of de Gaulle’s world view: two leaders as if incar-
nating their countries, and expressing national reconciliation through
their personal relationship. This friendship between the two men
would develop into a treaty between the two countries. In July 1962,
Adenauer visited France, and in September, de Gaulle visited West
Germany. Adenauer impressed and reassured the French, while de Gaulle
impressed and entertained the Germans with his high rhetoric and the
historic sweep of his speeches. A solemn treaty, the Franco-German
treaty, was signed in January 1963. This was only 20 years after the
cataclysm of World War Two. For de Gaulle this was not only an act
of reconciliation, but an opportunity to begin to draw West Germany
into a less pro-American, more pro-European system of alliances, guided
in particular by France, politically the most powerful of European
countries. In the Cold War context, however, West Germany was
the front line of any potentially devastating conflict. In the same
year, 1963, President Kennedy made his politically stunning (although
grammatically incorrect) ‘lch bin ein Berliner’ speech, thereby publicly
offering to West Germany, even West Berlin in the heart of East Ger-
many (and Berliners had already had experience of the Berlin Airlift),
protection from the USSR by the United States. The notion that
West Germany in such circumstances would do anything to jeopardize
US goodwill was out of the question and, therefore, de Gaulle’s diplo-
matic intentions were, particularly in retrospect, almost amusing.
The Franco-German treaty itself contained little apart from solemn
intention to dialogue, hold meetings and develop cultural and youth
exchanges.
De Gaulle ‘inherited’ the EEC (EU) as he did so many of the Fourth

Republic’s policies (e.g. its nuclear programme). He was not hostile to
the organization, recognizing its enormous economic advantages. Even
politically he was initially involved in its construction. The failed
‘Fouchet Plan’ of October 1961 was a French initiative and proposed
integrated cooperation in a range of areas: diplomacy, defence and
culture, and powers for the Commission, European Council and Par-
liament along the lines that in fact the EU was to achieve in the 1970s
and 1980s. In May 1962, he made his overtly anti-European speech,
which triggered the resignation of his pro-European MRP ministers. It
is arguable that once again de Gaulle’s attitude to the US was decisive
in his hostility. His failure to advance France’s own leadership of Europe
led to a reversal in his attitudes; thereafter he sometimes saw the EU as
yet one more potential avenue through which the US could dominate
Europe. Hence his hostility, from the beginning, to the UK’s joining
the EU. For him, the UK was a Trojan horse for US policy.18 In 1965,
France’s failure to get its own way on the Common Agricultural Policy
led to the ‘empty chair’ crisis of the EU whereby France just simply
refused to cooperate with its partners. This lasted six months, at the
end of which France’s demands were met.
By this time, de Gaulle had come to be seen by his allies – the US,
the UK and the countries of Western Europe, as a most difficult Head
of State. It is arguable that perpetually contestatory leadership saw the
beginnings of a revision of how he was seen in France. Although de
Gaulle enjoyed majority support in France for his foreign policy
stances, this was never of the kind he enjoyed in his 1958–62 phase,
nor was French opinion always in agreement with de Gaulle, for
example on nuclear policy. French nuclear weapons developed through-
out the 1960s (and well beyond). By 1967, France had a nuclear sub-
marine, and (French-made) fighters capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
It was also developing missile capability. The consequences for this
modernization were that the Airforce and Navy were favoured, de Gaulle’s
own force, the troublesome Army, disfavoured, falling in his presidency
from 800,000 to 300,000.
He extended his refusal of the two ‘blocs’ by developing good
working relations with the USSR, visiting ‘Russia’ in June 1966, once
again, however, signing agreements that had little content, even if they
momentarily drew the world’s attention. In September 1967, in Poland,
he upset his hosts (and the USSR) by urging Poland to be more imagina-
tive, be more like France and see the world as more than just two blocs.19
He made similar speeches in Romania in the following year, in May 1968
in fact, at the moment that his own regime was on the verge of col-
lapse. Efforts of this kind in the past had been crushed by the author-
ities in Poland – and in Hungary with Soviet troops, so he offered no
practical support to dissidence while irritating his orthodox party hosts.
The one tangible advantage was to stress the national identity issue,
which in fact was advantageous to both dissidence and orthodoxy.
He was to commit possibly his greatest diplomatic affront in July
1967 in a speech in Montreal, as the guest of the Canadian Federal
government.20 By uttering his expression ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ he
seemed to be calling for, not dissociation from the superpowers
(though the Americans were not happy with this speech either) but
secession for Quebec from Canada, and an implied special kind of rela-
tionship with France. Just before and after this (27 November 1967)
de Gaulle also made two pronouncements about Israel, the first oppos-
ing the 6-Day War, the second coming close to accusations of anti-
semitism when he referred to Israel (the Jews) as a ‘peuple d’élite,
sûr de lui-même et dominateur’.21
De Gaulle’s politics of grandeur, which grew out of his world view,
meant a series of ‘grand projets’ such as the Anglo-French supersonic
Concorde project, large investment in television and computer techno-
logy, again in response to US innovations in these, and even an attempt
to ‘take on’ the international financial system by bringing large gold
reserves back to France to counter America’s exporting (through dollars)
of its own deficit.22
De Gaulle’s rhetorical style at the international level was fashioned
by his domestic persona and the conditions of his presidency, which
encouraged a particular style and discourse that was lifted to the inter-
national level. De Gaulle could not, however, have lifted to the inter-
national level his unequivocal successes on the domestic level, given
that in the former he was not in a position of great, and familiar,
advantage. Yet it is doubtful whether France could have struck such an
independent stance under any other political leader at this time. And
no other politician’s international persona would have had such domes-
tic resonance and approval. And it was recognized, and often applauded,
that a European leader, drawing upon all the discourse, style, verve, his-
torical memory, and intellect that the French possess, could represent
perhaps Europe’s most compelling country on the international stage. No
Italian, British, German, or other leader could have taken such stances as
de Gaulle did. There was also a great deal of European opinion that
agreed with him, particularly as the Vietnam War became morally ques-
tionable, seemingly endless, and utterly destructive. We shall come back
to this point, but this brings us to what is arguably de Gaulle’s most

striking and paradoxical achievement, namely, the impetus he gave to
Third World discourse on the international stage. Paradoxical, in that
de Gaulle’s whole temperament was of Empire, and of tradition. Yet, the
logical outcome of his own views about national self-determination
meant that he did speak out against the superpowers’ grip in the name
of self-determination of free peoples whether in Europe, Latin America,
or South East Asia, and he reflected Western opposition to the war in
Vietnam, particularly in his Phnom Penh speech in September 1966,
and arguably contributed to the ending of the war by reflecting Euro-
pean public opinion and by creating a climate of opinion among Western
leaders. Given France’s own knowledge of South East Asia (the Vietnam
War had begun as a French colonial war), France was well placed to
offer criticism and advice. The lyricism of some of his Third World,
non-alignment rhetoric bordered on liberation philosophy.
The context of this was de Gaulle’s hostility towards the United
States’ domination of international relations among the Western allies
and its dependents and to the superpowers’ ‘cartelizing’ international
relations generally – hence his mixed reception in the USSR, Poland
and Romania, for example. We have to raise the question, however,
whether near-uncritical support for US policy by most of America’s
allies was tempered by de Gaulle’s boldness. US policy in Latin America,
South East Asia, and elsewhere was indeed highly questionable23 at this
time; and a kind of cultural resistance to an aggressive American econ-
omic policy in Europe with its far-reaching cultural ramifications in
terms of European identity/identities was perhaps welcome. It is also
arguable that de Gaulle understood well the nature of European Commu-
nism, better than the Americans did, and knew that calls for national self-
assertion could take place, and for the better, even in the context of the
Cold War.
This brings us to a difficult question, for we risk being drawn into de
Gaulle’s own mythical reference points. But let us ask it with that
proviso: was de Gaulle, with his acute political and historical intelli-
gence, indeed a visionary in world affairs? And although seen at the
time as an often unbearably arrogant, self-regarding, and at times bom-
bastic world leader, perhaps in the longer term he was right. It is argu-
able that his opposition to America’s treating Latin America as its ‘back
yard’ foresaw the murderous consequences that would appear in coun-
tries like Chile, and contributed in the longer term to the transitions to
democracy in Latin America. His advice to Eisenhower and Kennedy
not to become embroiled in Vietnam, and his opposition to Lyndon
Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War was arguably a correct view.

The policy of a country with a very limited range of nuclear weapons,
threatening anyone – in fact the USSR only – with significant and
immediate retaliation to attack, arguably acted as a deterrent against
aggression towards Western Europe. One assumes de Gaulle’s all out
strike, ‘tous azimuts’ policy was believed in the Kremlin. In the post
superpower era, should we not see de Gaulle’s encouragement of Poland,
of Romania, of Russia even, indeed visionary? Is it not true that his sus-
picions about the UK’s being too uncritical of American policy were
correct, and that his dramatic halting of the trend towards European
supra-nationalism in the early 1960s was a recognition of the consider-
able power and depth of national allegiances? Is it not arguable that he
foresaw rather than created the problems faced by a Europe caught
between the tensions of national and supra-national allegiances?
Having said these things, the essential thing to bear in mind is that
the kind of political performances de Gaulle gave were integral to the
kind of leadership he exercised, the way he came to power, the polit-
ical ascendancy he enjoyed at the domestic level and the highly per-
sonalized way he exercised his political power not only as the main
political actor but also as France’s Head of State.
Left opposition
One of the fortuitous things for the left in the political rout of 1962
was that, of the non-Gaullist opposition, the main parts left function-
ing were indeed on the left; and a certain degree of cooperation was
imperative. Quite simply, the legislative election two-round system
meant that without allies parties could never hope to increase their
vote in the second round and win the seat. Alliance with the PCF was a
gamble, and success would partly depend upon how the Cold War
developed, how détente between the superpowers developed, and how
‘acceptable’ communists in government became for the French as a
whole (and arguably for France’s international partners, especially the
United States). This realignment of the left, 1962–81, has been written
about in hundreds of books. What we wish to emphasize here is how
the left began to cooperate after 1962, and what the consequences of
this were for the nature of politics in the new Fifth Republic.
It is worth noting two things here. First, in neither the SFIO nor the
PCF was the Fifth Republic’s advent followed by any real doctrinal
reflection. Second, the alliance strategy remained focused on the National
Assembly. A very small number of individuals, some of them in polit-
ical parties (of the left, centre left and centre), or else in think tanks or
political media, saw the possibility of using presidential competition

to help get the republic to ‘revert’ to a properly republican one.24
Virtually no one saw beyond this – or into the heart of the Fifth
Republic, namely that the key to power was actually the presidency
and presidentialism itself.
On 19 September 1963, the then centre left Express magazine run
by the young modernist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, started to
write about a mysterious ‘Monsieur X’, an imagined, ideal left wing
candidate who might stand against de Gaulle in the forthcoming presi-
dential election of 1965. This campaign – a brilliant innovation in the
mediation of politics – caused enormous national interest. It transpired
that the Monsieur X was Gaston Defferre, a leading senior politician
in the SFIO and party boss of the Bouches-du-Rhône (Marseilles) fed-
eration of the SFIO. This was the first initiative from inside a large
political party of responding to the presidency in this way.25 The ‘par-
liamentary’ thrust in Defferre’s subsequent proposals to domesticate
the presidency (reform of the referendum initiatives, and of article 16);
these ‘symbolic’ attacks betrayed the party nature of the initiative.26
Defferre (dissociating himself from the PCF) actually did draw support
from parts of the centre left (Radicals and MRP) and some think tanks,
and went as far as to begin setting up a trans-party Fédération démocrate
et socialiste destined to involve several parties and groups. The leader of
the SFIO, Guy Mollet, in order to sabotage the initiative, insisted in
June 1965 that the FDS be truly socialist and secularist, thus collapsing
the project through his frontal attack upon the Christian democrat
MRP and other non-socialist support. It was true that Defferre was
trying to gather the former regime’s centre left to a new purpose. The
problem was that the SFIO was partly travelling in the opposite direc-
tion, towards the PCF that Defferre was marking himself off from. The
mighty PCF in 1962 had still polled, and would continue to do so
throughout the 1960s, around 20 per cent of the electorate, to the
SFIO’s 12.5 per cent. The PCF, therefore, had to be part of the solution,
even though neither it nor Mollet were interested in the presidential
election. Into this void stepped François Mitterrand, not a member of
the SFIO, who, by playing to the Mollet/PCF strategy while enhancing
– much more than Defferre – the ‘presidentialism’ of his (left wing)
candidacy, conflated, or rather, transcended both the Defferre and Mollet
strategy to begin a process that would transform the left and French
politics itself.
A first point to note is that Mitterrand’s was an individual under-
taking which neither countered nor threatened the established political
parties. In 1964, Mitterrand was the leader of one or two think tanks and
remnants of parties that had fused to form the tiny Convention des insti-
tutions républicaines. This would act as his support base, and continue to
do so over the years in one form or another. He made contact with the
established parties and kept his initiative within the converging trajectory
of the PCF and SFIO. His hurriedly organized Fédération de la gauche
démocrate et socialiste (FGDS) was a left-centred reprise of Defferre’s idea
but without the MRP (it included the SFIO and the Radicals, and his own
CIR), and it was accepted by the PCF (and the PSU). In September 1965,
he declared his candidacy. There would also be a Centrist candidate, Jean
Lecanuet, the leader of the MRP, who declared the following month.
The 1965 campaign itself saw television and advertising play a sig-
nificant role (Lecanuet used an advertising agency and an almost
US-style campaign). There were six and a half million television sets,
and a great deal of radio debate, particularly on the independent sta-
tions, all of which was reported in the press. The country ‘saw’ for the
first time opposition candidates countering de Gaulle’s views and his
government, the television having been the real domaine reservé of de
Gaulle until then. He, on the other hand, announced his candidacy on
the eight o’clock evening news as late as 4 November, only four weeks
before the election, and was clearly disdainful of the whole process
that he had himself invented. It is startling to bear in mind that this
was de Gaulle’s first – and last – national election. He did not even use
his allocated broadcast time. But the campaign itself changed every-
thing. As Mitterrand, and Lecanuet at the beginning of the campaign,
clambered up the opinion polls, de Gaulle’s supporters, almost silent
until the last days of the campaign, began campaigning vigorously,
and personally, against the opposition candidates. On 30 November,
de Gaulle – finally giving in to advice – also made a broadcast stressing
his social reforms and his effective government team.27
There was a general assumption that these elections, scheduled for
5 and 19 December, would see de Gaulle elected on the 5th with a vote
approaching 70 per cent. 1965 was the first major electoral moment in
the Fifth Republic where the unexpected happened, and the public was
riveted by developments. By mid-November it was clear from the polls
that he had fallen below 50 per cent, i.e. that he would have to go to
the run-off. Until this moment, paradoxically, because he was seen as
unbeatable, a lot of the interest was in the two other main candidates,
Lecanuet and Mitterrand. There was a kind of national curiosity about
what other politicians apart from de Gaulle there were. And, unlike
de Gaulle, all the other candidates campaigned hard, gaining much
publicity in a France that had been almost exclusively dominated by

only one person. The right wing lawyer J.-L. Tixier-Vignancour also
stood (as a kind of ‘witness’ to Algérie Française). He went on to gain
5 per cent, but it is interesting to note that even here, and even this
early, the fundamentally anti-de Gaulle extreme right was using what
had become the Gaullist republic’s central political moment to purpose.28
Mitterrand and Lecanuet’s candidacies were in part a struggle for the
future shape of the non-Gaullist opposition. And Mitterrand’s success
over Lecanuet in round one (we should bear in mind that Lecanuet was
credited in the polls with 20 per cent at some points in the campaign)
would have major effects upon the political process. In mid-November,
Mitterrand and Lecanuet’s national profile became even more ‘sérieux’ as
it was clear that one of them would go on to challenge the General. The
fact that there was to be a second ballot electrified the public and the
media and the polity. On 5 December, the results were: de Gaulle 44 per
cent, Mitterrand 32 per cent, Lecanuet 16 per cent, Tixier-Vignancour
5 per cent, Marcilhacy 1.7 per cent, Barbu 1.1 per cent. One of the results
was to trigger de Gaulle’s belated entry into the campaign. He gave three
interviews, becoming again as it were, the affable and approachable
de Gaulle of the press conference of 19 May 1958. Mitterrand campaigned
for the centre ground in round two, appearing more ‘republican’, more of
a rally style figure. On 19 December, de Gaulle won with 54.05 per cent
of the vote. De Gaulle had won – of course – but Mitterrand had as it were
recreated the left in one election. His 45.05 per cent against de Gaulle
meant that there was a possible alternative politics to Gaullism. It is true
that Mitterrand’s vote was not really the left – all those opposed to
de Gaulle had voted for him, much of the extreme right too. But the 1965
elections were fundamental to the embedding of the left into the regime,
and therefore of the regime into the wider political culture. Three pre-
liminary points we can make are: first, how dramatic, exciting, and fun
these first direct suffrage presidential elections were; second, how even at
this early stage, it was the presidential aspect of the republic that was
having major effects upon the comportment of the parties, even though
some of them ignored this effect; and, third, Mitterrand’s tactic of
moving from the left to the centre ‘republican’ ground for round two,
became a feature of leadership politics.
The new conditions of the republic
Let us look in more detail at what the 1965 presidential election tells us
about the role of ‘persona’ in politics. We need to make one thing
clear, however. The near universal view that 1965, forcing de Gaulle to
a second ballot, severely damaged his exalted personal image, and
caused him to fall from Olympian heights, is to fundamentally mis-
understand the Fifth Republic, Gaullism, and de Gaulle’s relation to
the French. We shall return to these issues below. Let us stress here,
once again, that the essence of the Fifth Republic is not simply the
power and prestige of the President but the personal nature of his
imagined relationship to his national constituency. And understanding
what happened to this will help us understand what happened to the
republic. We can agree with the general view, however, that television
and a sense of the modern and the new media age, did redefine French
politics fundamentally and forever. Many of the features of the cam-
paign remain with the republic and presidential politics 45 years and
more later. We can divide our comments on the significance of the
1965 elections into the three categories we used when looking at the
1963–65 period: Gaullism, de Gaulle, and the left.
Gaullism and government

Let us make four observations. First, the practical, managerial, daily
business of government style shown by Pompidou and his govern-
ment provided Gaullism with another face and leadership style that
helped de Gaulle rule unhindered, but also provided future Gaullism
with an extra political resource and, eventually, a new leader. Second,
we have seen that a precondition of the above meant the relatively
total ‘emptying’ of Gaullism of its ideology and ideological enquiry.
It nevertheless became the site where Gaullist ‘barons’ resided, and
future leaders at a range of levels would begin to emerge, with their
own coterie of support, advice, and even devotion. Third, and related
to this and to the ideological question, is the fact that such an
organization, although apparently ideologically empty, retained
the potential to pitch over into an emotional rally form, during
de Gaulle’s presidency, particularly around election times, but also
after de Gaulle. The rally, a devotional rally of feeling and opinion
around an insightful leader, remained embedded deep within the
organization. Fourth, as we have seen, the UNR and the govern-
ment acted as a protective shield, so that in the 1960s de Gaulle
could go off to solve the world’s problems because he had a
team at home operating in such a way as to allow him to behave
as if he did not need them. Let us turn to him then and the con-
sequences of his ‘above-the-fray’ status in the context of the 1965
elections.
De Gaulle
We can make four points. First, simply to stress again the point made
above, that the condition of his ‘gaullien’ status was a committed team
prepared to allow him such scope, although as we saw in 1965, the
image of a leader, so Olympian that he is ‘out-of-touch’, can be harmed
by the division of labour. Second, being given such scope, ‘character’
and presidential initiative replaced or at least dominated policy elabo-
ration; and de Gaulle’s arguably high handed and self-certain comport-
ment vis-à-vis virtually everyone, but in particular the United States,
increased after 1965 rather than diminished. Did he assert himself
more subsequently because of or in spite of the 1965 election? Third, it
is clear that de Gaulle’s style and style of delivery, often so powerfully
advantageous to him, were, in 1965, disadvantages. This is in part
the result of their precluding alternatives most of the time. It is
difficult for a leader like de Gaulle to have changed a whole regime,
offered to the French, against all the odds, the sacred right to elect
their leader, and then go on to be a contender for that leadership in an
appropriate way. Moving from leader to citizen-candidate29 is a very
charged symbolic transition. For de Gaulle it was impossible. The result
was that he stood in awkward contrast to his own republic. As regards
the accompanying discourse, moreover, it was also clear that the
attraction of Jean Lecanuet, for example, was the contrast with
de Gaulle’s never-changing intonations of grandeur and of regime crisis.
The electorate quite rightly felt that his regime was in fact relatively
stable, and this, of course, thanks to him. The discourse of crisis was
beginning to sound like empty rhetoric, and de Gaulle’s failure to grasp
the evolving ‘mood of the nation’ certainly undermined his claim
to X-ray vision. Fourth, we said above that de Gaulle’s style precluded
character shifts. Mostly, but not completely. De Gaulle’s ‘persona’ was
capable of another public aspect as we have seen: jovial, friendly,
knowing, warm hearted – and, given the unsettling rise of Lecanuet
and Mitterrand in the opinion polls, de Gaulle shifted into this mode,
particularly in the three interviews he gave to Michel Droit between
the rounds. In many ways, by ‘humanizing’ himself like this, de Gaulle’s
(albeit belated) 1965 election persona strengthened his long term
standing rather than weakened it. He arguably became more endeared
to the French in that he showed, once again, an aspect to his character
long submerged and much liked. We should remember that the dis-
cursive intervention that most endeared him to a fearful opinion was
the occasion of the press conference of 19 May 1958.30 Did the 1965
election bring de Gaulle down to earth? Arguably, yes (although not
for long); but the main point or points, rather, are that it did him good
not harm, and that this interaction of persona and character traits is
crucial to an understanding of the Fifth Republic. His popularity in no
way meant that the French saw de Gaulle, consistently and intensely,
as he saw himself. In this sense, even for de Gaulle – and especially for
his republic – 1965 was a great success, even though neither he nor
most commentators saw it as such. 1965 is not the twilight of Gaullism
but, when understood properly, its triumph.
The left
François Mitterrand, because he went through to the second round,
became henceforth the perceived leader of the left. He, like all the
other candidates, moreover, was (as if) a lone individual who had
stepped into the presidential arena. Mitterrand indeed was let through
by the left precisely because he had no political party (his CIR was
really only a small support group); but this notion of a candidate
as ‘alone’ would become part of the mythology of the presidential
contest, even though strictly speaking it was not true (indeed could not
be true given the exigencies of a party system). Mitterrand’s candidacy
(and Lecanuet’s by default) demonstrated that the future of French
politics would very much involve the political parties but in a novel
way that few, especially the big battalions, as yet understood.
The 1965 election also saw attempts at an overall modernizing of
politics. The candidacy of Defferre from 1963 to 1965 with ‘his’ book
(Un nouvel horizon, really it was an election manifesto), his support
from think tanks, the campaigns in the media, the personalization, the
federating of support somewhat reminiscent of the Gaullist rally, the
‘gadgets’ (e.g. badges, hats) and the photo-opportunities of Lecanuet’s
campaign, the developing television rhetorical style (repetitions, mises
au point) of Mitterrand; all these pointed to the idea that the ‘renewal’
of opposition to de Gaulle would be in tune with modern politics.31
Yet it would also bring closer to the mainstream and in personalized
form older myths and ideas. Mitterrand – although he would go on
to be as ‘regal’ as de Gaulle – detonated, by his 1965 challenge, the
myth of David v. Goliath, a myth that would inform French politics
in a significant way at a range of levels throughout the Fifth Republic.
Outsiders, underdogs, loners would begin to join the presidential
constellation with significant political consequences.
The events of 1965 meant that the legitimacy of political leadership
was now crucially related to the presidential system, if not to the presi-
dential election itself. 1965 also began a new kind of politics in that it put
leaders, potential leaders, and the political parties, in a dramatic and

exciting relation to the conquest of power, and linked over time presi-
dential to legislative elections. The perceived ‘crises’ these elections
took place in further dramatized these linked processes, often dividing
France into two warring camps, with the legislative elections them-
selves becoming highly personalized. 1965, for example, was the begin-
ning of a series of perceived crises that would influence each other for
15 years: the 1965, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1973, 1974, 1978, and 1981 elec-
tions were all shaped and dynamized by the elections that preceded
them, and in turn shaped and dynamized the ones following.
Finally, 1965 saw the personalization of politics become a generalized
phenomenon beyond de Gaulle himself. In this, he really did influence
the Fifth Republic without realizing how. He thought election by direct
suffrage was necessary to confer (a pale reflection of) his status upon
those who came after him. What he did was to generalize his own
mythology, and dynamize the whole system, bringing into it a complex
and consequential relationship between the persona of political actors
and their relationship to discourse, political culture, ‘opinion’, and the
electorate, and to the political parties.
From our analysis and narrative of 1962 and of 1965 we can make three
points relating to leadership. First, various actors at various conjunctures
were drawing the Fifth Republic forward in a particular direction. We
could say that de Gaulle was becoming the main figure not responding.
Second, this was possible because of the arrangement of the institutions
and what the presidency let seep into the polity generally as the result of
the requirements of presidentialism, the most salient and formative
aspect of which was the creation of images of national leadership (i.e.
across the nation and of the nation, itself perceived as an entity, as a
‘people’ and as a modern, nationally self-conscious electorate, and a
nation-state that now had international status). Third, in ‘real’ politics,
the ‘leader’ had to be in a relationship to a political party or group of
political parties. ‘In a relationship to’ begs many questions; it does not
necessarily mean, for example, being the party leader. As we have seen,
Mitterrand’s position in 1965 was conditional upon his not being the
leader of any significant political party. His subsequent leadership became
possible, partly because of his ‘symbolic’ 1965 leadership. Presidentialism
was imposing a range of forms of leadership, and a range of character-
istics and conditions of leadership itself.
There had been both symbolic and more managerial leaderships
throughout French history, but the new emphasis upon leadership itself
as more exalted was bringing in a much wider range of possibilities in
terms of style, discourse and rhetoric, image, even age (and to a certain
extent, even up to the presidential level, at election time at least, of
gender).32 One of the major differences between the Fifth and earlier
Republics, however, was the division of labour between the leader as a
time serving manager, however intelligent, even wise, and the symbolic
nature of new leadership with its emphasis upon visionary leadership.
1965 was one of the most interesting moments in the Fifth Republic’s
history for what it tells us about the range of issues we have been looking
at: the status of leadership, and how fragile as well as compelling it could
be; the role of the parties; and the role of the media. It was the first time
that the new Fifth Republic ‘performed’ in all its aspects, in all its presi-
dentialism. The year 1965 was soon to be overtaken in the national
memory by 1968. It is arguable, however, that although 1968 was indeed
a cultural revolution, 1965 was the more important political moment for
how the Fifth Republic developed. We need to add the rider, however,
that politically 1968 does have two major effects upon the fortunes of the
two main protagonists of 1965: 1968 made de Gaulle’s subsequent fall
and Mitterrand’s subsequent rise all the more spectacular, but the seeds of
each were sown in 1965. It is true that without 1968, de Gaulle’s fall
would have been of less biblical proportions, and Mitterrand’s rise less
phoenix-like. But all of these subsequent events were foreshadowed,
encoded, foretold almost, in the events of 1965.
The 1965 election was also formative in that it began as we have said
a related series of elections, elections that often were formative of sub-
sequent elections so that we have a path-dependent series from
1965–81. Even 1968, which can in many ways be seen as outside this
series is not. For example, the astounding 1968 Gaullist majority – as
we shall see – was based partly on events, the ‘events’, but also upon
the perceived consequences of the poor Gaullist voter discipline of the
1967 elections. The momentous departure of de Gaulle from office in
1969, which precipitated new presidential elections was in turn related
to his wilful insistence upon a referendum that he had promised in the
heat of the ’68 events, had withdrawn and gone instead – on advice
– for legislative elections; elections which for a range of reasons we
shall see irritated him, in spite of his and his party’s crushing victory.
1965–67
Let us look briefly at the responses of the Gaullists, the centrists, and the
left to the 1965 elections. Fourteen months separated the 1965 presiden-
tial and 1967 legislative elections. Giscard was dropped from government,
and turned his attention to establishing the relative autonomy of the

Independent Republicans from the Gaullists. Of equal importance were
his television appearances and a general media treatment of Giscard as
the young man to watch. This ‘individuation’ of politics was beginning to
spread now, from de Gaulle and the other candidates of 1965, now out
beyond these. On 10 January 1967, Giscard made his ‘Oui, mais’ remark
at a press conference – ostensibly about the government, but by implica-
tion a criticism of de Gaulle too (and a valorization of himself).33
In the centre, Lecanuet, capitalizing upon his 1965 success, forged
a new party (February 1966) made up of MRP, what remained of the
CNIP, old UDSR, some Radicals and centre left figures. It too was torn
between situating itself in relation to the government and creating a
wider alliance with the non-communist left. Throughout this period
we can see the ideological moving around of a great number of people
as the political formations established themselves; and issues such
as social reform, the relationship to the communists, secularism, and
Europe, would shift members and leaders around as they gravitated
towards the new political structures.
On the left, Mitterrand managed to keep the FGDS intact and
forward looking, and even developed the idea of a ‘shadow cabinet’.
This was not a great success, partly because the political parties, parti-
cularly the SFIO, still dominated within the Federation, and Mitter-
rand’s ‘cabinet’ reflected this, giving it a Fourth Republican feel, the
problem being also that many of these people were unknown to the
public. Further cooperation – always conflictual and liable to break
down – between the FGDS and the communists continued. By 1967,
Mitterrand, reflecting Pompidou’s Comité d’action pour la Ve (set up
in May 1966) had agreed single candidacies between the constituent
elements of the FGDS, a reasonably tacit understanding with the small
PSU, and désistement agreements drawn up with the PCF.
De Gaulle intervened once in the 1967 campaign to support the UNR,
but it is arguable that his intervention did neither him nor the party any
good – underneath, changes were taking place in people’s attitudes to
de Gaulle and to Gaullism. Pompidou ran the Gaullist campaign, and the
diminution of overt personalization and references to de Gaulle and more
attention to policy was quite striking. In the campaign itself, television,
partly because it still showed rather stifled performances by candidates,
was less exciting than radio where the debates between Pompidou and
Mitterrand (2 February) and Pompidou and Mendès France (27 February)
were listened to by millions and widely commentated. On the airwaves,
expert spokespersons both for government and opposition were replacing
the old Fourth Republican ‘good character’ local candidate to send to

Parliament and represent the local community. The local still mattered,
but a national/governmental level was being disseminated, now with
Pompidou seen as the main actor, and Mitterrand as the leader of
the opposition. As we have seen, other actors were prominent. Mendès
France, Giscard, Lecanuet, ‘clashed’ – often in the context of ‘duels’ as we
have seen; often even reported duels in the often forgotten National
Assembly, between, for example Mendès France and Debré (who replaced
Giscard in January 1966 at Finance), or parliamentary duels between
Pompidou and Mitterrand.
Over and above this, there was a kind of personalized renewal of the
political class, with ‘youth’ being brought to bear at the breaking dawn of
the new television/media age. Both Lecanuet and Mitterrand promoted
young candidates, often those whose allegiance was to them rather than
to the party. The Gaullists did this too in many constituencies, the young
Jacques Chirac, whose loyalty was to Pompidou rather than to de Gaulle
or the UNR, was the best known example. All the parties used the tech-
niques of modern campaigning, in particular the new trend, especially by
the Gaullists, of spending large amounts of money on the campaign, and
replicating Lecanuet’s US style rallies, so that ‘spectacle’ became the norm,
so that, as in 1965, the 1967 election was an attractive occasion, and was
lived as a national one. The results saw the Gaullists, semi-detached from
de Gaulle, increase their vote even on 1962 (though not, it should be
noted, on 1965) to 38.5 per cent. Pompidou’s prestige climbed even fur-
ther. At the previous legislative election it was noted that no party before
the UNR had ever broken through the 30 per cent mark. Now it was
approaching 40 per cent. The Communists did well with 22.5 per cent,
and the FGDS quite well with 19 per cent. The ‘centre’ fell away, this time
forever from countenancing party dominance in the Fifth Republic with a
score of 14 per cent, albeit similar to Lecanuet’s 1965 score, but insuffi-
cient to ‘weigh’ in the second round, or subsequently to entertain the idea,
held until then, of radically influencing the political topography. In round
two, one week later, the Centre démocrate took 1,000,000 fewer votes than
Lecanuet in 1965, and fewer than the very poor combined showing of the
MRP and CNIP in 1962. The centre would go on existing and see a range
of leaders other than Lecanuet, Jacques Duhamel, Joseph Fontanet and
Michel Durafour, for example, constantly trying to revive the centre. The
bi-polarization of 1965, however, was being reaffirmed, and this in the
semi-absence of the towering figure of de Gaulle.
On the left, the ‘discipline’ that would take the left towards power
and office did assert itself. The discipline between the PCF and the FGDS
candidates (who had also brought some PSU under its wing) had the
resounding effect of threatening Pompidou’s first round success. If the
PCF had allowed a few more exceptions to the désistement rule, i.e. allow-
ing an FGDS through to take on the Gaullist candidate in round two,
where the communist led in round one, the left may well have won the
election. Many Gaullist voters, so confident after their first round success
did not mobilize enough for round two or in round two. Many centrists
– though by no means all – were willing or more willing than before to
vote for the FGDS in round two, and even, with the FGDS ‘shield’, for
the PCF. In the end, Pompidou (and the Giscardians) had 245 seats.
The others combined, not a united but an ominous opposition, had 242
(of which 192 were PCF/FGDS). Pompidou had a majority of three. Pom-
pidou had won nevertheless, and almost ‘without’ de Gaulle, itself a new
development.
The society that this polity governed was in a period of bewildering
change. In many ways, in music, lifestyles, attitudes, authority within
the family, the ‘place’ of women, France was catching up with its Western
counterparts; in other ways – in cinema, political and social thought,
the cultural life – it was out ahead. For many, the mid-1960s meant
better jobs, better prospects, but the still booming French economy
(throughout the 1960s France’s GDP growth rate was second only to
Japan’s) was still handing out its rewards unevenly, in terms of gender,
social class, profession, age, and region. The troubles of 1963 had shown
that not only was this one of the few ways of gaining attention, it could
be a successful one. The government did in a more private manner deal
with industry and other interest groups, but the relationships were either
private deals or public protest.34
The uneven rewards of the economic boom, the massive exodus from
the countryside to the towns, the dislocations involved, and the rapidity
of change meant that discontent – this was shown by hundreds of
opinion polls throughout the decade – was a constant feature of ordinary
people’s social life. Dissatisfaction, a sense that things were not right, per-
meated people’s thinking. Also there had developed, by the mid-1960s,
a largely accurate popular view that the Gaullist government and party
had become more or less a conservative force representing – through, for
example, help to industry but restraint on wages – capital and not labour.
The political forces such as: unions, leftist parties, the PCF, became
channels of this discontent. The discontent itself structured politics and
political relations at this time. And 1968 was around the corner.
3
1968 and its Aftermath
One of the most important things we can say about interpretation of

the events of May–June 1968 is that they should not be treated sepa-
rately from the rest of the period. The ‘events’ of ’68 were a phenom-
enon of the Fifth Republic, a phenomenon of de Gaulle’s presidency.
Let us look at the events and their aftermath from this perspective to
see if we can shed light upon their significance, both for Fifth Republic
politics in 1968, and for the fortunes and development of leadership
politics after.
In some ways, May 1968 was the expressive culmination of social
and political developments in youth culture over the previous years.
Internationally, youth, the baby boomers, booming throughout the
Western world, had shared the social influence of both US and
European popular and youth culture since the end of World War Two.
More recently, anti-Vietnam War protests had been developing across
the West’s universities. All over Europe, left wing groups had been
springing up, and radical leftism was ‘in the culture’. The summer of
1967 had seen major student unrest in West Berlin; one of the heroes
of the left, Rudi Dutscke, was shot in the head (April 1968) and very
seriously injured by a member of an extreme right wing group, becom-
ing a ‘martyr’ of protest. A lot of left wing agitation was occurring
throughout US and European campuses, particularly the ‘new’ univer-
sities, like Nanterre near Paris, which opened in 1964. These univers-
ities, none more so than Nanterre, were overcrowded, dull, miles from
cafés and shops, with poor student accommodation and were, gener-
ally speaking, 1960s concrete monstrosities surrounded by construc-
tion sites, and seething with political radicalism. Nanterre had been in
a political ferment since November 1967, with demonstrations, sit-ins,
and so on, disrupting classes.
67
On 8 January the Minister for Youth, François Missoffe, was opening

a swimming pool at the University, when a young left wing student,
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, shouted at him that the recent White Paper on
Education was rubbish and among other things did not deal with
young people’s sexual problems, to which Missoffe replied that Cohn-
Bendit might consider jumping in the new pool as a remedy. (To
which Cohn-Bendit replied that that was a ‘nazi’ remark). Cohn-Bendit
was threatened with suspension and the university students went on
strike. Demonstrations on the campus and clashes with the police
followed. In the same month, at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris’ Latin
Quarter, 400 school students demonstrated in the rue St-Jacques (sub-
sequently one of the main sites of the battles with the CRS in May) in
response to the expulsion of one of their classmates.1 Major clashes
with the police followed. Demonstrations continued, some of them
in the Latin Quarter in February (e.g. 13 February) – turning to sig-
nificant rioting and violence (e.g. 7 and 21 February), often now joined,
organized, and encouraged by left wing activists.
A ‘climate’ of discontent among the young, often shared and encour-
aged by their predominantly young, overworked and undertrained
teachers and lecturers, was developing – largely unnoticed by the
authorities other than those in education and the police. Protests and
demands in the universities and schools were a mixture of local, almost
personal issues – accommodation, curriculum, relations between and
the segregation of the sexes, conditions of study, employment, and
wider issues whether national (capitalism, the regime) or international
(capitalism, Vietnam). The unrest in France’s universities spread through-
out the country, and in some cases (e.g. Caen) led to running battles
with the police. The students’ union, UNEF, highly politicized though
not advocating violence, and the SNESup (lecturers) were involved in
organizing demonstrations, occupations and sit-ins, and in trying to
initiate politically consequential dialogue with government. Through
March, these activities continued, particularly in the Sorbonne and at
Nanterre. On 22 March in Nanterre the students ‘occupied’ the build-
ing, breaking into offices, breaking down doors and so on. It was at this
time that the slogans so associated with ’68 (e.g. ‘L’imagination au
pouvoir’, ‘prenez vos désirs pour des réalités’, ‘interdit d’interdire’) began
to appear on walls, first at the university and then rapidly into the
metro, then everywhere, along with the growing presence of an array
of left wing groups, and the symbolic renaming of places e.g. at Nanterre,
renaming the main lecture theatre the ‘Amphithéâtre Che Guevara’.
Nanterre was closed (not to reopen until 1 April, closed again on 2 May,
1968 and its Aftermath 69
reopened 9 May), and the students moved to the centre of Paris to the
Sorbonne. At this time, for example on 23 March, much of the agit-
ation was between different groups: extreme-right groups, communists,
UNEF trying to mediate and control the escalating violence, and an array
of Trotskyists, Maoists and others – soon to be joined by Anarchists and
‘Situationnistes’. Demonstrations and clashes with the police continued
throughout the month, partly triggered now by Cohn-Bendit’s arrest on
27 April.
Between 2 and 11 May the Prime Minister was on an official visit to
Iran and Afghanistan. Demonstrations in Paris were now gathering
tens of thousands of demonstrators. On 3 May there were again major
riots in the Latin Quarter which continued on and off until the massive
explosion of running street battles of 11 May. The following day, the
arrest and conviction of four students (to two months imprisonment)
led to further demonstrations and rioting. The night of 10–11 May saw
widespread rioting and thousands of students (estimates of 20,000)
building barricades (up to 60 of them) across the streets of the Latin
Quarter, digging up tens of thousands of cobble stones (to use as walls
of defence and missiles), and adding to the barricades with cars and
trees. The police response was quite brutal; and well reported, chasing
students into people’s homes, batoning the students (and everyone
else), smashing everything inside homes they entered, and attacking
passers by. Such acts created sympathy for the students among the
essentially conservative population. The bourgeoisie was witnessing its
own children being severely beaten.
Pompidou returned from Afghanistan on 11 May, and immediately
began to be seen to take control of the situation – freeing students in
detention, implying criticism of his own government, addressing
Parliament, acting in a conciliatory manner on television and to jour-
nalists. On 13 May there was a large demonstration in Paris, estimates
vary between 200,000 and 1,000,000,2 with slogans such as ‘Dix ans, ça
suffit!’ and ‘bon anniversaire mon général’ (it was the tenth anniver-
sary of the Algiers events). It is from this moment that the wave of
strikes began that would, by 20 May, involve 10,000,000 workers and
bring France to a standstill.
The following day (the 14th), de Gaulle left France on a state visit
of four days to Romania. On his return, his attitude was scornful of the
students (‘La réforme, oui, la chienlit, non’ – meaning, more or less:
yes to reforms but no to this crap). He was somewhat critical of his own
government for not having solved the crisis; and he let it be known
that he would address the nation on 24 May (we have seen how this
de Gaulle ‘device’ had so successfully been used in, for example, 1958
– but perhaps now this was an early indication of how out of touch he
was). In reality, de Gaulle’s dramatic gestures and pronouncements
were undoing the painstaking negotiations Pompidou was under-
taking. When he did make his broadcast on television and the radio he
announced that all the problems that had arisen would be addressed
and, it was implied, solved by a referendum he was going to call. The
broadcast was generally seen as a flop. In the following days, Pompidou
and others managed to persuade him not to call a referendum, but to
hold legislative elections. On the evening and night of de Gaulle’s broad-
cast (24 May) the worst of the Latin Quarter rioting took place. The
exploding ‘events’ and de Gaulle’s inaction seemed to be in inverse
proportion to one another.
Over the following two days (25th–27th) Pompidou (and his young
assistants Edouard Balladur and Jacques Chirac) thrashed out the
Grenelle Agreements with the unions, largely in an effort – perhaps
Pompidou had read his Mao Tse Tung – to separate the workers’ move-
ment from the students (many factories were now occupied as were
many universities, and fraternization and debates between workers and
students were spreading). The UNEF, PSU and other leaders held a large
rally at Charléty on the 27th which Mendès France attended; and there
was talk of ‘revolution’ here. Over the next days, it became clear that
both he and Mitterrand, through a series of public declarations, were
positioning themselves to lead a provisional government of some kind,
or stand in a presidential election (Mitterrand) – it was somewhat
unclear exactly what they were each proposing. Mendès held a press
conference on the 29th. The same day, de Gaulle ‘disappeared’
(between 11am and 6pm). It was rumoured and became known subse-
quently that he had visited the French military stationed in West
Germany. It is from here that his hesitation changed. De Gaulle
returned from Germany, and on 30 May called a cabinet meeting, and
in the afternoon made a dramatic and highly personalized radio broad-
cast (in a brief speech he uses ‘I’ and ‘my’ 15 times). The tone was that
of some of his 1940s and 1958 crisis broadcasts.3 He dissolved the
National Assembly (no referendum) and set new elections for 23 and
30 June. All the military and other dissidents of the 1961 Algiers
putsch were released from prison, others pardoned. Over the next days
many of them returned to France. De Gaulle was making peace with
his most lethal enemies, and as if rallying to himself his old enemies –
possibly for a military showdown with the rioters. That evening,
almost a million people marched, now in favour of de Gaulle – a
demonstration that surprised de Gaulle himself, and also saw support-

ive echoes in the provinces. Significantly, it was a ‘rive droite’ presence.
The rioting and demonstrations on the Left bank, and the now weeks
long ‘permanent revolution’4 in the Odéon, began to dwindle.
Between 14 and 16 June the Odéon and the Sorbonne were evac-
uated by the police. On 7 June, de Gaulle gave an interview (as ever, to
Michel Droit) on radio and television. Much of the content on ‘parti-
cipation’, for example, was similar to his earlier declaration. What was
stunningly different was the masterful personalization now of his rela-
tion to the events (and therefore to history itself; he talked at length of
his own hesitations and reflections and of the bizarre day he went
missing).5 De Gaulle was enfolding near personal defeat into, at last,
his own success and – soon – that of the regime. In the elections, the
Gaullists swept to an unimagined and till then unimaginable absolute
majority (even without the Independent Republicans), 300 out of
458 seats. The centrist parties virtually disappeared, and Mitterrand’s
FGDS disintegrated. The communists, although they held their 20 per
cent of the vote in round one, without a sound alliance with the FGDS,
lost 39, over half, of their seats. The FGDS lost 64, the PDM (the latest
grouping of the centrists) were down to 32 i.e. almost down to half the
RI’s seats. De Gaulle (and Pompidou?) had been plebiscited as he had
been in the 1958 and 1962 legislative elections, and yet another crisis
moment was transformed into triumph.
Sous les Pavés, la Cinquième République
There have been many hundreds if not thousands of analyses of the

May ’68 events. Bénéton and Touchard identified eight broad inter-
pretations.6 Let us identify and briefly comment on them. First, 1968 was
a revolutionary left wing conspiracy. This was the prevailing Gaullist
view in the immediate aftermath. The accusation against the PCF
was a false one – even in their own terms the PCF acted as a counter-
revolutionary force. The small left wing groups were indeed attempting
revolution, but they were very diverse, divided, and unsure as to what
they were trying to get to happen. They also latched on to events that
were happening anyway. In overall terms they were a symptom as much
as a cause. It is arguable that the more romantic and imaginative
Anarchists and Situationists were the true political expression of ’68.
Second, 1968 was a crisis in the education system – in France as else-
where. And it is true that there had been a huge increase in student
numbers,7 major overcrowding, a rigid pedagogical system with a very
high failure rate, and a concomitant devaluation of degrees at the

moment the system was being expanded. We should add that Nanterre
was actually quite a tolerant and progressive place. But the French
‘rising’ was one among many, and this generational phenomenon has
to be seen in a wider context. Third, the wider social and cultural
context itself: 1968 was a generational revolt. It was true that the new
generation was that of baby boomers: aware of a now very large gen-
eration gap, aspiring to new lifestyles, and to a great extent herded in
to these new concrete jungle universities in an inadequate educational
system, bored and alienated. Having said this, much of the direct and
indirect action was limited to students rather than the whole gener-
ation which suggests it was indeed an educational phenomenon or else
a class one (the children of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie).
Fourth, 1968 was a crisis of civilization. Not only Marcuse but Malraux
too thought this was the case, and to the extent that one understands
what such a grand expression actually refers to, one can see in ’68 the
questioning by the consumer society’s (middle class) children of the
consumer society itself. Fifth, 1968 was a new type of social move-
ment, demanding of more democratic decision making and new social
relations. One can say that its insurrectionary nature might contradict
this view, but certainly new social movements like feminism, eco-
logism, anti-racism, ‘autogestion’, peace movements and so on multi-
plied considerably in the 1970s, although many of these in fact
predated ’68, and therefore need to be put in context. Sixth, 1968
should be seen in an appropriate way, namely as a traditional social
conflict, given the relative economic downturn of 1967, the growth in
unemployment and short term jobs. This clearly was a context, and
much of the negotiation with the unions treated it in this way. But this
does not explain either the insurrectionary, poetic, inspiring character
of the ‘spirit’ of ’68, nor indeed its suddenness and intensity, which
no one expected. Seventh, 1968 was evidence of the decline in the
strength of, or weakness of Gaullism. This is debatable as it arguably
misinterprets, and does not explain exactly what Gaullism’s ‘strength’
was. The general view that 1968 or 1965 saw Gaullism in decline is also
highly debatable – its vote overall was actually going up all of this
time. It does raise the question, that we shall come on to, as to whe-
ther Gaullism was now more than de Gaulle. But in this, 1968 can
be seen as proof of Gaullism’s strength as much as its weakness. This
view also assumes that the ‘events’ replaced the traditional opposition,
given the latter’s weakness. If this is the case then one would have to
argue that both Gaullism and its opposition/s were in decline, which
may be true but again raises many more questions than Gaullism’s
(debatable) weakness. Finally, there is the view that ’68 was the result
of a ‘chain of events’, and of decisions taken, and the failure to take
decisions, that led to the revolutionary paroxysm. This all may be true,
in a sense has to be true, but carries with it the almost Anglo-Saxon
empirical danger of not seeing the events in relation to their social
context and the structuring of politics that the Fifth Republic had
created. It does, however, point to the highly pyramidal nature of the
Fifth Republic, and to how individual inaction led to political paralysis.
Let us now look at these events from the perspectives we have used
throughout our analysis to see the extent to which, rather than an
event that explodes within and against the Fifth Republic, it was as
much its product as anything else. We do not mean that it was only
French (one could even argue that it was German (West Berlin, 1967)
and imported into France). Its character as an expression of much of
the youth of the West (and Japan and Australasia, and so on) is beyond
doubt. Paris ’68, in fact became the quintessential expression of a
whole generation world wide.
In terms of the Fifth Republic we can say two things to begin with
about ’68. First, was its suddenness which gives us a clue to the kind
of political character Fifth Republic politics had. If we see and analyse
1968 in the same kind of dramatic discursive and performative terms
that we used to analyse 1958 we shall shed new light upon it, and
perhaps contribute to a new interpretation of ’68. Second, and related
to this, is how highly personalized May 1968 was from a range of per-
spectives that we shall examine in a moment. 1968 was quintessen-
tially a personalized social movement, the assertion of individualism
and of personal and individuated desire for liberation by a generation
of young people wanting to ‘do their thing’. The very French speci-
ficity of this desire is that it took place politically in a regime that was
itself very personalized and – therefore – psychologically in a regime
where political conflict could only take the form of Freudian revolt
against – the now ageing (he was nearly 80) – father figure. And dom-
inant and domineering father figures inhibit personal expression. The
conflict was both literally and metaphorically/psychically a genera-
tional struggle, almost a family neurosis. And it is in this context
perhaps that we should see the striking youthfulness of 1968. Let us
take our two points and look then at how dramatic and how personal
the whole of the 1968 events were.
In a sense the initial clash between Daniel Cohn-Bendit and
François Missoffe at the swimming pool has something about it that is
microcosmic of the near-revolution that followed: a Gaullist minister

at a formal occasion, an individual, being heckled by another indi-
vidual, a politically conscious, disrespectful young man – ‘Dany’ was
23 – he had in fact been at Nanterre for some years failing his sociology
exams and not going to lectures. A young man ‘refusing’ the older
man’s protocol, and in doing so deploying – at a public ceremony – use
of disrespect-as-provocation; 1968 could only ever be total (and there-
fore aimless) after this. It was a movement that, outside calls to ‘revo-
lution’, made no demands at all except a call for self-realization. The
demands that were made – the economic ones, for example, were
almost like part of a different set of events in real time as opposed to
mythic time. On this, two things: first, when giving press conferences
and interviews – filling the discursive space – Cohn-Bendit’s views were
quite mundane, for the discursive register of ’68 actually had no place
for press conference type discourse; second, Cohn-Bendit’s age was in
fact significant in that he was indeed older (in 20 year-olds’ terms)
than most students, even graduates, and his impertinence towards
Missoffe (a cheekiness captured forever later in the photo depicting
him, nose to nose, boldly smirking at a CRS on 6 May outside the
Sorbonne) was like a ‘green light’ to mischief from a slightly older
student to the half a million slightly younger ones around the country.
Another feature of the Missoffe/Cohn-Bendit clash was its subject
matter – sex and the young; still by and large a taboo subject in public,
outside the sixties generation. The topic discussed therefore was
itself an act of intergenerational conflict. To this we need to add that
Missoffe’s actually quite witty on the spot reply – of the kind: I can
imagine you would have sexual problems young man, why don’t you
jump in the new swimming pool and cool off your frustration – was
also a generational remark, the kind one can imagine made by a boy’s
school teacher, or an NCO in the army. A remark, though not out-
rageous, quintessentially demonstrating the incomprehension of the
older generation. One can sense the ‘non-dit’ of the exchange: that
Cohn-Bendit did indeed speak for a generation, though as subsequent
remarks by him indicated, a rather male-centric view of sexuality.8
Nevertheless, there is a quality to the ‘non-dit’ of a kind of ‘you don’t
understand us – ok, get this…’. A further feature of the Cohn-Bendit/
Missoffe exchange which was to inform all the events (in spite of the
street violence?) was its ludic quality. Cohn-Bendit’s provocativeness
and his sexual referencing anticipate the (desire for) the celebratory
and ludic quality of the May events. It is also true that Cohn-Bendit
(his arrest, his expulsion from France, his secret return etc) became the
personalization of the events (this brought centre stage by the media

– his photo on the front pages of the press across the world). He was
far less a tactician/strategist than other student leaders such as Alain
Geismar, Jacques Sauvageot, and Alain Krivine.9 Nevertheless, in Cohn-
Bendit the movement had found a ‘face’. In this way we can see that
the expression, ‘we are all German Jews’ (he was expelled back to
Germany on 22 May),10 is a perfect displacement of a movement, a
generation in fact, on to an individual (and back again: he is/we are).
1968, moreover, can be understood in terms of what individuals did
and did not do, how they performed – hour by hour, within the insti-
tutional configuration of the regime. It has become the received view
that many ministers – Missoffe, Peyrefitte, Joxe and others, severely
underestimated what they were up against, this reflecting the paralys-
ing pyramidal structure of (French) decision-making. It also reflected the
consequences of the Gaullist settlement’s emphasis upon one leader.
But it is not clear whether in the early stages both Pompidou and
de Gaulle also failed to grasp the scale of the issues. Pompidou did sub-
sequently gain a lot of prestige from his activism, leadership and
decision-making, but this only after his return from Afghanistan on
11 May when events were already escalating massively and publicly.
One can also wonder why Pompidou – whose professional background
was in education – had seen none of this coming. He had been Prime
Minister for six years. We could also speculate as to whether Pompidou
truly grasped the issues at the time as has been subsequently assumed.
The Grenelle ‘Accords’ were arguably a response to CGT-style demands,
rather than to the more, in some aspects, idealistically inspired CFDT.
And at the time (27 May) these were seen as such and rejected as such.
The strike continued and spread in what momentarily at the time was
seen as a political failure by Pompidou to solve the problem of the
strikes, and gave way to the subsequent de Gaulle initiative that was so
reminiscent of his style in earlier moments. We shall come back to
this. Here we can say that, overall, Pompidou did manage the crisis and
was in control of government, but what is significant is that he was
‘seen’ to be ‘doing’ something. In the classic Fifth Republic way you
need a crisis in order to be able to overcome it.
De Gaulle’s own ‘failure’ made him seem like everyone else: he
missed the significance of ’68 (and de Gaulle’s myth – 1940, 1946 – was
built upon his Cassandra knowingness). As Paris exploded, de Gaulle
went on a state trip to Romania. On his return, moreover, he was like
Pflimlin suggesting constitutional reform as Algiers erupted; and this in
the context first of referring to the events as ‘chienlit’, and second by
announcing that he would talk to the nation almost a week later. We

should contrast this with the positive use of delay, as he had used
so well in May 1958 when, in reply to Mollet’s question on the Friday,
he announced he would hold a press conference but not until the
following Monday. In 1968, the delay had the opposite effect, that
of making de Gaulle – in power – seem irrelevant to the unfolding of
what was happening generally. His grandstanding also arguably undid
all Pompidou’s efforts and made the situation escalate. And by remain-
ing within his role of guide and philosopher, when he did eventually
make his 24 May broadcast it was with the wrong tone, talking at
length of what was wrong with the country, of what it needed: reform
involving ‘participation’ – itself not without its merits in a less spectac-
ular situation (although Pompidou’s view was that it was crackers)
– but involving yet another referendum, but this time – for the first
time – in no relationship to the drama unfolding. When de Gaulle did
intervene personally, discursively, and performatively – and success-
fully, it is worth stressing that the whole situation changed. Until
29 May de Gaulle as an actor had either seemed unaware or unconcerned.
On 29 May by disappearing he dramatically attracted attention. It became
known that he had gone to Germany, and the rumours abounded
about his state of mind (from ruthless determination to helpless despair).
But the camera was on him (or searching for him) rather than any other
actor or group. The following day, with the nation anticipating further
confusion and indecision, the performance, the event they witnessed
was of dramatic personal determination and a ‘return’ to drama. He
dissolved the National Assembly, and maintained the Prime Minister
in power. It is also worth noting that on 30 May he broadcast not on
television but on radio, catching the drama of his wartime broadcasts.
By this time, moreover, sympathy for the students had turned into
a mixture of incomprehension as to their continuing motives, and a
growing fear of the chaos that might follow de Gaulle’s departure. He
also in the broadcast conjured up the spectre of a communist takeover.
Again, almost mythically (it had been prepared for days), the Gaullist
demonstration of the same evening followed the kind of dramatic
sequence that was de Gaulle’s hallmark when he was successful (flight,
return, intervention, pronouncement, acclamation). The demon-
stration (up the Champs-Elysées to the Etoile) was the route of France’s
national celebrations (cf. de Gaulle in 1944, and January 1959 – although
he went the other way). Because of his comportment and interventions
from 29 May, de Gaulle personally retook the political initiative from
the rioters.
In very personal terms, the idea that politics had moved away from
the established parties and politicians (although Mendès and Mitter-
rand would probably have felt anything but ‘established’ at the time)
was compounded by the mistaken personal interventions of opposition
politicians. Both Mendès’ presence at the Charléty meeting and Mitter-
rand’s call the following day for a new government were not calls to
violence, in fact were the opposite, attempts to overcome the crisis
peacefully. But both initiatives looked like opportunistic flirting with
the streets (which they too had failed to see coming, although some
claimed that Mendès’ book La République moderne was a foretelling; this
author fails to see how); 11 and both were inadequate and inept, as they
were neither clear nor made bold (or even ambivalent) self-confident
gestures (the use of ambivalence is perhaps a precise art).12 Like the
Gaullists, they were not ‘players’ at this time so were as powerless as
they seemed. And both gestures – Mendès at Charléty and Mitterrand’s
declarations – echoed their own depiction of de Gaulle’s own comport-
ment of May 1958: trying to come to power on the back of an uprising.
In this regime where discourse had been so politically consequential
and this country where language and thought had played such a
defining role (forever, but especially politically since Dreyfus), 1968 as
a discursive event could not be equalled. Throughout the period of
May and June, the packed out Odéon and the Sorbonne were the sites
of endless discussions of contemporary politics, culture, international
relations, political philosophy, and so on; but generally the ‘discourse
of 68’ and its imagery with its poetic celebration of language – ‘sous les
pavés la plage’; ‘soyez réalistes, demandez l’impossible’, ‘la poésie est
dans la rue’, and so on,13 along with lampoon, and caricature, of cap-
italism, but particularly of de Gaulle himself, and its at times carnival
and holiday atmosphere was in the true tradition of French politics
generally and the Fifth Republic’s conventions of drama and symbolic
politics specifically, and would have a major impact on political
discourse in the 1970s and 1980s.
Just as discourse captured the months of May and June 1968, so
too did discourse allow an ‘imagined’ event to appear as a real one. The
students, for example, in spite of their rhetoric, were never really in
any significant contact with the workers. Much was made of this; but
for example, when students, 1,000 strong, marched from the Sorbonne
to the striking Renault factory, the workers wouldn’t let them in. It is
arguable that there was no revolution in the making. It is true each
section of society – students and workers – expressed in May and June
the social discontents of their class with the difficulties experienced by
the rapid changes of the 1960s, but the PCF was probably right to
see the gauchistes as interlopers in this area. The PCF, however, was
no more in tune with the workers at the beginning, and it is true that
there was a spontaneity, a suddenness and a ‘Front populaire’ flavour
to the early factory occupations and the spread of the strikes into a
national event involving 10,000,000 workers, and none of this was
anticipated by the PCF or CGT. It is arguable, however, that, from
14 May, as the working classes became involved, the nature of the
’68 events entered a different phase, the ‘social’ phase; different and
not dialectically related to the students, and whose two main aspects
were best expressed by the two main unions: the CGT pressing for
better pay, and the CFDT pressing for less authoritarian industrial rela-
tions, and both pressing for better working conditions and job security.
Many of the students’ slogans were incomprehensible to working class
people (e.g. ‘la révolution est incroyable parce que vraie’). Having said
this, the Popular Front aspects of the strikes, and the revolutionary
symbolism and Sorelian style revolutionary myth celebrated and main-
tained in discourse and through images (the tear gas clouds wafting
across the cobble stones and over the barricades and past the cafés in
the Boulevard St Germain) maintained ’68 as a (potential) revolution
in the minds of the acutely historically conscious French.
The large (30,000) and politically articulate Charléty meeting evoked
respect in the Stalinist hearts of the PCF, only too aware of the role of
discourse in politics. We can note here too how discourse was turned
against the PCF in the elections themselves (by de Gaulle, Pompidou and
others) for the PCF was not really the electoral enemy but the perfect
mythical enemy. They were the recipients of a politically very powerful
anti-communist rhetoric (the irony being, and de Gaulle/Pompidou’s
knowing this, that the PCF and CGT were as against the ‘events’ as the
UNR was). Finally, the decisive role of discourse and rhetoric, in 1968
as in 1958, was shown by the example of de Gaulle himself. Through
his discursive (and persona) failures in different forms until 30 May, and
from then on his dramatic use of rhetoric and the tone of his 30 May
speech and highly-charged persona (Had he seen the army? Had he
almost gone into exile but returned renewed and celebrated in the Etoile
demonstration? Would he fight the students? Had he saved the republic
again from chaos? How was he now after weeks of near-revolution in his
beloved republic?) – de Gaulle had demonstrated how rhetoric and
persona defined the Fifth Republic as a place of drama.
In May 1968, the political parties and government were in a position
not dissimilar from that of May 1958, but this included the Gaullists
this time, and the reason lies once again more with perceptions than
with realities, but perceptions which informed legitimacy and author-
ity; for it was perceived in both cases, largely because of inaction on
the part of the government and parties, that the ‘sites’ of politics had
gone elsewhere (in 1958 to the Army on one side of government and
de Gaulle on the other). Only the PCF and the PSU were ‘actors’ in
these events, the former by countering the students while trying to
respond and adapt to circumstances, the latter through trying to be
part of the events ideologically/discursively while trying to avoid
implication in the violent tactics of the gauchistes. We can make two
points: first, because these too were now so personalized, the ‘false
moves’ or non moves of a Peryrefitte, Mendès, or Mitterrand (or the
PCF) discredited the parties themselves. Second, the students’ discourse
of provocation, lampoon, and ridicule was, is, a trenchant rhetorical
political weapon in that either personally ridiculing or asserting the
political irrelevance of the established political parties and move-
ments makes discursive response impossible. The students in 1968
re/activated a rhetorical source of extreme effectiveness in French polit-
ical life: making fun.14 Such an approach is all the more effective given
the continuing hierarchies, paternalism and deferential and stuffy rela-
tions that still existed in French society and politics, and were
– unfairly, but that is of no consequence – encapsulated for the stu-
dents in the ‘persona’ of de Gaulle, and in his and all the other polit-
ical parties. Having said this, we should also stress that no ‘formal’
political interventions – Mitterrand’s calling for a provisional gov-
ernment, the PCF calling for a people’s government (gouvernement
populaire), Pompidou or de Gaulle promising reforms, were of any
discursive consequence, because much of ’68 was about a mythical
and dramatic celebration of youth whose ludic side was about fun,
being together and discovering each other, and whose contestatory
side was about provoking and denying the authority of law, govern-
ment, politics, education, the family, religion, moral convention,
bosses, and virtually, while the party lasted, everything else.
Was there an ideological dimension in 1968 akin to de Gaulle’s
‘vision’ and political programme of 1958?15 In certain ways there was
but, as a kind of utopian celebration of youth, it could not actually
elaborate a practical programme, even a practical social proposal, in
spite of the extreme left’s dreams of revolution. Some of the ideas
informing 1968 were about changing attitudes, lifestyles, moral codes
and so on, and in that its ‘ideology’ was realized in the aftermath of
the events themselves. There was also a general liberal-left outlook
seeking expression in the 1960s. Because of increased education, more

leisure and more media coverage, a generalized disapproval of the
Vietnam War and even a kind of liberal Third-worldism (against
poverty and disease) were part of many people’s thinking at this time.
There had also been a dramatic decline in religious practice amongst
the young as well as a generalized ‘sexual revolution’. The writings of
J.-P. Sartre in particular had had enormous influence upon young
people’s attitudes; but in strict political terms, there was little ideo-
logical or policy demand, beyond the practical demands of the
communists and the ‘autogestionnaire’ slant in CFDT thinking.16
One of the effects of ’68 was to momentarily drain formal politics of
its content: nothing would satisfy the demands of most of the young
people. In the slogan ‘Be realistic, demand the impossible’ it was the
demanding that mattered (interestingly though one should perhaps
translate ‘demandez’ as the rather deferential ‘ask’). The final area
where 1968 was crucially influential within and upon the Fifth Republic
was in the media and in opinion. The ORTF was not the place to get
free and fair reporting, but although government controlled it, it could
not avoid responding to the coverage the events were getting. Inde-
pendent radio and other TV channels (in neighbouring countries but
which broadcast in France)17 played a large part. Reporters brought the
startling (and noisy) events into people’s homes. Public opinion was
also startled by the initial heavy handedness of the police – partly
because it was indiscriminate – and this had a major effect upon the
course of events. Opinion was also aware of events and equally aware
that the executive seemed to be less than properly aware of the
running nightly battles in the heart of Paris and other cities. Evolving
‘opinion’ was also a significant player by the end of May in that, ini-
tially quite sympathetic, it began to turn away from the rioters as fear
of social and political breakdown began to take hold, which in turn
influenced political events, in part restoring to de Gaulle (and Pompidou)
authority to act. In many ways, some of the rather over the top ana-
lyses of ’68 as a psychodrama were correct,18 in that a questioning of
virtually every social and political institution was taking place in the
context of major rioting and the paralysis of not only the education
system but of the whole country (transport, utilities, commerce); and
in terms of attitudes and expectations and general comportment. In
many ways, things were never the same again.
The Gaullist landslide in the elections of June was in part the reasser-
tion of a nation that had watched but disapproved of the May events;
but it was also a reassertion of ‘ordinary-ness’, for really there was little
else on offer; certainly not from the gauchistes and the students (for
whom elections anyway (‘scrutin putain’) were a trick played on idiots,
a ‘piège à cons’). The PCF, in spite of the way it was depicted, had
offered no credible alternative (in fact, it did not offer even an incred-
ible one); the more idealistic – PSU, CFDT – activists, in spite of
their intelligence and imaginativeness, were only claiming a kind of
reappraisal of workplace relations, social relations, and industrial prac-
tices. The kind of ‘romantic politics’ that had brought de Gaulle to
power had gone out of the formal polity, and ’68 was a kind of young
people’s romantic politics with no political aim (‘les motions tuent
l’émotion’). The next few years, however, would see a range of attempts
from the right and the left, as well as their extremes, to bring it back in
again.
In a range of ways, therefore, 1968 was an ‘event’ of the Fifth Republic
itself. Let us make some preliminary remarks. It was, as was said at the
time, about ‘roses’ as well as ‘bread’ (and also perhaps roses for some
and bread for others), and in this it was an expression of the consumer
boom and its children as well as an attack upon the uneven ‘consumer
society’ of the post-war years. It started as we have seen as, on the one
hand a reaction to the massive and very badly planned boom in higher
education provision, and on the other as an almost secondary gripe
about student accommodation and access to girls’ dormitories (it was
essentially that way round); and yet by the time of the Faure reforms
of 1968–69,19 the cultural revolution that was underway dwarfed the
educational reforms’ relevance.
1968 was also a French, initially Parisian but soon national, event
that united many of the Fifth Republic’s first generation of young adults.
It is true that France was not alone in its rebellion. Similar events and
comparable cultural changes were taking place elsewhere, across America’s
campuses, in (West) Berlin and Amsterdam and London, and across
Italy, across the West generally. Eastern Europe too was beginning to
experience similar social and cultural changes. But nowhere were the
events so well known as in de Gaulle’s Republic. ‘Paris ’68’ lifted to the
level of romance and poetry the contesting of a regime and its cultural
values. And the notion of toppling the regime was nowhere as acute
as it was in France, and this was because of the Fifth Republic’s
own political culture. France was still, in education, the family, and
industrial relations, an old-fashioned, authoritarian, and sometimes
stifling society. And the irony of de Gaulle’s own dramatic view of
politics was that now he was the one being characterized as the old and
authoritarian brake upon progress and change. And unlike in, say, West
Germany, Italy, and the UK, he was the perfect target for youthful
contestation, with his monarchical style, now great age and apparent
condescension, insistence upon protocol and highly concentrated power.
His regime, like all those with power concentrated into the image of the
uncontested leader, was susceptible to the idea that challenges to
the leader might lead to overthrow. And if de Gaulle did not take the
events seriously when they began, he soon came to believe that indeed
he and his regime were about to be overthrown. This did not happen,
but ’68 brought to new heights the tendency of ‘opinion’ to express
itself. ‘Opinion’ so cherished, possibly even created by de Gaulle, here
in its youthful expression had indeed expressed itself but now had
turned spectacularly against him. It is also worth pointing out that ’68’
became ‘the paradigm’ for protest in the Fifth Republic – contesting
‘power’ and political authority became endemic in the Fifth Republic.
1968 was also a Fifth Republic event in that, in spite of initial govern-
ment control of the media, it was a media event – like 1958, like 1965,
through television, newsreel, radio, newspapers, magazines, interpersonal
exchange, international interest, and a pervasive sense of carnival, it was a
national event lived at the level of the whole population, participating
in this cathartic moment of cultural change.
The three main areas however, which allow us to treat the events
of 1968 as best understood as an event of the Fifth Republic are: the
way in which ‘opinion’ in 1968 was given particular status by the Fifth
Republic, the way in which a ‘direct’ mass electorate in 1968 was
created by it, and the way in which personalized leadership was dra-
matically affected in the Fifth Republic by 1968. Let us examine these.
‘Opinion’
Over and above generational opinion being refashioned by, among

other ‘isms’, Maoism, Trotskyism and the influence of Sartre amongst
the student population, 1968 was a national opinion-informing event,
discussed between friends and within families and in schools, com-
mented, and watched and listened to, on television and radio, by the
whole population. It was arguably the first (relatively) pacific ‘revo-
lution’ of this kind. It anticipated in many ways the (would-be-pacific)
Prague Spring of the same year and the ‘Velvet revolutions’ of the late
1980s and 1990s in Europe, and elsewhere. In retrospect, a lot of the
violence seemed ‘staged’ rather than actual. And for many participants,
the apparent violence was secondary to the fun.20 As national spectacle,
the May events were partly ‘controlled’ by public empathy – police baton
charges upon the nations’ middle class youth, including females, par-
ticularly on the night of 10 May, galvanized opinion. This sympathy
was to wane quite quickly and, coupled with the lack of a real project
for the revolution itself, contributed – once withdrawn – to the ulti-
mate defeat of the movement. ‘May 68’ was a phenomenon in many
ways nourished then contained by the Republic’s new ‘opinion’. 1968
was also part of a paradigmatic generational culture shift which had
begun to take place as early as the late 1940s. The modern France
de Gaulle had himself helped create turned against him and, in a classic
paternal response, he could not understand it.
The unmediated relationship escapes to the streets
Through referendums, plebiscitary legislative elections, ‘bains de foule’,

a decisive appeal and privileged relationship to a ‘France profonde’,
de Gaulle’s personalized relationship with France in a certain kind of
way ‘created’ the French. In 1962, the constitutional reform gave this
unmediated relationship institutional reality. The 1968 generation’s
collective dreams of self-fulfilment represented an alternative France or
perhaps a variation of this modern France that had not been properly
included (it is arguable that de Gaulle barely knew it existed). It is also
in this light that we should see the pro-de Gaulle demonstration of
30 May (and the landslide elections of June) as a truly Fifth Republic
response, an echo, of this new institutionalized collective, fashioned by
the Fifth Republic. All of these entities are part real, part imagined
(some of the demonstrators on 30 May were arguably simply very right
wing), but in 1968 they all made up France. The new Fifth Republican
electorate and opinion were now made up of parents, trade unionists
and the Gaullist voters of the June landslide as well as the new gener-
ation of students, revolutionaries, and the millions of less politicized
baby boomers joining, participating in, observing, witnessing, being
carried along by, enjoying, a cultural revolution.
Personal leadership (and its rejection)
We are perhaps moving here from our own culture-orientated per-

spective on politics into political psychology, but there was something
very Freudian and Oedipal in both the causes and motivations for the
May events, and in their expression. It is not without significance that
the iconography and much of the graffiti (‘la chienlit, c’est lui’) of 1968
was defiantly directed at de Gaulle, and de Gaulle represented as an old
man by the generation of misunderstood baby-boomers. (It is also

arguable that for many of the politically active students, the PCF also
represented an Oedipal target.) One thinks too of the impish expres-
sion on Cohn-Bendit’s face in the photo we mentioned above. The
view of France as bloquée coincided perfectly with the pyramidal (or
perhaps rather volcanic) perception of the polity, with de Gaulle being
blown off the apex by the repressed and vital forces of a newly virile
(and nubile) generation. The image of a regime momentarily more
reminiscent of the July Monarchy or the Second Empire (both initially
very optimistic regimes), susceptible to collapse because of its (person-
alized) structure, lent the last years (as it turned out, the very last year)
of de Gaulle’s presidency, a fin-de-régime quality.
Let us turn, however, from the psycho-social to the politico-
institutional and politico-cultural consequences of the events of 1968
for the Fifth Republic. Before we do, it is perhaps worth prefacing our
analysis with the observation that, irony of all the ironies, the Fifth
Republic emerged from what turned out to be the end of de Gaulle’s
reign even more strengthened; and perhaps the irony of that irony is
that so did de Gaulle, or rather his posthumous influence.
Let us look at the consequences under seven headings: the imme-
diate consequences; the future mythification of the political process;
the effect upon de Gaulle; upon the longer politico-cultural situation;
upon the Gaullist party and others; upon the left generally; and upon
the futures of individual political leaders.
1) The regime was nearly overthrown, but in fact was not overthrown.
The events were reminiscent of earlier revolutions and uprisings.
February 1934 was in many people’s memory (although not the
students’ memory). But the regime withstood the assault and loss
of authority (akin to the Fourth Republic’s loss of authority in 1958).
It withstood the assault (though the cultural revolution flooded in
from/out to everywhere), but it also withstood the loss of authority.
De Gaulle’s authority was severely diminished: in spite of the land-
slide legislatives of June he had been seen to wobble – and had been
mocked; and it is arguable that he never recovered, in fact could not
recover, once such lampoon had been so nationally disseminated.
2) In true revolutionary nature, 1968 was a ‘magic moment’. It linked
up with the past (Revolutions, June 1936), but as far as the Fifth
Republic was concerned, this was not an old tradition but a new
one: the introduction into the wider political culture of the Fifth
Republic of the myth of ‘the rising’. For the ‘generation of 68’ it
became a myth akin to 1934 for the radical right, 1940 for the
Resistance generation, or left activism (particularly 1956–58) against

Algeria. And arguably it was a myth more widely adhered to than all
of these. In terms of its becoming a mode of political activity, it
became generally associated with the university (and school) sector,
although not exclusively – farmers, nurses, teachers, and so on
carried on this spirit of ‘contestation’ throughout the Fifth Republic.
Various attempts at re-enactments of ’68 informed the Fifth Republic,
one of the most significant but by no means the only one being
December 1986 and the opposition to government education reforms.
And in 2002 (between the two rounds of the presidential elections)
the defence of the Fifth Republic against Le Pen went along ‘1968’
lines (as did the protests against de Villepin’s CPE in 2006). Although
peaceful, the demonstrations and atmosphere in 2002 captured
those of ’68.21 For better and worse, education policy itself from
1968 on has been fashioned (and more often than not blocked) by
the experience of or appeals to 1968. So the ‘spirit’ lived on in a
variety of ways – partly thanks to 1968’s relatively unbloody, indeed
ludic, aspects, inspiring the younger generation while continuing to
worry subsequent leaders such as Edouard Balladur, Jacques Chirac
and Nicolas Sarkozy. Few could erase, however, the public perception
of the colossus, Charles de Gaulle, misunderstanding, hesitating, fee-fi-
fo-ing, stumbling badly, particularly in the early weeks of the crisis,
as he tried to grasp what was happening to his regime.
3) In a republic which through institutional and cultural reconfigur-
ation and influence had become so personalized, the contesting and
to a certain extent humiliation of de Gaulle had a series of effects
upon the regime. In the first place, the President had been insulted
and defied in a near-Oedipal celebration of defiant youth. In a country
where both protocol and its negation, lampoon, are so important in
political exchanges, the reduction of de Gaulle to the status of ‘silly
old fool’ would have a dramatic effect upon his fortunes in the
medium term: in the first place, it was clear that alternatives to him
were emerging – we shall look at this below – or were at least imag-
inable; in the second, it was apparent that the party (the UNR) and
the party system more generally was still intact, both because of and
despite the landslide Gaullist victory. The Gaullist landslide, and the
weakness of the democratic left (and the fizzling out of the May
movement itself) implied that there was no alternative to parlia-
mentary democracy of some kind. Once the crisis was over, it was
more or less business as usual. De Gaulle on the other hand looked
shaken, out of touch, and less than infallible.
4) We mentioned the ‘cultural’ influence of the mythology of ’68;

there was an even more fundamental change in French attitudes
and comportments which all converge in or around 1968, if not in
their origin then their crystallization as powerful social forces. For
personal relations, attitudes to and of women, community groups,
structures of authority, cultural and other institutions, sexuality,
including homosexuality, lifestyles, self expression, artistic expres-
sion, and so on, for all of these, 1968 was a significant moment.
This cultural shift saw ’68 (‘Where were you? What did you do?’)
as a new generation’s coming of age. This would have significant
effects upon the comportment of the various lefts vis-à-vis each
other through the 1970s until the ’68 generation came to power in
1981 (under the leadership of Mitterrand, not of that generation,
but as we shall see, who used it as part of his Damascene conversion
to socialism). It is also the case that some elements of the extreme
right saw 1968 as a moment when neo-fascism or neo-conservatism
was given a major boost in France both organizationally and ideo-
logically. Everything had a connection to ’68.
5) The political parties of the right responded supportively to the
President, after an initial aimlessness (reflecting government aim-
lessness) in the opening days and nights of the events, demon-
strating the nature and pitfalls of blind dependence. The party did
regroup and mobilize well, first in terms of responding to the crisis,
second in terms of the 31 May show of support for de Gaulle, and
third for the snap legislative elections in which the party swept to
an absolute majority in the Assembly in support of the President.
This very act nevertheless began the separation of the party from
its leader. He disliked the new Assembly majority, his own, for
its ‘ultra’ character, and supported one of the few reformers in its
ranks, Edgar Faure, who, as Minister of education, was the architect
of and presided the ‘Faure’ reforms of 1968 which responded to
some of the students’ demands for university reform. The party and
de Gaulle were in a complex relationship, and again in almost
Freudian manner, were moving away from one another in dress-
rehearsal for après-de Gaulle (although few had any sense that that
moment would come so soon). The Gaullist allies hitherto, the
Independent Republicans, led by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, were also
to come of age; with the Gaullist landslide, the RI were able (they
had been trying for some time, as we saw in the previous chapter) to
take their distance from the Gaullists and go, not into opposition,
but into a kind of self-reflective period in which the essential stra-
tegic concern was the promotion of their own leader. The elec-
tion of an ‘ultra’ Gaullist Assembly also saw the replacement of
Pompidou as Prime Minister (de Gaulle appointed the loyal and
politically unadventurous Maurice Couve de Murville). Georges
Pompidou therefore was ejected from the Gaullist star system, such
as it was around de Gaulle, into a wider orbit, but one which ulti-
mately was to change the course of Gaullism and of the Fifth
Republic.
6) On the left, the effects of 1968 were even more profound and far-
reaching. We have seen that by 1968, that is after the 1967 legis-
lative elections, the left opposition had a respectable minority
presence in the National Assembly, and even a shadow cabinet. The
various parties of the left were federated into alliance, and
Mitterrand led this loose coalition, itself in loose coalition with the
PCF. 1968 shattered the left: the PCF was depicted as revolutionary
by the right and by the media. Loathing the extreme left’s advent-
urism, and losing control of the strike movement in its early stages,
it was caught between its revolutionary rhetoric and its unrevolu-
tionary practice; rather than at last appearing respectable, it simply
appeared hypocritical at worst, irrelevant at best. This was followed
by the crushing of the Prague Spring in August by Warsaw pact
troops and the PCF’s support for the Soviet Union’s action. The PCF
lost to the party a generation of supporters, members and intellect-
uals. The SFIO fared little better. It too was caught in the same
dilemma of a radical rhetoric and a cautious approach which meant
that during the events the socialists bordered on the status of polit-
ical bystanders. In all ‘revolutionary’ situations there is a polarization
of choice; here, caught between the Fifth Republic and the students,
the SFIO seemed even less relevant than the PCF. The longer term
consequence of 1968 for the left, however, was that over time the
spirit of ’68 flowed into the established left, mainly the SFIO but
also the PCF. And it provided the left with youth, ideas and activ-
ism, and a millenarian quality it had lacked under Molletism, a
‘migration myth’ which was to have positive effects upon the left’s
fortunes during the 1970s.
7) In terms of the effects of 1968 upon the political personalities
involved, the case of François Mitterrand is a good example. Mitter-
rand, like de Gaulle, like everyone, was caught in uncomprehending
surprise by the May events. And the events did what all leftist viol-
ence, other than cold blooded murder, does to good republicans and
social liberals: it throws them into confusion. As the TV and press
had shown, the violence of the authorities was severe, but it was
nevertheless in defence of the republic, and it was not murderous;
the students and strikers might, however, topple the regime. The
political compromise with this moral dilemma was the Charléty meet-
ing and Mitterrand’s declarations to the press. Mendès France made
the same miscalculation as Mitterrand. The consequence was, or
so it seemed, the end of Mitterrand’s career (Mendès’ was already
really over). His gesture seemed like mere opportunism (even worse,
inconsequential opportunism). Following the ensuing Gaullist land-
slide in June, the FGDS collapsed. Mitterrand, apart from his small
eternal entourage of loyal followers like Georges Dayan, was without
a party support base. The ‘new’ socialist party could now, guided
again by Mollet, and led by Alain Savary, undertake the reconstitu-
tion of non-communist socialism from which Mitterrand could now
be excluded.
The suddenness, the drama, and the rhetorical quality of ’68, its
relationship to the institutions of the Fifth Republic, their reaction
to the wider culture, the role of opinion and the role of the personal
within it make 1968 a quintessential moment of the Fifth Republic’s
evolution.
4
1969–74: Gaullism Without
de Gaulle
In April 1969, de Gaulle precipitated his own downfall by bringing

in a referendum on two issues, neither of which had constitutional
‘referendum status’.1 More importantly, however, he revitalized, now
through separation and rejection, his emotional relationship with the
French and, even more importantly still, the wider role played by
emotion in French political relationships.
The 1969 referendum
De Gaulle had stated during the 1968 events2 that he was going to call
a referendum. He was persuaded to call legislative elections instead. It
was as if he desired one more referendum, one more unequivocal
affirmation of his personal authority and his republic. Desire more
than reason explains why the referendum de Gaulle did call in April
1969 was a major, and for him final, political miscalculation, not only
in terms of its defeat – the first referendum defeat of this kind in
French history3 – but in terms of the subject chosen,4 his analysis of
the attitude of the French, and his appraisal of the strength of the
opposition. It was a personal miscalculation based upon a misinterpre-
tation of just about everything. The French did not particularly under-
stand the referendum topic, nor care. They would come to care for him
enormously, once again, but only after they had rejected him.
De Gaulle presented his proposed reform as a kind of final piece of
his great Oeuvre. Drawing upon his notion of ‘participation’, a notion
that is difficult to identify in concrete reality, de Gaulle proposed a
reform of the Senate, and to accompany it a setting up of stronger
regional governance. The reforms involved setting up part-elected,
part-nominated bodies representing various social, economic and local
89
interests. At one level, such a measure seemed pointless or rather

difficult to see following logically as part of the ‘finished’ republic; at
another it seemed dangerous for a modern democracy, particularly one
as turbulent as France as it would have withdrawn from the Senate its
legislative function, turning it into a wise but only advisory body, and
leaving the National Assembly (alongside the President) as the only
politically consequent institution. In his 9 September 1968 press con-
ference, de Gaulle portrayed his reform initiative as rectifying the ills of
May 1968. The French themselves were not particularly interested in
the Senate, but creating a unicameral legislature as a response to the
1968 uprising seemed to be evidence of a stratospheric level of per-
sonal capriciousness in the presidential republic. Many also saw it as a
thinly disguised, irresponsible, and personal attack upon the Senate by
de Gaulle because its members had never been his unswerving supporters.
After announcing the reform, he then declared that the referendum
would take place a full seven and a half months after he introduced the
idea. This long period between September 1968 and April 1969 allowed
for the near totality of political forces outside Gaullism to coalesce into
a ‘no’ to de Gaulle, and give rise to a situation where a France without
de Gaulle, a Republic that would not collapse into chaos or a commu-
nist takeover, was imaginable – and, once imagined, quite possible.
One has to ask whether such a dull referendum topic, which had
nevertheless institutional implications, which roused the opposition of
the whole political class, and, worse, the indifference of the popula-
tion, and which had no certainty of success, was not, if not a deliberate
daring by de Gaulle of the French to disavow him,5 then at least was a
decision – truly illustrative of a regime in which persona plays such a
role – driven by emotional demand of some kind. The UNR backed the
measure, but even here there was uncertainty in some of the declar-
ations of Prime Minister Couve de Murville. There was muted support
from Pompidou (whose status as loyal Gaullist would be enhanced
whatever happened). In a few cases there was outright hostility, and,
overall, dutiful but lukewarm support from a party as perplexed as
everyone, except for diehards like Malraux, whose strong support and
style too – like de Gaulle’s – were rapidly appearing to belong to the
past.
On 3 October, Alain Poher, a centrist, was elected President of the
Senate. He stated immediately his, and the Senate’s, opposition to the
referendum and the reform. Poher was immediately treated in a lot of
the media as an interesting, competent, likeable figure. In the follow-
ing weeks the debate in the country gained some interest in terms of
1969–74: Gaullism Without de Gaulle 91
whether de Gaulle’s initiative was, in fact, unconstitutional; and whether

it was one question (regions), or two (Senate and then regions). There
was general media agreement that de Gaulle’s initiative was a personal
one with very little support from either the political class or the
general population.
The unions, the PSU, the PCF, the SFIO, the Radicals, the National
Association of Mayors, the Conseil d’Etat who declared the referendum
not properly constitutional and clear, the centrists, even some UNR,
and then significantly Giscard d’Estaing – whose party was ambivalent,
but which agreed upon a free vote of its members, all opposed de
Gaulle’s initiative. Poher’s popularity, almost fatherly reassurance
while opposing the referendum, rose, and he became a kind of sym-
bolic figurehead of the ‘no’ vote. He seemed to offer a symbolic reassur-
ance in the context of the President’s questionable behaviour. It was as
if everyone was protecting de Gaulle’s republic from de Gaulle.
Even Pompidou who was de facto the leader of ‘yeses’ contributed to
this imagining of a France without de Gaulle by declaring twice (sig-
nificantly while outside France as if such a declaration inside would
have appeared treacherous), once in Rome (17 January), once on Swiss
TV (13 February) that he would be a candidate in any future presiden-
tial election. And his travels, his being away from government, his
reflection (he was writing a book) all contributed to his developing
presidential image. The real key to understanding this moment of
French political history lies here, in the centrality of the real and
symbolic relationship between de Gaulle and Pompidou.
1968 sowed the seeds of leadership renewal. In terms of authority,
1968 saw a symbolic transition from de Gaulle to Pompidou. De Gaulle’s
style of leadership had begun to have negative outcomes. From 1967
and the embarrassment, as we have seen, of ‘Vive le Québec libre!’,
de Gaulle’s popularity began to slide. 1968 dealt him a hammer blow.
His style of leadership, one might argue Gaullism itself, had left a vacuum
in a time of crisis. Neither his party nor his government knew what to
do when the ‘events’ took place. Throughout May and June 1968, only
Pompidou enjoyed growing respect and authority. Until de Gaulle’s
dramatic 30 May intervention, Pompidou alone had responded to
the crisis and driven government action. His reward, cold dismissal,
reasserted the primacy of the (humiliated) President, and the centrality
of caprice. 1969 provided Pompidou the ideal occasion to step back
into the frame as the successor, because he had been the loyal lieu-
tenant for six years, and perhaps more importantly because he had
been rejected. Pompidou was therefore the significant symbolic and
real candidate to succeed de Gaulle. But did he have the ‘vision’, the
status, the ascribed character traits to allow him to take de Gaulle’s place?
Yes and no, is the answer; and yes and no was to prove to be the success-
ful answer. He had demonstrated loyalty, competence and authority for
six years as Prime Minister – an unprecedented term of office in France.
He also, like de Gaulle, was an intellectual and a scholar.6 He had proved
to be more practical, more sensible, and arguably more far-sighted, and
this for years. De Gaulle had often been seen as lacking cool judgement
on a range of issues – the latest being the 1969 referendum itself. A very
practical reason for Pompidou’s popularity over even de Gaulle’s for
many Gaullists was that he had sound economic and financial expertise
and was, like them, conservative in a way de Gaulle was not.
And the latest initiative of de Gaulle – to embed participation in his
republic – was viewed with horror by most significant UDR leaders,
including Pompidou (the UNR became the UDR in 1968). So, Pompidou
represented several strategically fortuitous elements of leadership at
this conjuncture. He was popular in both the party and the country.
He did not pretend to de Gaulle’s greatness, and to the extent that
anyone could be imagined replacing the President, lack of pretention
and competence might be welcome. And he had had his ‘inheritance’
petulantly snatched away from him by the great man himself. In
a certain way, the April 1969 referendum was in part a choice
between de Gaulle’s Fifth Republic and Pompidou’s, in part a choice
of de Gaulle’s republic through Pompidou. Pompidou’s subsequent
election was the confirmation of both choices.
The official campaign for the referendum, lasting two weeks, began
– at last – in mid April (14 April), this time on television. Poher came
across as statesmanlike (his opponent, the Prime Minister, Couve de
Murville, less certain of himself). Two days before the end of the cam-
paign, Poher again appeared on television adding determination to his
personable image. He drew attention to the drama being inflicted by de
Gaulle upon himself by stressing that there was no reason for de Gaulle
to resign if he were defeated, which constitutionally was true. Poher
further stressed that if de Gaulle were to resign, the rule of law and sta-
bility would prevail, thereby reassuring while enhancing his own
image (the head of the French police federation had said the same only
days before, that if de Gaulle resigned, the gendarmerie and police
would ensure that the country remained stable). It was looking more
and more as if de Gaulle’s petulance, not the dangers of communist
takeover or regime collapse, was the true cause of the upheaval and
potential instability.
On 10 April in a television interview with Michel Droit, de Gaulle

not only affirmed he would step down if the referendum went against
him but dramatized the issue further by likening it to all the major
decisions that had had to be decided by referendum since 1945.
Indifference greeted the lion’s roar. According to the polls, and unlike
in referendums generally, neither the ‘yes’ nor the ‘no’ opinion in
the country was particularly strong. Indifference, the real enemy of the
referendum, prevailed.
On 25 April de Gaulle made another broadcast stating the points he
had stressed on 10 April. Two days later the ‘non’ vote won by 53.2 per
cent to 46.7 per cent with the usual near 20 per cent abstentions.7 In
Paris and in most of the large towns, the ‘no’ was even higher than
the national average. De Gaulle resigned on 28 April,8 and went to
Colombey (and then to Ireland throughout the following presidential
campaign). The notion of de Gaulle being ‘gone’ and the republic con-
tinuing was now a reality. And he ‘featured’ virtually not at all in the
presidential election campaign period that followed, except in the form
of photos from a short film of him walking with his wife on an Irish
beach as if in exile. Following his resignation he never spoke in public
again. His death the following year was like a demonstration to the
French of the totality of his devotion to the higher calling, and a stark
reminder of what they had lost, had in fact abandoned.
De Gaulle had always used referendums as a major political weapon
to gain popular legitimacy, and push through his agenda. He had
used national elections in this way too, as we have seen. Was April 1969,
however, really a miscalculation? In one sense, the obvious sense, of
course it was, and a sign that de Gaulle had lost his grip. The past master
of referendums would never in 1958 or 1962 have proposed such a non-
issue as a major national consultation in order to gain approval. For de
Gaulle, the referendum was a method of gaining popular support to act,
alongside the paraphernalia of traditional republicanism, but it was also
about establishing a mythical relationship with the French and France.
The previous referendums took place in perceived ‘crises’ and he had
always used this context to make the referendum a personal plebiscite.
De Gaulle never used referendums to avoid an immediate political
problem9 but to confirm his authority to act. But the real nature of the
Fifth Republic – an imagined set of relationships – can best be seen when
the leader/follower relationship breaks down, and in this case when devo-
tion is demanded, and refused.
The 1969 referendum, like the other ‘moments’ 1962, 1965, 1968,
was actually a major consolidation of the Fifth Republic, paradoxically
perhaps the major consolidation in that it revived the myth of rejec-

tion and allowed it to become again a major political resource. The
referendum of 1969 allows us to see the true role of the referendum
not only in de Gaulle’s thought but also now in French politics. The
referendum that tells us most about the republic was the least memo-
rable and the worst timed and executed. We can make two substantial
points.
First, de Gaulle did not need the fundamental legitimation of the
people, for, in his view, he was legitimate whether in or out of power.
De Gaulle’s legitimation predates his acceptance by the people, and
resides in a ‘moment’ of or a place in mythic time. Approval by the
people, through acclamation, election or referendum is for de Gaulle a
mythical moment of union with the people, but not one in which he
unites with them, but when they unite with him.10 De Gaulle did not
need their approval to be right, he only needed it in order to act, and
practically he could not act against the wishes of the people because
he had accepted the historical appropriateness to twentieth century
France of republicanism and democracy. But de Gaulle’s ‘enchanted’
France lay elsewhere, in the imagination, in himself and his relation-
ship to it. The French as a nation in his view were to be guided in that
they were, whether or not using majoritarian mechanisms, as pro-
foundly capable of weakness and doing the wrong thing, as doing the
right. In the contemporary period, the French did the right thing only
on the occasions when they celebrated him, or gave him their approval
to act, or allowed him – gave him the institutions and scope that
allowed him – to act. If they disagreed with him, in fact even such a
notion was not in his vocabulary; if they disavowed him, they demon-
strated how profoundly wrong they could be. So that when de Gaulle,
as ever, made the 1969 referendum a question of confidence, he was
not abusing the referendum by threatening to resign if he was not
endorsed and ‘weighing’ on the outcome, he was simply reminding the
French – for, weak as they were, they needed constant reminding – of
the true nature of the relationship between them.
This brings us to our second substantial point concerning what such
a development – the final rejection of the leader by a fickle people
– actually does to the regime. 1969 was like 1962 in that everybody was
ranged against him. This time, however, the people went over to the
other side, more or less. Although numerically this is true, they rather
did nothing much, and in so not doing broke the magical relationship.
The referendum of 1969 demonstrated that the Fifth Republic was
enacted as an emotional not just a constitutional relationship. This was
certainly the case for de Gaulle. For him, the unmediated relationship
between him and the French was an emotional celebration by them of
his historical and mythical legitimacy. This also informed other aspects
of the relationship. He treated dissolution of the National Assembly
and legislative elections in the same way: they were moments when he
called the people to him. And the referendum was the essential act in
this relationship. It is the act and process of the referendum rather
than its subject or outcome that constitutes de Gaulle’s republic. In the
referendum – and in fact in the legislative elections – there is only one
player (de Gaulle) and one audience (the people). This is why de Gaulle
did not know how to act in a presidential election itself; there were
other actors contesting his view of how the republic functioned.
In 1969, through the personalized intensity of his relationship to the
French, de Gaulle demanded their approval. The received view is that
the rejection of de Gaulle was part of a routinization of charisma, and
demonstrated that France could live without him (it was about to
anyway, he would have ended his second term less than three years
later at 82). This was and still is the received view. Alongside this,
however, it actually revived Gaullism. It ‘enacted’ a rejection of the
leader by the people in the mythical relationship, thereby ‘proving’ its
existence, and preserving it within the polity, as we shall see. It is now
difficult to imagine, but the consequences would have been enormous
if de Gaulle had served out his term and retired. The personalization of
leadership was enhanced by the rejection of the personal leader. He left
office a rejected but mythical character just as he had taken it (as
opposed to a silly old fool he had been glimpsed as being for a fleeting
moment in 1968). The immediate consequence of this ‘overthrow’ was
that the leader was irrelevant (1968) and now promoting irrelevant
policies (1969); he had ‘lost it’, as it were. In the longer term, however,
it would reinforce the acutely personal nature of the regime, and
would preserve de Gaulle in the French imagination and maintain the
underlying mythology that informed and structured the republic.
The 1969 presidential election
In the first round, Pompidou, with nearly 10 million (43.9 per cent) votes
was only 6 per cent short of a round one majority. Poher gained just
over 5 million votes (half of Pompidou’s) and Duclos almost 5 million.
(Defferre for the SFIO took just over 1,000,000 votes, a mere 5 per cent of
the votes cast). Pompidou went on to win easily with a vote of 57.5 per
cent (although there was a 30 per cent abstention rate).11
Even in the absence of de Gaulle, persona and personality played a

role in the 1969 election. Although Poher maintained his reassuring,
fatherly character during the presidential race, a not insubstantial
resource, his programme was confused (because he did not really have
one) and his support base very brittle. He also implied a return to
the Fourth Republic, away from the strong presidency of the Fifth.
Pompidou had both a programme and a support base – the UDR espe-
cially. Nevertheless, we need to stress that Poher’s personal influence
upon the election, and by extension the regime, was substantial in that
he ‘fashioned’ in part the persona of Pompidou in the election, and the
choices he made. Pompidou was very aware of Poher’s popularity, and
it contrasted with his own reputation as less ‘human’, more right wing,
and harder in image somewhat. He changed tactic and began appear-
ing more ordinary, and more conciliatory. This ‘opening out’ by
Pompidou’s character extended into the period after his election as he
widened the Gaullist tent towards the softer political centre. Perhaps
not by coincidence, the communist candidate, Jacques Duclos, was
also putting forward a friendly, reassuring image. And it went down
well with the public. All three of the big candidates were similar in
campaign image; all of them therefore reassured the electorate, and
therefore reassured de Gaulle’s republic.
Two final remarks on this question of personality. First, the PCF’s
good election (Duclos – 21.5 per cent) was possible because of the col-
lapse of the PS vote, itself linked to the hopeless image of its leadership
at this time. Second, we should note the high profile and highly per-
sonalized campaign of Michel Rocard, the PSU candidate who would
capitalize heavily upon his public popularity at this election and a sub-
sequent by-election, as he moved back into the mainstream of the
Socialist movement (he had as a young man left the SFIO in 1956 over
government policy in Algeria), as the personification of the new left,
la deuxième gauche, and the main leftist rival to Mitterrand’s leadership
over the next two decades.
The Pompidou presidency: 1969–74
There are several periods of Fifth Republic political history that do not
attract scholarly attention. There are floods of research on the de Gaulle
years and Mitterrand’s first term; a lot on Sarkozy’s; a reasonable amount
on Giscard’s presidency; yet there is very little on the Pompidou presi-
dency (or on Mitterrand’s second term, or on Chirac’s second term out-
side ‘rivalries’ literature). ‘Normalization’ creates indifference. Researchers
and observers began to move away from French politics, only to be

brought back again in a hurry by a riveting and unexpected event – by
Mitterrand’s unexpected victory in 1981, or his triumphant re-election
in 1988, or the left’s win in 1997, or Le Pen’s going through to round
two in 2002, or the emergence of a major female candidate in 2006–07.
The Pompidou period attracted little interest partly because his victory
was expected, and because he had been in one sense running the
country since 1962; partly because the Pompidou presidency followed,
like the dull day after a carnival, the momentous events of 1968. But
the Pompidou period tells us a great deal about Fifth Republic politics.
1968 demonstrated that politics is not just about politics. The ‘site’
of political performance and spectacle moved to another place – ‘the
streets’ – even the expression (‘la rue’) is charged with imagery and
poetry. The site of politics moved to lyrical discourse and politics as a
kind of epiphany that had no plan or direction, and was all the more
‘spectacular’ for that. 1968 also triggered massive social and cultural
changes for another decade and more; but its ‘essence’ was its almost
magical transcendence of time (‘La barricade ferme la rue mais ouvre la
voie’). In the true sense of the word, what would have replaced the
Fifth Republic if it fell, as so many of its leading politicians feared it
would12 – including de Gaulle – was literally inconceivable. De Gaulle’s
initiative (and Pompidou’s counsel) in dissolving Parliament and
calling new legislative elections were true democratic initiatives that
no one could argue with (except the students for whom elections were
themselves part of the problem). But the significance of the elections
was not that they were democratic, but that they transferred politics
back to its acquired institutional framework: a mediatized, personalized
and dramatic elective democratic process. But even this is not the ulti-
mate significance of the events of June 1968. The real significance, that
the Pompidou presidency would preside, was that the June election
initiative put the genie back in the bottle, returning French politics
to the controlled drama of politics within a particular institutional
configuration – informed by culture, and ‘held’ within a range of para-
meters. Pompidou’s election to the presidency was the first illustration
of this post-1968 Fifth Republic after the aberrant referendum.
The Pompidou presidency is of crucial interest to our analysis in that
the development, indeed the fate, of the Fifth Republic in the post-de
Gaulle period was dependent upon the personal responses and init-
iatives (and health) of Pompidou himself in the context of the insti-
tutional configuration bequeathed by de Gaulle, and the society and
culture bequeathed by 1968. Let us look at the Pompidou presidency
from our three perspectives used earlier: Pompidou and the institu-
tions; foreign policy; and the response of the left to the challenges of
the renewed Fifth Republic.
Pompidou and the institutions

The fate of the Fifth Republic could only be really decided, properly
tested, after de Gaulle left office. The general view – it is really an
incontrovertible fact – is that Pompidou ‘consolidated’ the Fifth
Republic.13 We would add to this that he added to the range of leader-
ship styles, contrasting his restrained style with de Gaulle’s, yet carried
on the general thrust of Gaullist policies (while mitigating some of the
intransigence of de Gaulle’s leadership). Let us concentrate, however,
on the underlying meaning of consolidation. Essentially, Pompidou
reasserted – although with some difficulty – the primacy of the presi-
dency. In terms of both domestic and foreign policy, he maintained
the policies and strategic imperatives of the de Gaulle era, of which he
had been one of the main architects. What he also did or rather did
not do was return the debate to whether the period 1958–69 had been
a deviation or misinterpretation, as it were, of the true spirit, let alone
the letter, of the 1958 constitution itself. Pompidou had already
reasserted the de Gaulle interpretation in his book (written in his ‘tra-
versée’ period after being sacked), Le noeud gordien.14 Therefore, what
the received view – that Pompidou ‘consolidated’ the Fifth Republic
– masks is that Pompidou consolidated the continuing ambivalence
of meaning informing presidential authority. Pompidou reasserted the
role of the personal, that is to say, the continuing role – usually in
the name of presidential ascendancy – of characterial interventions,
the public projection of the political ‘persona’, personality clashes, and
the continual gathering in of presidential authority – continual in the
sense that it was continually enacted as part of the phenomenon of
presidential ascendancy. In this way, the ‘clash’ between Pompidou
and his first Prime Minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, is a true expres-
sion of the ‘consolidated’ Fifth Republic.
Just as Pompidou had been the almost certain President to fol-
low de Gaulle, Chaban had been the almost certain Prime Minister.
He had been President of the National Assembly since 1958. He shared
Pompidou’s sympathy for an ‘ouverture’ and a kind of pacifying ‘assain-
issement’ of political life, and enhancement of government and Parlia-
ment, in order to ‘normalize’ political relations between government
and opposition, centrist opinion, relations between the Assembly and
the Senate, and the smooth daily running of politics.
Chaban-Delmas presented his legislative programme to the National

Assembly on 16 September 1969. It was called the ‘New Society’
speech, and rapidly became the hallmark of Chaban’s government.
Even though the new presidency and government had at one level
brought continuity with de Gaulle’s, it was like a response to the
changing society, and to the demands of ’68, as well as the, hitherto
neglected, leftist aspects of Gaullism (of ‘participation’), and of the left-
moving mores of French society in its evolving social structure and cul-
tural expressions. The New Society speech was therefore like a new
beginning, a ‘projet’, and was US-style ‘Democrat’ in its connotation
(cf. the ‘New Deal’ of FDR, ‘New Frontier’ of JFK). The speech and the
programme promised reforms of industrial policy, bureaucratic log
jams, education and training, incomes policy (it introduced the SMIC
(minimum wage), updating former incomes policy and generally
raising wages), relations between employers and the unions; in a word,
it was like a project to ‘free up’ French society from the myriad of
blockages and constraints that impeded it.15 It was also informed by
a social philosophy, given eloquent space in Chaban’s speech, that was
also centre left in social interpretation (Chaban was influenced by
a range of centre left advisors, and people who would have called
themselves Mendèsists, including the young Simon Nora and Jacques
Delors).
In terms of policy, public expectation, the defusing and addressing
of social tensions, and the image of a new President with an invigor-
ated purposeful government (and continuing economic expansion,
and no real opposition), a government chosen in Gaullist presidential
style by the new President, and representing all the strands and streams
now of Gaullism, the Chaban administration was set for effective
and popular government. What could possibly go wrong? The one and
only cloud casting any shadow was the fact that the Gaullist majority
in the National Assembly was the same ‘ultra’, heavily conservative,
right wing majority elected in the 1968 landslide. The factors, how-
ever, that would begin to undermine this near-perfect political situ-
ation were immediate and were related to its very success, and to
the effects of ‘success’ upon the personality politics that were being
‘consolidated’ by the Pompidou presidency.
Since 1958, National Assembly discourse and exchange in the Fifth
Republic had been severely diminished in its political resonance. This
was not the case for Chaban’s ‘New Society’, particularly given the now
systemically linked media – radio, television, magazines and news-
papers – and the mediatization of politics. The spirit of the new
reformism captured the attention of the national media. Chaban’s ‘New

Society’ programme was put to the vote the next day on 17 September
and was passed by a staggering 369 to 85 votes. The media had a field
day, commenting and generally celebrating this new departure, and
the heady popularity of the new Prime Minister. Chaban, moreover,
had an attractive public image: he was a former Resistance fighter, was
handsome, fit, a jet-setter, telegenic.
Pompidou’s (only second) press conference on 22 September seemed
a somewhat bland, dull affair where he, the President, commented on
the ‘New Society’ of his own Prime Minister. Even authorship of the
‘New Society’ (and therefore symbolically of the new society) was
Chaban’s; and it became known – possibly as the result of a mix up
– that Pompidou had not even seen the draft of Chaban’s speech. We
should also point out that there is only one passing reference to the
President in Chaban’s document/speech. In a highly personalized pres-
idential system, a ‘new’ star had been born who was not the President,
but his Prime Minister.
The play of the ‘personal’ then took on great political significance. At
the moment that the President was, through his own downplayed
style, consolidating through domestication, de Gaulle’s Elysée, Chaban
was stepping forward as a (Gaullist) superstar. When we say that it is
here that the personal took on greater significance; in different circum-
stances, a different polity, institutional configuration or culture, or
even different moment, this would all be utterly trivial; but it was
Chaban’s style and image that were threatening to Pompidou. It was
true that Pompidou was much less ‘lyrical’, more ‘practical’, more con-
servative than Chaban (and less good looking), but in the context of
the potential clash of leadership ‘image’ caused by Chaban’s success, it
became rapidly known that Pompidou disapproved of the ‘philosophy’
– abstract philosophical claptrap – underpinning Chaban’s ‘New
Society’; that he was irritated by Chaban’s personal choice of a whole
range of junior ministers in the new government (the senior ones had
been more or less the President’s choice), that the parts of the ‘New
Society’ project that involved the ‘ouverture’ of the media itself (until
then almost the President’s propaganda outlet) were actually opposed
by Pompidou. In a word, presidential disapproval of the Prime Minister
was nebulous but immediate. We should also add that Pompidou’s
own presidential status was still extremely vulnerable given that
de Gaulle was still alive – any comment or attack from de Gaulle (even
in the form of the latest volume of his Memoirs) could have devastat-
ing effect. Pompidou did in fact delay the publication of the last parts
of de Gaulle’s Memoirs. When they were published (1970), they were

not critical of Pompidou, but nor did they confer upon him anything
like presidential status. Irrespective of the Memoirs, however, any dec-
laration by de Gaulle – who as we have seen was ‘cool’ if not hostile
towards Pompidou from ’68 onwards – would have entered the dis-
cursive topography with major symbolic consequence. Almost merci-
fully for Pompidou, de Gaulle died in November 1970, tying Pompidou
closer symbolically to de Gaulle, his predecessor – though not to
de Gaulle’s family, some of whom blamed him for de Gaulle’s defeat,
even death – but it was a death which, because of its institutional
reflection on Pompidou, saw a rise in Pompidou’s popularity.
We referred earlier to Pompidou’s Le noeud gordien. In a crucial
passage he states that because a President following de Gaulle would
lack his charisma16 he would need to be much more involved in all
aspects of government policy. This interpretation – probably accurate
but no less startling in its personal admissions as well as its perception
of presidential authority – is one of the keys to the problems posed by
Chaban’s initiatives. The apparently uncontentiously accepted need for
presidential supremacy in the consolidated Fifth Republic, and this
in the context of Pompidou’s own assumption of what we might call
‘charismatic deficiency’, meant that the legitimacy of his own govern-
ment and his own Prime Minister’s highly successful debut had to be
cut off or intercepted at the moment it began to flower. This is quite an
extraordinary development in a polity, and demonstrates the dysfunc-
tional nature of the Fifth Republic’s emphasis upon status and personal
image.
Such personal suspicion and manoeuvrings heightened dramatically
the role and effect of personal advisors and entourages. Much of the
sarcasm expressed by Pompidou about the ‘philosophy’ of the ‘New
Society’ and the irritation felt about such things as the junior minister
appointments were relayed back and forth by presidential advisors and
other commentators. A further effect of these, at times, bewildering
complexities and palace conspiracies was to, as we shall see, begin to have
formative influence upon attitudes and initiatives. The ‘courtiers’ around
major political figures began to take on major political significance from
this period.
In June 1970, at the National Council meeting of the UDR, Chaban
was openly criticized by other Gaullists. This had also become associ-
ated with the question of who was the real heir to de Gaulle, and it is
interesting that at the same meeting, Debré was wildly applauded
(Chirac, Pompidou’s protégé was ignored). One also sees at this time
the declarations (and alliances and plots) of a range of Gaullist leaders

(and new Pompidoliens), with Messmer, Debré, Joxe, Guichard, and leftist
Gaullists like Vallon and Hamon, and all the former general secretaries
jostling for political position, often using de Gaulle himself as their
reference point. (Anecdotally, it is worth mentioning that it was from
this point and for approximately the next decade that there would be
the widespread use of ‘things de Gaulle said to me’).
In September 1970, Chaban, still Prime Minister, stood for his own
Bordeaux parliamentary seat in a by-election (his suppléant, i.e. stand-
in when he became Prime Minister, had died). It was Servan-Schreiber,
in a hitherto almost unseen media saturated leadership-image-beauty-
contest style manner, who stood against him.17 Chaban was triumph-
antly re-elected in the first round with 63.55 per cent; J.-J. S.-S. gained
only 16.6 per cent. This highly publicized confrontation between the
two French politicians most in the limelight, each with what might have
been called at the time ‘sex appeal’, was not without consequences. In
terms of the Fifth Republic, what was emerging was a political persona
with a movie-star image. In the autumn of 1971, at the height of his
premiership, Chaban’s fame turned to notoriety. Financial scandals
implicating him began to break. It appeared that he had paid no taxes
for several years in the late 1960s. His tax return was published on the
front page of the satirical newspaper Le Canard enchainé in January 1972,
which was regarded in elite circles as not only satirical and irreverent but
as a very reliable whistle-blower (speculation also suggested the Ministry
of Finance (Giscard) in this smear campaign). The effect was very dam-
aging for Chaban and for his party, not because it was evidence of real
wrong doing; the nature of any personal misdemeanour was never truly
established, but because he had become such a high profile media figure
– more dynamic seeming than the now, in fact, ailing, President.
We shall examine Pompidou’s EEC (EU) referendum in the next
section, but in March 1972, Pompidou called a referendum on EEC
enlargement (for the following month). The referendum won (a major-
ity of 68 per cent but on a 60 per cent turn-out, this was only 36 per
cent of the eligible electorate), but it was generally seen as both a polit-
ical stunt and a damp squib by the President. In the wake of this
mediocre result, underlining Pompidou’s lack of flair, Chaban on
23 May 1972 made a highly personalized bid to revive the public stand-
ing of the government, the President, and, particularly, given the array
of factors we have been examining, himself. He relaunched his
‘New Society’ programme in all but name, once again in the National
Assembly – and once again with almost identical parliamentary
support (368/96 with 6 abstentions). On 5 July, Pompidou sacked him.

We should underline here what this demonstrates about authority,
legitimacy, and personalism. Such assertions of supremacy were necess-
ary because they seemed unnecessary: i.e. the overwhelming parlia-
mentary and media majority support for Chaban triggered the refusal
of presidential acquiescence in another source of legitimacy and site of
growing public popularity. The public were ‘not ready’ for this move,
according to polls, increasing further this notion of unrepresentative
‘majesté’ on the part of the President. Nevertheless, in terms of the
underlying logic of the republic, it was a reminder of presidential
dominion.
Pompidou and foreign affairs

Through choice or compulsion, Pompidou’s foreign policy stances
in great measure followed de Gaulle’s. The rhetoric was less strident,
the interventions and image less bombastic – this not itself without
significance – but the direction from the 1960s into the 1970s is more
or less unbroken, and arguably the same contradictions or weaknesses
were carried forward.
The first area in which Pompidou carried on de Gaulle’s approach
was his ‘pro-Arab’ attitudes and critical attitude towards Israel. This
reflected a Realpolitik linked to France’s desire to maintain and enhance
good relations with the oil producing states. This was underlined by
the dramatic events of 1973 and the Yom Kippur war between Egypt
and Israel. France’s attitude also meant association with Colonel
Gaddafi, who at this time was seen internationally as something of an
international outcast – fanatical and unreliable. France’s association
with such a leader and with the Arab states generally contrasted with
a much greater pro-Israel sentiment in French public opinion (and
Fourth Republic governments), still strong since the 1967 war, in
which an independent – and democratic – Israel was seen as a brave
and bold, and a pro-Western, tiny nation, surrounded by a huge array
of hostile Arab states. It is also debatable whether, even in practical
terms, France benefited from such a position, as in 1973, after the Yom
Kippur War when the oil producing states, realizing their financial
muscle, quadrupled the price of oil, precipitating the West’s economic
recession, France suffered just as much as everyone else.18
The second, and main, area where Pompidou carried on de Gaulle’s
policy was in France’s relations to the United States and the Soviet
Union. The same contradictory and inconsequential approach is appar-
ent. In February 1970, Pompidou made his first state visit to the United
States. His financial attitude certainly made for better relations, although
it was clear that France, representing a lot of critical Western opinion,
was still a fierce critic of the Vietnam War. This was even more diplo-
matically fraught for Pompidou than for de Gaulle, given that it was a
criticism that was now clearly correct, as the US staggered to find a way
out of the Vietnam quagmire. The presidential trip, however, was badly
affected by France’s declared policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and
Pompidou’s visit was dogged by a series of high-profile pro-Israel – and
anti-French – demonstrations. The atmosphere became so critical to
the visiting head of the French state that his wife returned early to
France in anger, and the visit ended in fiasco.
Just like de Gaulle’s, Pompidou’s travels continued to symbolically
imply that France was able to dialogue as an equal with the super-
powers and assert its greater than other Western states’ relative inde-
pendence from the US. In October of the same year, Pompidou visited
Moscow. Like de Gaulle’s Russian trip, the visit was a well noted affair,
but, as with de Gaulle, nothing consequential flowed from the trip to
France’s advantage. The limitations on France’s ability to truly affect
superpower relations any more than other states was underlined.
Equally, France’s attitude to West Germany (and reciprocally, West
Germany’s attitude) was fashioned overtly by France’s view of the US.
De Gaulle had tried as we have seen to pull West Germany away from
the US and towards itself; arguably a diplomatic cul-de-sac created by
the ‘need’ to ‘stand up to’ US pre-eminence. Pompidou’s diplomatic
attitude to West Germany, the same as de Gaulle’s, was informed by an
opposite view, namely, that West Germany’s Ostpolitik, being developed
by Willy Brandt, suggested a rapprochement with East Germany and
the Soviet Union.
The USSR/USA issue was to repeat itself in January 1973 with
Pompidou again visiting the Soviet Union (Minsk). In June, the Soviet
leader, Leonid Brezhnev, visited Rambouillet. Again, the same incon-
clusive significance of such exchanges was apparent. And as a kind of
diplomatic balancing act, Pompidou made a surprise visit to President
Nixon in Rekyavik on 31 May 1973.19 In September, Pompidou visited
Mao Tse Tung’s China on a state visit where, unsurprisingly, he got
rhetorical backing for a world not dominated by the two superpowers.
This matrix of international activity – US, USSR, Germany, China – was
clearly the result of choices made by Fifth Republic France regarding its
own desired international status, but ultimately underlined its – never-
theless significant – second rank status, alongside Britain, West Germany,
and Italy.
Both at the time and since, the most memorable feature of Pompidou’s
‘foreign’ policy were his initiatives on Europe. Pompidou is best remem-
bered for his bringing the UK, Denmark and Ireland into the EEC. In a
sense the symbolic effect of this, in contradistinction to de Gaulle’s
breathtaking refusals, refusals that were against the wishes of every
other member state, was profound. De Gaulle’s view – that the UK
was too pro-American to act truly independently was, and remains, a
widely shared view. Nevertheless, the acutely personal expression of
the French veto,20 de Gaulle’s own personal veto – and this com-
pounded by a generalized view that de Gaulle felt extremely badly
treated by the Allies, particularly the Americans, but also, at crucial
moments during and after World War Two, the British too – lent
Pompidou’s initiative an emotional quality, and was like a personal
gesture of reconciliation. It also transformed the EEC into a major eco-
nomic actor and set the stage for the enlargements that followed. The
reality was arguably not as altruistic as then appeared, and perhaps
remains the view now. First, Pompidou’s desire to bring in the UK was
in part a counter to the growing dominance of West Germany in the
EEC, and its developing policy of Ostpolitik. The media-vehicled per-
sonal relationship between Pompidou and the pro-European British
premier, Edward Heath, stood in contrast to de Gaulle’s friendliness
with Adenauer. The personalization of the Pompidou-Heath relation-
ship stood in real contrast to most of France’s previous and subsequent
personal relationships, namely, de Gaulle and Adenauer, Giscard and
Schmidt, Mitterrand and Kohl, Chirac and Schroeder, and to a lesser
extent Sarkozy and Merkel, that is to say always a Franco-German per-
sonalization, except in this case. The second, less than altruistic reason
of course, was that although pro-EEC, France was significantly less pro-
integration, less supra-national than the other EEC states. Bringing in
three similarly-minded states, particularly the UK given its comparable
economic and political status to France and West Germany, could only
push the EEC further along an intergovernmental path.
Pompidou’s EEC initiatives shifted quite dramatically perceptions
of France, and attributed to Pompidou’s persona a kind of personal
rectification or setting the record straight of his own predecessor’s
personal capriciousness, occasional vindictiveness and bad judgement.
We mentioned above that both at the time and subsequently,
Pompidou’s intentions regarding the enlarging of the EEC, were viewed
sympathetically. Reaction to his use of the referendum was not so
unequivocal. This has significance for our overall interpretation. The
April 1972 referendum on enlarging the EEC – it became known as the
referendum on ‘UK entry’ – was Pompidou’s only referendum, and

it was a very deliberate ‘other use’ of the referendum in the Fifth
Republic. It maintained the, constitutionally debatable, presidential
initiative created by de Gaulle, and in that sense maintained the
notion of presidential primacy. On the other hand it was about what it
said it was about, that is to say, not a plebiscite as de Gaulle’s refer-
endums had been. It was an unemotional referendum. Moreover, it
was not injected into the political process in a dramatic moment and
to dramatic purpose, as de Gaulle’s referendums (and the ’58, ’62 and
’68 elections) had been. Pompidou, therefore, had used the referendum
to non-plebiscitary purpose while maintaining it as a strictly presi-
dential prerogative. Through media opinion and opinion polls, the
‘UK entry’ issue was indeed undramatic as most people were in
favour of it, and those for (and even those against) were not passion-
ate about the issue; indeed, they were in favour but not passionate
about Europe in general. So, the referendum appeared as a personal
initiative, in that it was not ‘necessary’, and was seen by some as
related to (re)gaining popularity in terms of the Pompidou-Chaban
relationship.
The referendum campaign and referendum constituted something
of a non-event, and therefore something of a personal setback for
Pompidou’s status. He certainly saw it in this way. In Gaullist manner,
he made two interventions (on 11 and 21 April) in favour of the refer-
endum. In such (un)dramatic contrast to de Gaulle’s successful inter-
ventions, they seemed only to underline the President’s worry not that
the campaign was going against him, but – worse still – that it was
being ignored. The mediocre result was to have repercussions upon the
institutional antagonisms, for as we have seen in the previous section,
it was the mediocre referendum – itself devised according to some
observers to enhance Pompidou’s status, that triggered Chaban’s initia-
tive to relaunch the ‘New Society’ and enhance his own, his President’s,
and his government’s status, which, in turn, triggered Pompidou’s
sacking of his Prime Minister.
A final point regarding the role of the personal in Pompidou’s France
was his illness. To an extent, his presidency as it drew to a premature
close, became associated with his now widely known although slightly
mysterious fatal illness. And on the international stage this was only
too apparent through massive media coverage, at Rekyavik for example,
which depicted the President as very different – tired, slow, bloated,
hesitant, wrapped up against the cold – from the new President of only
four years previously.
On the domestic front too, Pompidou’s last interventions were

arguably personal miscalculations, probably due to his very poor state
of health. He half promoted a five-year presidential term (although this
would act as a precedent justification for a similar move over 25 years
later), and his final months were marked by slower economic growth;
in fact, this was the prelude to recession and the (very sudden) ending
of what were to become known as the ‘30 glorious years’. Unemploy-
ment also began to rise quickly to nearly half a million, and France saw
the onset of serious ‘stagflation’, low growth but high inflation, growth
falling from 6 per cent to 3 per cent between October 1973 and April
1974, and inflation climbing very rapidly in early 1974 to 15.6 per
cent. Pompidou had been aware of the approaching recession but,
because so ill, appeared to have lost his grip, as this, the most stunning
period of growth, appeared to be shuddering to a halt. Pompidou’s
popularity began to fall, from an average of around 65 per cent down
to 55 per cent, still a reasonable score.
Pompidou’s death in April 1974, anticipated for many months, was
nevertheless received as a shock by French opinion, and underlined the
intimate nature of political leadership in the Fifth Republic. Imme-
diately, moreover, the President was treated as a true Head of State and
the country moved into a period of genuine mourning. At the time
and subsequently, great emphasis was put upon how Pompidou’s style
(there had been no howlers like de Gaulle’s ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ speech)
had informed the republic and had contributed to the Republic’s
consolidation.
Left opposition, 1969–74

Perhaps the most interesting point we can make about the left in 1969
is that there wasn’t one, apart from the communists ironically enough,
who had shown – ultimately misleadingly – that they need not be
afraid of the presidential elections, and could regain their historic vote
(over 20 per cent in 1969) under certain circumstances. Jacques Duclos
was a communist of the old guard, hard line and Stalinist. But that is
not how he appeared.21 For the general public, his campaign discourse
did not come across as the party line; it seemed as if it were him
expressing his ideas. He was also relatively well known as a Resistance
figure, now middle aged but paternal and reassuring. The second round
had, however, no candidate from the left. The lesson for the PCF and
for the non-communist left was that an alliance with the socialists
remained an imperative. Even in the best circumstances, the PCF would
never win the presidency.
From the ruins of 1968 and its aftermath, the non-communist left
tried to adapt to the new conditions. The SFIO ‘modernized’ by creat-
ing the New Socialist Party (it actually kept the word ‘New’ for a little
while). This saw ‘rallying’ to the SFIO some of its dissidents. The UCRG
led by Alain Savary joined in May 1969, and later a small group, the
UGCS, led by Jean Poperen joined in July. Savary became the new
leader. Mollet at last stepped down. He had been leader of the SFIO
since 1946. He still had enormous power and influence. The crucial
point about the new socialist party was that it maintained the basic
structure of the SFIO, a party organized and structured, like most
European left parties, around tendances and courants (either ideological
or territorial), in a word ‘factions’. These would form alliances to create
party majorities. This is important for understanding leftist politics in
the 1970s; the history of the PS becomes in great part for that decade a
history of party conferences, as we shall see. The second feature of the
new party was that, although it remained really the old SFIO, its desire
for newness, change, adaptation to the Fifth Republic was genuine, and
after 1971 would ‘set off’ a whole series of rhetorical, discursive, and
leadership-related changes that would ‘transform’ the party – in fact,
driven by factions – into a ‘rally’ that would conquer the Republic.
As regards the ‘centre’, in spite of Poher’s good showing at the 1969
elections, it was still subject to all the pressures of the regime itself
– constantly ‘reappearing’, but splitting, being ‘robbed’ of its discourse,
even raison d’être by the right or left or rival centrists, never identifying
and holding on to a dependable durable electorate (the discrepancies
between centrist parties and centrist electorates, the latter often now
more right wing than the former – certainly at national level – was a
recurring problem). If the non-communist left could hold to the course
it had set itself with the PCF, even though the ‘alliance’ was often
more like cats in a bag than brothers in arms, then the left might
gradually build a durable and electable Fifth republican electoral
alliance.
Most of those involved still thought in terms of party alliances to
create working majorities in the National Assembly and the town halls.
This was seen as the traditional motor of political activity. In local elec-
tions and by-elections at this time, the Gaullists were still doing well,
implanting themselves in local politics. In by-elections in October
1969 five ministers and the former Prime Minister stood to regain their
seats (having stood down to become ministers). Five were re-elected,
but the former Prime Minister, Maurice Couve de Murville was beaten
by the left wing PSU leader, Michel Rocard. All elections, all political
activity, was now significantly personalized, and with significant

consequences, many of them unforeseen.
For many on the left, and especially the PCF, the issue was one of
creating a solid left alliance that neither party could renege on; there
remained permanent mutual mistrust which was cloaked in leftist rally
discourse. For the PCF, a Common Programme of Government was
essential to keep the non-communist left in a solid alliance, signed on
the dotted line by all parties to it, but which would hold the socialists
to radical reform when in government. The role of the Common
Programme would become crucial later on but its effects would be fun-
damentally different from those envisaged by the PCF in the early
1970s. Georges Marchais took over from the ailing Waldeck Rochet
(initially as Assistant general secretary) in 1970 at the party’s 19th con-
gress (for the PCF too the 1970s would become a decade of significant
and dramatic party conferences). Marchais’ role was to keep the social-
ists ‘on side’, create talks, agreements, a radicalization of its and the PS’
discourse (it published a document setting out its ‘mission’ Changer
de cap in October 1971, as a prelude to the Common Programme), and
the drawing up of a Common Programme to be signed when agreed
(it was, in 1972).
What the new socialist party had to do in response was very odd: it
needed to maintain and deepen the alliance, while effecting its own
‘reunification’, bring in enough new (or bring back enough old) blood
that would distinguish it from the tired SFIO, while not bringing in too
much that it would heed the siren calls of centrism. More importantly,
and this was a much more complex affair, it needed to do all this while
creating a national leadership style that could rival Gaullism and its
allies, while developing a language and image that would enable it to
embrace the new media-dominated politics of a presidential regime.
The elements for success, therefore, were significantly missing. The
first was appropriate leadership. Savary was a respected figure but not
even as well known as Defferre, who himself had not been able to lift
the party above 5 per cent at the presidential elections. It was clear
therefore to a lot of people that in spite of the break up of the FGDS,
Mitterrand – who had forced the colossus de Gaulle into a run-off in
1965 – had to be brought into the party. In what capacity was not
clear. The second issue was that of language. What ideology, what dis-
course could ‘lift’ the party to another level without it becoming an
ineffective cacophony.22 The result was a discursive interweaving of
great complexity, and would involve the old leftist language of the
Popular Front which would service the PCF-PS alliance and a marriage
of Mitterrandism (see below) with the deuxième gauche and 1968. The
result would be a near millenarian leftist rhetoric that would revive
both the left’s and the Fifth Republic’s mythologies, and, of crucial
importance to personality politics and crucially misunderstood by so
many in the party, would strengthen enormously the fundamental dis-
cursive ambivalence of leadership politics within the Fifth Republic.
We shall return to this question of language in the next chapter. It is
from 1971, and again from 1974 that the interweaving begins in all its
complexity, as Mitterrand himself becomes its main exponent (ironic
in that the deuxième gauche and 1968 discourses were anti-Mitterrand).
At the rhetorical level, the new discourse would let the genie of ’68
back out of the bottle that de Gaulle had so effectively diverted to par-
liamentary purpose in June 1968, and put it to the parliamentary – and
especially presidential – purpose of the left, enabling the left to depict
itself (and speak) as a vast personalist rally that went way beyond
the confines of formal democratic politics. There were two issues
here, two tasks, both concerning Mitterrand. To put it bluntly he had
to first become a socialist before becoming a leader, for Mitterrand’s
successes to date – 1965–68 – had been built upon the fact that he was
neither a socialist nor had a party. Becoming a socialist was seen as
the minimum necessary. It would have enormous impact, defeating
Giscardianism and Gaullism, transforming socialism, ultimately con-
tributing to the fatal weakening of communism (and arguably later on
socialism too), and further influencing the discursive parameters and
leadership style of the regime itself. His ‘conversion’ to socialism was
transformed over time to its conversion to him, a reversal that would
have major consequences. But first he had to be ‘baptized’, and this
he effected symbolically in a kind of Damascene conversion that was
published in book form in 1969. Ma part de verité, through the develop-
ment of a Marxian-type economic analysis and a human rights/république
sociale discourse, enabled Mitterrand to position himself within, to
insert his persona into, the overall developing discursive matrix of
the left, as a socialist. His championing since almost the beginning
of the Fifth Republic of an alliance with the PCF meant that such a
discursive adaptation was seen as going with the grain of the PCF-PS
alliance.
The second task was to bring him into the party. This was done in
part as just one moment of the process of reunification of the ‘new’ PS
and all its lost children. But it was also part of a plot. We should note
in passing that this perpetual interplay of the party political, the ideo-
logical and discursive, and the institutional, means that in the Fifth
Republic, ‘plots’ are a major part of the political process, on the left
as on the right.
We said earlier that Mitterrand had no party. And many figures had
simply joined the new PS as individuals. He did have his own CIR
which, by a stretch of the imagination, could be seen as a ‘current’
of left wing opinion, and a welcome addition to the growing rally
of a ‘reunited’ French Socialism. Mitterrand’s CIR joined at the Epinay-
sur-Seine PS conference of 1971. His group was given a 15 per cent
share of the factions that would elect the Directing Committee and
then the leadership. The other significant players at this moment were
the CERES group (with 8.5 per cent) which, because of its intellectual
input, radical discourse and well organized leadership (it too would
later become a strong personalized faction around Jean-Pierre Chevène-
ment) had been a recruiting sergeant for the socialists in the 1960s.
Jean Poperen’s group, which had joined the party with Savary’s group
in 1969, had 12 per cent. The other two significant players – and the
leaders of ‘the plot’ inside the party – were two leaders thirsting for
reform of the SFIO: Gaston Defferre of the Bouches-du-Rhône feder-
ation, and the young would-be modernizing social democrat, Pierre
Mauroy, leader of the Nord federation. Between them they held 30 per
cent. Mollet and Savary held 34 per cent. Socialism was ‘on the move’,
so the conference speeches reflected the new dynamic socialism, and
Mitterrand’s ‘return’ was hailed by all. His resounding speech was
almost revolutionary in its register and tone. When the vote for the
Directing Committee and leadership came, Mitterrand’s group plus
Defferre’s, plus Mauroy’s, and CERES wrested the leadership from
Savary to Mitterrand.23
Mitterrand’s first leadership speech was ‘revolutionary’ in its tone
and its reaffirmation of the Union of the Left (a more sober appraisal
might be that it was off the wall, but it served its Machiavellian
purpose).24 All this became known as the ‘Epinay line’, a line, outlined
by Mitterrand, stressing the Union of the left, and therefore the deep
desire of the vast majority of PS activists. The Epinay line, however,
was really not fundamentally about the Union of the left at all, but
about the embracing of a form of exalted leadership, a belief that would
express itself as a kind of ‘rally’ around Mitterrand’s presidential-style
leadership.
In the aftermath of Mitterrand’s taking the leadership of the PS,
therefore, four related factors dominated: the factional politics of the
PS, the left alliance, the anchoring of discourse to the left (and intro-
ducing into it ‘new’ discourse – personalism and deuxième gauche), and
the development of Mitterrand’s leadership image, particularly in terms

of the presidential elections scheduled for 1976.
In March 1972, the PS put out its own version, as it were, of the
PCF’s Changer de cap called Changer la vie, prefaced by Mitterrand. On
26 June 1972, the PCF and PS jointly signed the Common Programme
which would act in part as a manifesto and legislative programme for
the 1973 elections, in part as a symbolic text committing the united
left to a ‘break’ with capitalism.25
In 1972, the Radicals split (once again), this time along the major
legislative fault line of the Fifth Republic, with the Left Radicals (MRG),
led by Robert Fabre, joining the PCF-PS alliance, thus adding to Mitter-
rand’s ‘rally’, and mirroring almost the ‘three pillars’ approach (the UDR,
the RI and the MRP) of Pompidou’s Gaullists. If the unexpected could be
kept at bay, the new left would be ready for the presidential elections of
1976. It, the unexpected, of course, could not.
5
1974–81: The Giscard Years
The 1974 elections
In the months preceding Pompidou’s death the impending economic

crisis began to take hold within what can be described as growing
national pessimism.1 Pompidou’s popularity began to fall; the three-
times reshuffled Messmer government was unpopular and, like with so
many polls about governments from this time onwards, seen as drift-
ing, having no grip on affairs etc.2 The gloom was deepened by the
growing sense that Pompidou was dying; and on television – often at
high profile international meetings he looked extremely sick. As with
de Gaulle, Pompidou’s death on 2 April 1974 was received as a shock.
Public reaction to the loss of both de Gaulle and Pompidou are illus-
trations that the Head of State and the public enjoyed an emotional
relationship that went beyond the political. Poher as Senate President
once again took over as interim President, adding decorum to the situ-
ation. The period of national mourning added to the ‘majesty’ of the
republic.
In major contrast to this, the (here, dysfunctional) role of persona
and the individual immediately came into play within the right. The
confusion ensued for several days, as there was no ‘procedure’, no con-
vention as to what to do. Into the procedural vacuum several indi-
viduals stepped and acted, some to their advantage, and altered the
direction of the republic. The most likely inheritor of Gaullism, Jacques
Chaban-Delmas, declared his candidacy 48 hours after Pompidou’s
death. He did this to forestall rivals, but it damaged his image consider-
ably, making him appear disrespectful in this period of mourning.
Several others then put forward their own candidacies, making them-
selves seem like circling vultures. The Prime Minister, Pierre Messmer
113
suggested himself as a compromise, unifying candidate (and therefore

made Chaban seem further divisive). Chaban rejected Messmer’s offer.
Edgar Faure dipped his toe in the water. Giscard d’Estaing – his
entourage working concertedly behind the scenes – waited until 8 April
to declare his candidacy, making him seem respectful and, ironically
given that he led only a small party, as the potential rassembleur, the
rally-style figure of the right and centre right. On 15 April Jacques
Chirac, a relatively minor figure in the Gaullist party, made his ‘Appel
des 43’, a coded public call to support Giscard. Some of Chirac’s ‘43’
Gaullist MPs and suppléants, did not really know what they were
putting their names to, but it appeared as a small but significant rebel-
lion against Chaban. Behind the scenes, Pompidou’s former advisors,
Marie-France Garaud and Pierre Juillet, plotted tirelessly against Chaban
(regarding him as far too left wing), guiding and influencing Jacques
Chirac (for several years to come). Chaban never recovered. Over
and above this, his television and media appearances were unexpect-
edly dismal (Giscard’s, brilliant – giving him this time the Kennedy,
Trudeau-style image). Giscard did perhaps reflect the right at this
moment better than Chaban. Rally, trans-class Gaullism had mutated
decisively to conservatism under Pompidou (although as a political
and discursive resource it would remain). Giscard had worked for a
decade with Gaullist governments, and as Finance minister was the
architect of France’s 1960s economic prosperity. He was seen as more
‘sound’, economically and financially, than Chaban, yet also reflected
youth, modernization, and (some of) the aspirations of changing, post-
1968 France. Giscard also seemed to be able to effect the reconciliation
of the non-Gaullist and Gaullist right and centre: Jean Lecanuet
(leading France’s Christian democrats) and Jean-Jacques Servan-
Schreiber (for the Radicals) moved decisively into Giscard’s orbit
during the campaign. Giscard’s first round vote would be double
Chaban’s.
On the left there was no confusion at all. Mitterrand had taken
control of the non-communist left, and symbolically – though he had
constantly to be extremely wary of the symbolism – of all of the left.
The PCF endorsed his candidacy. Even (most of) the ‘far’ left – the PSU
led by Michel Rocard – came out in support of Mitterrand, with Rocard
working for him during the campaign. The left was united behind one
representative. It is worth stressing however that the left was not quite
ready for this campaign coming two years ahead of schedule. All of the
candidates distanced themselves from their party support,3 appearing,
as in 1965, as ‘free’ agents, developing ‘their own’ ideas, presenting
1974–81: The Giscard Years 115
themselves as ‘characters’ and rounded personalities in their campaign

publicity. It is politically consequential that this personal image aspect
became dominant, with Giscard minimizing the right wing image
of his party, and Mitterrand his association with the Communists,
without losing their support. Related to this personal aspect were the
opinion polls, for the first time becoming a forceful (and arguably
undemocratic) player in the campaign. Giscard’s lead over Chaban
was nourished by the polls themselves; ‘nationally’ – even though
the leader of a small party – he was portrayed as carrying a potential
‘majority’.
The first round results coming after a hard fought, confusing, and
nationally riveting campaign, were startling. Chaban’s vote came in at
barely 16 per cent. Giscard’s was more than double this at 33 per cent.
And Mitterrand’s was 43 per cent – only 2 per cent short of his second
round result in 1965, and only 7 per cent short of a majority. The
opportunity for the left to win the presidency of the Republic had sud-
denly materialized. Mitterrand only needed the small ultra-left candi-
dates and some left wing Gaullist support to win. The tally however of
the smaller parties, and Chaban, did seem to give Giscard a potentially
clear win of perhaps 52 per cent or so. The second round of the cam-
paign therefore became a kind of (personalized) titanic struggle
between a changing right and a changing left each trying to gain
the centre ground through the depiction of their candidate’s image,
character and discourse. The new, and immediately normative, TV
debate (10 May) between the two rounds4 therefore became a decisive
moment of the campaign, with the two candidates involved in a kind
of point-scoring intelligence contest. Giscard arguably came out best,
projecting himself (and therefore the right) as compassionate. In a
memorable phrase he said Mitterrand and the left did not have ‘le
monopole du coeur’. Mitterrand himself certainly thought the TV
debate was decisive in Giscard’s favour. It is worth speculating whether
the age difference played a role: if Giscard had been ten years older
than Mitterrand rather than ten years younger, the image each created
might have had different consequences. In contrast to de Gaulle, both
youthfulness and paternal image were now leadership resources for
presidential image. The 1965 election – and more and more, television
– had promoted ‘youth’ as an attractive political resource. Here Giscard’s
youth (he was 48, Mitterrand 57), seemed to give him an advan-
tage. Giscard went on to win in round two by a whisker – 50.07 per
cent, a less than 350,000 vote lead.5 And the turnout was a huge
87+ per cent. Giscard had won – and the left had almost won. This
even division of France into two would inform the politics of the
next seven years, but we can see here how the presidential election
itself was not just a reflection of the political forces but a central
moment of political realignment, political change, and political parti-
cipation. The presidential election had become the major moment of
the life of the Fifth Republic.
On the question of the personalizing of the presidential election, and
its relation to the polity, we can make one final remark. From 1974
onwards, political parties and actors began to realize the importance
and dynamics of the presidential elections as moments which wit-
nessed significant political change. Their own personalization and the
personalization of the political parties, groups and potential con-
stituencies they represented offered (sometimes dramatic) political
opportunities. In 1974, for example, Jean-Marie Le Pen stood. He
gained only 200,000 votes, but began his, first, federation and then
personalization of the extreme right, which was to influence French
politics for the next 30 years. 1974 also saw the first ecologist candi-
date, René Dumont, and the beginnings of a national (and significant
regional) growth of Green politics, organized in part – and this some-
times to its disadvantage – around personality. Finally, Arlette Laguiller
stood for the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvrière, and began a major personal-
ization (and feminine presence) of far-left politics that with her, ‘Arlette’,
and significant others (Krivine, and later Besançenot), would weigh
upon far-left politics for 30 years, sometimes almost as significantly as
Le Pen did upon the right.
Slowing down the ‘Marseillaise’ then speeding it up again

As regards Giscard’s becoming President in 1974, let us make five pre-
liminary points. First, Giscard shifted the presidential paradigm one
further step, from de Gaulle, to a Gaullist (Pompidou), from a Gaullist
to a member of the non-UDR right (Giscard). In both presidential and
party political terms, therefore, new sets of opportunities presented
themselves as regards domestic and foreign policy initiatives, presiden-
tial style, and political alliances and initiatives. What seemed to be
happening, was that, without de Gaulle, Gaullism itself was subsiding,
and its space was being filled by liberal and liberal-minded modern
conservatism. This was Giscard’s view, and that of a great many other
people.
Second, momentarily, and potentially for the longer term, Giscard
had become the leader of the whole right. Significant changes within
Gaullism and between Gaullism and ‘Giscardianism’ were anticipated.
Giscard had won by a small margin. This was however a major victory
given the revival of the left, and the fact that he was not himself a
Gaullist baron. Giscard had won thanks to both Gaullist and centrist
support.6
Third, because of the nature of the competition and the nature of
French politics itself now, the ‘personal’ was of inordinate significance
both ‘on’ and ‘off’ the stage. The ‘rightful heir’, Chaban, had been
beaten through a combination of his own personal miscalculations
and the highly personalized palace conspiracy against him led by
Chirac. The two consequences of this would be that ‘treachery’ would
become part of the grammar of this type of politics, bringing decisively
into the Fifth Republic artful manoeuvre, personal betrayals and small
but concerted conspiracies that would lend a Roman or Florentine
flavour to the republic. The second consequence was that Chirac’s
‘reward’ – Giscard made him Prime Minister – propelled him forward,
so that, very soon in fact, the centre of political competition in the
republic would shift and be between not only liberalism and socialism,
but between Giscard and Chirac, and would follow conflictual path-
dependent lines that would affect the politics certainly of the next
seven years, and arguably of the next 20.
Fourth, Giscard’s ‘style’ would be formative, but also problematic.
He was seen as a modernizer and more ‘in tune’ with 1970s France than
either Pompidou or de Gaulle had been with the 1960s and 70s. Never-
theless, he also had about him, with his name and family pretentions,
and now the presidency itself, something unrepublican and monarchical
about his persona and style. What is significant is that this phenomenon,
which would be simply the subject matter of glossy magazines in other
countries (and was in France in magazines like Paris Match), in the French
Fifth republican context, this mildly paradoxical issue of mixed style
(the modern democratic v. the archaic monarchical) would profoundly
influence Giscard’s political decisions and initiatives, and contribute in a
dramatic way to the fortunes of the septennate.
Finally, Giscard’s election brought the Fifth Republic into its own.
Giscard’s undertaking against Chaban in 1974, and his success, his
political trajectory and support base, demonstrated for the first time
that there were ‘pretenders’ (not ‘dauphins’) and that political trajec-
tory, support, use of and relationship to the media, strategy, and style,
and the ability to respond to the unexpected, would now be as crucial
as they were becoming widespread.
At the beginning of his septennate, Giscard had the rousing and
tuneful national anthem, the Marseillaise,7 officially slowed down. This
was an unpopular decision and was later reversed. Slowing down the
Marseillaise was analogous to moving from ‘rally’ politics: rousing,
unstable, emotional, dynamic, to ordinary, modern politics: reflective,
procedural, calm, stately. In a paradoxical way, the young technocratic
new President, had a strong streak of monarchism in him, and the
office he now held allowed him, almost propelled him, down this
road. His new national anthem reflected this. Rather than sounding
un-revolutionary, ‘European’, and rational as intended, it sounded
more like a death march or slow processional coronation march. And
we should not underestimate the political significance of the confusion
of conscious intention and effect, for what Giscard had unwittingly
done was more offensive than abusing of the constitution; he had taken
the nation’s hymn and turned it to personal purpose. This attempt to
‘read’ the new spirit of the times was to miscalculate the emotional
content of collective culture. And this contradiction in Giscardianism
between the ‘modern’ and the ‘monarchical’ would manifest itself again
and again. Giscard himself exhibited throughout his septennate (and
beyond – he always comported himself from 1981 onwards like a deposed
King awaiting his return to the throne) the duality of the modern
democratic and the old fashioned autocratic.
This is where the (perpetual) depiction of Giscard as an Orleanist is
misplaced.8 This, the received view, misses the duality of Giscardianism
(and perhaps that of French politics also). His was not a modernizing
monarchy, but a lived contradiction between modernity and archaism.
Giscardianism would have itself modern – as Finance minister (i.e. a
post concerned above all with the modern) he took the Metro to work
(allegedly), could play the accordion (a ‘popular’ musical instrument),
had a young ‘modern’ family, and so on, and as President put forward
the image of this technocratic happy youngish family man taking over
the management of France. His was the first presidential picture in an
ordinary lounge suit (rather than tails). Even the blue of the tricolor
was lightened to appear less dramatic. He changed the site and overt
military character of the 14 July celebrations in order to modernize and
de-dramatize them. And in policy terms as we shall see, his reforms
reflected this. Yet in fact, Giscard’s personality9 was royalist. In many
of his private exchanges he was arrogant and disdainful, and rather
secretive – in the first months of his presidency people often had no
idea where he was. In his attitude to questions of protocol he was
utterly conservative (like de Gaulle, in fact). Many of his close friends
(and more shadowy ones) were from a right wing that was extremely
reactionary, and although with all the modern glamour of the Paris
Match photo shoot, much of the style he brought back into the pol-
itical culture was far from republican. Nothing encapsulates this
mismatch more than his ‘family visits’; intended as a method of ‘popu-
larizing’ Giscard, they had the opposite effect. Marie-Antoinette would
have been more at ease. From January 1975, the President undertook
highly publicized visits to dine with ‘ordinary’ French people. These
frankly excruciating exchanges illustrate the complexity of political
authority in the Fifth Republic: how to reconcile, even express, the
interrelationships between presidential authority and its claims to
popular legitimacy.
This problem of the relationship between executive authority and its
legitimation has informed all Fifth Republic politics. One of the things
that stands out regarding the (plebiscitary) nature of the presidency is
that no referendum took place under Giscard’s ‘reign’. To note this,
beyond discussions of whether de Gaulle’s referendums were either
constitutional or even democratic, is to see how the referendum served
a specific purpose for de Gaulle, which related to a near-intimate con-
ferring of authority by the people. Giscard’s monarchical style came to
haunt his presidency towards its close, as the contradiction between a
‘republican’ and a monarchical style became so contested as to make
him appear too arrogant and too aloof. The Fifth Republic was now
complex beyond even the understanding of its protagonists.
Irrespective of Giscard’s own regal style, personality even, his polit-
ical strategy was to domesticate (and appropriate the legacy of) rally
style Gaullism. Pompidou had already begun to do this. Giscard thought
he was continuing an irreversible trend. The Giscard ‘plan’ was to lead
a new, modern conservatism divested of its rally politics, replacing it
with a quiet monarchical style, and weaken the left’s opposition by
adopting some of its demands (social reforms now overdue in a post-
’68 modern democracy – we shall analyse these below), and establish
the conditions for an (at least) 14 year presidency, allow the develop-
ment of a pro-European, centre left opposition, and watch the shrivel-
ling and disappearance of the rally right and the archaic communist
left. We shall look in more detail at this strategy as reflecting of an
ideology when we look below at Giscard’s own political writings of the
time, themselves designed to call into existence this virtual France. The
fact that Giscard failed to do it was not in itself a misreading of France
and French political culture. In many ways France was and is exactly as
Giscard portrayed it: pro-European, modern, democratic, liberal, con-
sumerist, essentially ‘centrist’ in outlook and so on, but the major mis-
reading of his own republic was first, his failure to see that national
responses to his style would be extremely complex; and second, his

ignoring of the rally alternative, the myths it draws upon, and the
plebiscitary traces within this Republic, particularly when mobilized by
personal leaders depicting their political parties as ‘movements’ and as
a rally of ideas (rassemblement d’ idées).
Bearing these points in mind, let us look at three areas in detail: the
legislation and the government activity of the post-1974 period; the
creation of the RPR and UDF; and developments on the left. We shall
then look at the 1978–81 period.
Giscard and his presidency

The two most noteworthy immediate features of Giscard’s election
were his ‘presence’ (even though at times it was like the ‘absent pres-
ence’ of a Monarch), and his championing of a raft of popular social
reforms that were in ‘l’air du temps’. Thus he would be the personal
advocate of a ‘new’ France that would bring it into line with the mod-
ernizing changes being adopted across the western world. The ‘pres-
ence’ of Giscard – his deliberate embodiment and presidentialization of
his septennate – would remain; the reforming zeal would lessen in the
second part of his presidency in the face of major economic problems
and political challenges. In the opening months of his presidency, the
accentuated presence of his own personality dominated the political
scene to the point where he, the successor to the Gaullist and
Pompidolian regime – making no reference to his predecessors in his
speeches – rapidly became suspect in the eyes of his main political
support, the Gaullists.
The modernizing President’s reforms dominated the political agenda
for the first two years. The voting age was reduced to 18. The heavily
politically controlled broadcasting authority, the ORTF, was trans-
formed into a series of smaller organizations, prior to their being given
greater freedom, and – opposed at the time by the left – possible
privatization. The parliamentary opposition – in both the National
Assembly and the Senate (60 deputies or senators) – were given the
right to ask the Constitutional Council to advise on the constitutional-
ity of laws. Before, only the President, Prime Minister and Presidents of
the two houses could do this. Secret governmental telephone tapping
was to be stopped. Political censorship in the cinema was ended. The
working week was reduced to 50 hours. For two million workers, the
retirement age was reduced to 60. The laws for adoption were reformed.
Legislation outlawing discrimination against the disabled was intro-
duced. A lot of the ‘gigantism’ characterizing modern building pro-
grammes was stopped. ‘Ecology’ was introduced into the political

agenda – here initially the protection of green spaces. Reforms for
political decentralization were introduced, and in the educational
system measures to promote equality of educational opportunity were
introduced. There were also liberal reforms introduced into the judi-
cial, police, and prison systems. The most headline grabbing reforms,
however, those that became synonymous with the first years of
Giscard’s presidency, were the drive towards women’s rights (a junior
ministry of ‘The Feminine Condition’ was created), and the liberal-
ization of divorce laws, abortion laws and contraception (the latter
refundable from the health service and available to minors without
parental consent).10
Some of these initiatives gave rise to significant new legislation.
Some were more akin to social ideas – on ecology for example – being
introduced into the political realm. This situated Giscard’s image as
both a bold and careful reformer. We can make two points here, one
social, one political. These reforms were ‘in the air’ (largely created
in the aftermath of the cultural revolution of 1968). The Mouvement
de libération des femmes, and a sister organization campaigning for
abortion and contraception reform, and the activities of such
(inter)national figures as Simone de Beauvoir, and campaigning ‘family
planning’ organizations, meant Giscard was as if responding to gener-
ally accepted social demand. (There were estimated to be up to a
million illegal abortions per year with all the health risks associated
with this). A general demand for ‘individualism’ and private rights (e.g.
introducing divorce by consent rather than ‘fault’) also meant that
Giscard was seen as a facilitator of the demands of modern life. In the
context of a highly personalized regime, the political or politico-
cultural aspect of these ‘social’ issues was that, paradoxically, the
President himself was seen as more monarchical (a good king), while,
again paradoxically, shifting from his right wing support base across to
the centre and centre left.
Many of these reforms, particularly the most prominent like the
abortion legislation, were spectacularly opposed by some of his own
supporters – a lot of them only passed into law thanks to the parlia-
mentary opposition. Significantly, the Health minister, Simone Veil,
one of Giscard’s newly ‘feminized’ government,11 was seen on tele-
vision, distressed and crying publicly in the National Assembly at the
onslaughts of bullying by speakers opposed to her measures. Much of
the opposition to Giscard’s reforms came from the Gaullists and indi-
cated that his ‘presidential majority’ was problematic and would not
necessarily ‘follow him’ on his reformist journey; and that the sig-
nificant opposition to his reforms – from the Church and many Catholics
for example – was also a social and cultural fact, and was reflected in
the political arena. France was not as thoroughly modern as many
would have it. This is not to say that such traditionalism was only on
the political right, but it was in the culture, a political resource, and a
political problem.12
The most notable feature of Giscard’s presidency was his political
persona. He wanted to ‘appease’ political conflicts and de-dramatize
politics, bringing to it a non-conflictual rhythm (hence his not using
referendums, not dissolving Parliament, and his reluctance to change
his ministerial team). He was, nevertheless, an extremely intervention-
ist President himself acting upon events in a way that contradicted his
desire to allow events to take their undramatic course. Giscard inter-
vened constantly in government, issuing instructions, writing (public)
letters to his Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac, specifying what he
wanted achieved; and ‘governed’ moreover through the media with
speeches, press conferences, television broadcasts and announcements.
Retrospectively, his two presidential predecessors actually appeared sur-
prisingly hands-off vis-à-vis their Prime Ministers and governments.
Giscard’s monarchical, presidential presence, moreover, meant that he
would enjoy the successes but also have personally ascribed to him the
failures of his septennate. And in many ways, economically and finan-
cially, 1974 to 1981 was one of the most difficult periods the Fifth
Republic had known, before or since, certainly up until 2008.
By the end of 1973 the price of oil had quadrupled, contributing to if
not actually being the cause of the end of 30 years of economic expan-
sion. As Giscard came to power, a dramatic economic slowdown was
taking place. Inflation was running at 15 per cent, and in the course of
1974 and 1975, unemployment, at around 500,000 began to climb
very fast.13 And within the new consumer society, where growth had
been predominantly domestic, inflation could only be tackled by a
reduction in consumption which in turn fuelled unemployment, this
latter putting pressure upon state finances and the budget. We shall
look at the political crisis of Chirac’s resignation in August 1976, and
his replacement by the economist, Raymond Barre, but can say here
that by the time and from the moment Barre took over, the dominant,
at times the only, policy issue was the economy itself, the reforms of
the first two years eclipsed by the aftermath of the oil crisis (to be fol-
lowed by another in June 1979). In this context, the highly personal-
ized political role of Giscard (and from 1976 his, ironically, would-be
impersonal and a-political new Prime Minister) would be identified

with the single issue of the economy.
Raymond Barre, ‘France’s best economist’, according to Giscard,14
was appointed Prime Minister on 25 August 1976. Within a month, the
‘Barre Plan’ was presented. The ‘Plan’ was designed to address the
economy’s difficulties by attacking inflation, maintaining the strength
of the currency and trade, and balancing the state budget. The mea-
sures meant pressure on prices, taxes and wages (prices would later be
‘liberated’ ending strict government control in place since 1945). The
politics of ‘rigueur’ became almost the only site of discursive debate
between the government and its opponents (both within and outside
the presidential majority). One of Giscard’s advantages in this was
his own, as well as Barre’s, perceived expertise in the area of finance
and economics, and the assumed lack of it both on the left and at this
time among Chirac’s Gaullists, seen in part between 1974 and 1976
(Chirac’s first premiership) as responsible for the economic situation.
The economy was not the most propitious of presidential rhetorical
resources. By the end of 1979, the price of oil had again doubled. By
1978, unemployment had reached one and a quarter million. In 1979,
a further 150,000 people were added to this figure. By September 1979,
Barre’s popularity rating in the polls had fallen to 26 per cent. Giscard’s
response to the oil crisis was to dynamize further France’s civil nuclear
policy, although this too was a contested policy. There were major
successes in the aviation industry; and in December 1979 the Ariane
rocket was successfully launched. Moreover, France’s unemployment,
although severe (6 per cent), was lower at the end of the decade than
the UK’s or West Germany’s. Politically, however, the further personal-
ization of politics that informed the Giscard presidency would sig-
nificantly inform Giscard’s becoming irrevocably associated with a
period of economic recession.
Gaullism and Giscardianism

The years of Giscard’s presidency were characterized by a duality.
On the one hand, France had returned to ‘normal’ politics. The right
retained the presidency, but it had moved from Gaullism to a non-
Gaullist conservatism. Moreover, a generic presidential style was also
emerging, although not without difficulty. There was still real difficulty
on what precisely was the relationship in the presidency between the
political and the ceremonial/ritual, and this had significant effects
upon presidential comportment, and therefore potentially upon stabil-
ity. In one sense, the model for behaviour which has been shared by all
Presidents was monarchical i.e. standing straight and not smiling.

Where ceremonial comportment meets politics and its mediatization
(not least that of ‘image’), it inflects the nature and direction of the
republic. ‘Ceremony’ became much more imbued with significant
political effects at both the beginning and the end of Giscard’s presi-
dency. At the beginning, the rituals (the national anthem, the families)
demonstrated how Giscard wanted the Fifth Republic to be, but threw
into relief fundamental contradictions between the modern and the
archaic and the relationship of presidential persona to each of these.
At the end, the monarchical style undermined Giscard’s claim to repre-
sent the people and the republic, as we shall see.
Giscard’s attitude to the presidency’s role within the polity, also con-
tinued a trend. A kind of monarchical brooking of no criticism is how
we might put it. It was still the case that all government policy was
presidential policy and vice versa. His sacking of Servan-Schreiber
within two weeks of his being appointed was a first example of this.15
The major miscalculation that Giscard d’Estaing made, however, and
that all the barons made too, was not to realize that part of the Fifth
Republic’s nature was that it was, as it were, vulnerable to itself; the
detonation of a personal rally was always a political resource, and
because it always was, its occurrence was as unpredictable as it was
likely. And it took place right inside the presidential majority. Brooking
no criticism when there is a fronde of over half your parliamentary
support – led by your rival for five years of your presidency – can make
a monarch look rather foolish.
When commentators argue, rightly, that the Giscard-Chirac quarrel
was part personal and part political, they have a tendency to stress the
first as real but not very significant and the second as essentially related
to political cleavages. Our study has demonstrated that the importance
of the ‘personal’ within the institutional in the Fifth Republic cannot
be overstated. And the Giscard-Chirac antipathy is perhaps the best
illustration of how the regime, however dysfunctional as a consequence,
is fuelled and driven by such rivalries.
Giscard appointed Chirac as his Prime Minister as a ‘reward’ for
leading the ‘plot’ to ruin Chaban’s presidential aspirations and there-
fore facilitate Giscard’s. The gesture by Giscard was logical for two
reasons: Chirac’s actions had demonstrated that the two were agreed
on the broad essentials of the regime’s development; Gaullism should
evolve away from the old heroic rally designed to unite the nation,
into a modern centre right post-Pompidolian, conservative party, in
tune with the times (significantly ‘feminized’ and a lot less ideological,
for example). The second reason was partly the opposite: that Giscard
felt that compared to Chaban and other Gaullist barons, Chirac was
personally an insignificant political force and was in no way consid-
ered the party’s potential leader. At this time the party had no real
leader; as Gaullism evolved, the President himself might become its de
facto leader. In fact, the insignificant Chirac would become its leader.
To a certain extent, therefore, we can say that circumstances and
Giscard himself through miscalculations created Jacques Chirac.
Politically, Giscard would probably have kept Chirac as his Prime
Minister for a long time as Gaullism evolved towards Giscard’s world
view, a view that would modernize politics, bringing into the Giscardian
orbit Christian democrats and Radicals (many of whom had been very
hostile to Gaullism). Two personality traits of Giscard, given political
prominence by the institutional configuration, would work against this
quietest movement of party political reconfiguration: arrogance and
impatience. Giscard’s personal interventions as we have noted above
were constant and often perceived, particularly by the bulk of the
Gaullists, as confrontational. Although Chirac was Prime Minister,
few Gaullists were in significant government positions. Giscard made
minimal reference to the Republic’s Gaullist past. On all important
issues – foreign policy, economic policy, social policy – Chirac’s init-
iatives were non-existent. Everything was credited to and driven by
Giscard or ‘his’ ministers like Simone Veil or indeed his right-hand
man, Michel Poniatowski, the Interior minister, detested by almost all
and scornful of the Gaullists. Gaullist restlessness led to a leadership
crisis which saw Chirac – to everyone’s surprise – take the leadership of
the party on 17 December 1974. Giscard welcomed this development,
seeing it as one more sign that the republic was evolving in his direc-
tion, as it were, and that there would be no clash between the Gaullist
leader and his Prime Minister as they were now the same person. This
was a monumental personal miscalculation.
Politically, Giscard’s monarchical style sat oddly with his overall
desire to ‘décrisper’ (make more relaxed) French politics and French life.
As we have seen, offering to the Assembly and Senate the right to refer
legislation to the Constitutional Council was a ‘liberal’ development
that was seen by some Gaullists as undermining of the Gaullist settle-
ment which, for them, held the republic together. Giscard also took
this relaxing of the republic to almost farcical levels: inviting Malian
road sweepers (éboueurs) into the Elysée (they wondering why on earth
they were there); and dining once a month as we have seen, ‘invited’
by ‘ordinary’ people into their homes. And others, less painful – being
seen out with his family, visiting prisons, and so on. The bizarre but
forceful political effect of these initiatives was to make Giscard appear
strangely social democratic in his outlook (anathema to the neo-
Gaullists) and yet even more monarchical than ever.
Between 1974 and 1976, Chirac’s relationship with Giscard deter-
iorated. Chirac, moreover, at this time was being ‘counselled’ (this
feature strongly marked Chirac’s entire political career) by two experts
in the dark arts, Pierre Juillet and Marie-France Garaud, who had been
Pompidou’s advisors. Juillet and Garaud had come to regard Giscard,
just as they had Chaban, as holding unacceptably liberal views. His
reforms, and also the developing trend of left wing successes (Mitter-
rand’s vote in the presidential elections, left success in by-elections
in 1974, the Cantonal elections scheduled for 1976, then the muni-
cipals in 1977, and the legislatives in 1978…) meant that, for them,
Giscard was helping to hand the republic over to the right’s enemies.
Chirac’s rhetoric and image would radicalize rightwards through the
next decade.
Giscard’s other policy initiatives, perfectly logical in themselves from
a rightist perspective, if not a Gaullist one, confirmed such a view that
Gaullism was being dismantled. On nuclear weapons, Giscard – trying
to lessen international tension by taking the view that the Gaullist
policy of all-out nuclear retaliation (tous azimuts) to (Soviet) attack was
outdated (and dangerous), strengthened the Gaullists’ antipathy. For
some, moreover, this made nuclear confrontation more rather than
less likely, because the policy implied that France might use nuclear
weapons in a range of situations rather than in one alone. It was also
true that Giscard was seen by many, especially the Gaullists, as an
Atlanticist, thus betraying the foundations of Gaullism.
On 27 July 1976 Chirac offered his resignation by letter (Giscard
delayed the resignation which took place officially on 24 August).
No Prime Minister in the Fifth Republic had done this; they ‘served’
until the President saw fit to replace them. Thus began a symbolic
re-enactment or revival of Gaullism’s rally politics around its new
leader. In November, Chirac stood in a by-election to regain his par-
liamentary seat and won in the first round. His rhetoric radicalized into
an RPF style, intoning the need to defend the state and the country,
and envisioning a future revival of France’s fortunes through the strug-
gle of volonté against fatalité, fundamental precepts of de Gaulle’s
thought. It was as if Chirac and the Gaullists were outside the Republic
(as if the Fifth were the Fourth), even though they were still inside the
governing majority, its largest component, in fact. On 5 December
1976 at a ‘rally’ of 60,000 members, the party was transformed into the
Rassemblement pour la république (RPR) with Chirac as its new President,
thus dragging away from Giscard’s control (and authority) the biggest
part of his majority, and reactivating those elements within Gaullism
that Giscard had intended to domesticate. The situation became more
dramatic when, the following month, in January 1977, Chirac declared
himself a candidate for the (new) Mayorship of Paris. This had been
Giscard’s innovation, to give Paris a new status, and bring control of
the capital under Giscardian influence. The loyal Giscardian, Michel
d’Ornano, was the candidate. In the months that followed, Chirac’s
party demonstrated that as a campaigning political party, the RPR
was peerless. The left’s own major gains in the municipal elections of
March 1977 were overshadowed somewhat by Chirac’s triumph in
Paris and the humiliation of the President. In one sense, the undermin-
ing of the President was an assault upon the Gaullist republic itself
(ironically, by a Gaullist). In another sense, it was a clear demon-
stration of how the Fifth Republic truly functioned, an institutional
configuration in which a whole range of unexpected leadership chal-
lenges could spring forward, a regime where alternative rallies around
exalted leadership figures could form. Giscard had lost two crucial
years of planning and action in the reconfiguration of a party system
supportive of the President. His response was, from a Giscardian per-
spective, to counter the new Gaullist rally with something akin to a
Giscardian rally.
The first task was to provide a doctrinal and discursive base for this.
In an innovative move for a sitting President, Giscard published a
book, Démocratie française on 11 October 1976. It was the doctrinal
opposite of the radicalizing bombastic neo-Gaullism of Chirac. Quietist,
conciliatory and ‘modern’ in outlook, it was a kind of celebration of
the middle classes (a category notoriously difficult to define, parti-
cularly in France). It argued that there was a new majority16 that tran-
scended the old left-right divisions, and that a new type of consensual
politics was possible. Giscard’s discursive creation of a new sociological
majority was a direct challenge to neo-Gaullism’s divisiveness. In May
1977, Giscard’s Independent Republicans were transformed into a new
political party, the Parti républicain (PR) to try and rival the Gaullists
and provide a proper party base for the President. In February 1978,
the PR and some of the other centrist parties (and individual members)
coalesced into the Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), a confeder-
ation involving the CDS, the Radicals, and the Giscardian Clubs, Per-
spectives et réalités,17 but a confederation that aspired to becoming a
‘rally’ around the President (cf. the coincidence of the Union’s name
with the title of Giscard’s book).
Although the UDF was an attempt to do what Giscard wanted all
along, the existence of the now virulent RPR meant that the ‘majority’
was now divided into two hostile and personally expressed camps.
Luckily for Giscard, the same kinds of divisions were wrecking the
unity of the left’s challenges to the presidential majority.
One aspect of the rally politics detonated by Chirac was that the
rally leader need not in an initial phase try to appeal beyond a res-
tricted audience. The rally begins as a lone figure perhaps supported by
a very small core of devotees. It then triggers parts of the political class
(and/or parts of ‘opinion’), and then spreads outwards, ideally, to take
power of a party, a faction, a segment of opinion, or the country. What
Chirac’s undertaking shows is that hostility and unpopularity may be
in inverse proportion to the support from within the rally, so that
notoriety becomes a legitimate part of the rally strategy. This is a varia-
tion on the rally tactics of de Gaulle, or Mitterrand (Mitterrand too
‘lost’ centre ground initially in order to build up a more solid left, and
de Gaulle was extremely unpopular at several moments during the
Fourth Republic). It defines itself and becomes known by means of
a negative reaction. And it was not only Giscard and his supporters,
but significant parts of the Gaullists and of public opinion who now
characterized Chiraquisme or Chiraquie as hard core, right wing, brash,
unpleasant and against accord and consensus (although at various
moments Chirac revived the notion of participation). It is possible
therefore that in order to be an ultimately ‘successful’ rally, it must
begin almost as a negation of a rally; and that this in certain circum-
stances or in certain moments, or within certain parts of the political
class, is a resource in itself. The image of unpleasantness and its muta-
bility can be seen in other examples, such as Le Pen’s leadership in the
1980s, moving into and then away from hard unpleasantness to a
‘kinder’ image in the 2000s. It recurs in Nicolas Sarkozy’s political tra-
jectory in the mid-2000s. We shall come back to this, but this Wildean
idea of it being better to be talked about than not becomes part of
the topography. Sometimes the RPR became a kind of unrelenting
machine, careering around, provoking unpopularity in order to later be
reconciled with a wider public. From the mid-1970s onwards, Chirac
stays around the 20 per cent mark in favourable national opinion,
using this position to advantage whenever possible, e.g. in 1995 and
spectacularly in 2002. In the 1970s the impression of shallowness, of
an anti-intellectual and disrespectful anti-Giscard attitude, and even a
recklessness, seemed to constitute a necessary part of Chirac’s initial

‘strategy’ in order to hive off and strengthen as much of Gaullism as he
could, and deny the inclusive pretentions of Giscardianism. Chirac’s
status outside the RPR was in inverse proportion to his popularity
inside.
Chirac’s status was negatively affected, however, because, acting as a
brash rabble-rouser, he broke from the ‘heroism’ of Gaullism, incurring
the wrath of some historic Gaullists. And in the context of an alliance
where the leader of the largest party contested the authority, and ulti-
mately the office, of the actual President, the noisy rally politics that
dominated the presidential coalition did it great damage. It took the
form of a kind of constant brinkmanship on the part of the RPR within
the coalition, often using the budget process, particularly for the 1980
budget, as well as occasions such as European elections, to demarcate
itself as the obstreperous noisy partner in the coalition (the PCF was
doing precisely the same thing at the same time on the left). It was
also never truly clear what Chirac’s challenge, what his opposition to
Giscard and Giscardianism, actually comprised. This too becomes a
feature of this kind of politics: that it becomes believable because it is
difficult to grasp, and therefore pushes perceptions and discourse out
to wider questions of personality, visions of France, notions of pre-
serving the patrimoine, of unmasking treachery, and so on; and despite
the aggressive thrust of Chirac’s image vis-à-vis the President and
the government, it is interesting that his speeches were reminiscent
in both explicit and underlying themes of traditional Gaullism, even
though ‘delivered’ by a new type of Gaullist, as if Chirac at the level of
the grammar and vocabulary of Gaullism truly was the representative
of the older Gaullist concerns – patrimoine, refus de la fatalité, volonté,
the need to arrest the decline of the state and of France, and so on;
and that this ‘true’ highly personalized leadership was in a functional
relationship to outside unpopularity.18
One of the consequences of this undertaking was indeed the tem-
porary but serious decline of the Gaullist party. It seemed to step over
across to the right of the Giscardians, so that it occupied on the right
the same position as did the PCF on the left, the former senior partner
to a coalition, now perhaps becoming the junior one, radicalizing in
tone in order to distinguish itself. On the ‘inside’ were the two more
successful and more popular leaders, Giscard on the centre right and
Mitterrand on the centre left. This raises the question of whether
this going out into further orbit, a little like an echo of the traversée du
désert19 actually was intended as a necessary part of its plan, namely,
the defeat of Giscardianism in the 1981 presidential elections; a neces-

sary defeat in order to eventually win the presidency back for Gaullism
(which would happen but not for another 14 years).
The left
The left in the 1970s is a classic example of the interaction of parties,
opinion, the media, personalized leadership, and discourse.
Mitterrand’s very narrow defeat in the 1974 presidential elections
was a disappointment to him, and he thought that his chance for ulti-
mate victory had gone. In fact, the Union of the left, the revival of the
PS’s image and discourse, and the leadership of Mitterrand, saw a rally
dynamic of vast proportions that carried the party through towards the
1981 elections on a tide of optimism.
Mitterrand’s near victory in 1974 made him the undisputed leader of
the left. The PS, even though built upon factions, now saw itself as a
rally of opinion around his leadership. Wherever he went, Mitterrand
was treated by the party itself and by members in a way that no social-
ist party leader had ever been treated, and as if he were already the
President. The Mollet years (1946–69) were as if wiped from the party’s
memory, and Mitterrand was treated as a kind of successor to, and
almost incarnation of, the socialism of Jean Jaurès and Léon Blum
(neither of whom, however, in their lifetimes received the kind of def-
erence Mitterrand received). French socialism was also seen as part of a
vast social democratic movement sweeping across Europe (and many
joint meetings and shared imagery such as the modernistic ‘rose in the
fist’ accentuated this). We said earlier that the history of the party
became almost the history of its conferences, and although these were
about power and policy (and still featured endless late night negotia-
tions in smoke-filled rooms), their overall function shifted significantly
into one of celebration, pageant almost and at times a near-devotional
attitude to the leader.
This rally style was accompanied by major inflections at the level of
discourse and rhetoric. We have already seen that the PS’ rhetoric had
become near-revolutionary in tone, much of this to both reassure and
counter the PCF in its revolutionary professions of faith. Added to this,
however, was the symbolic final reunification of all the left when
the near-totality of the deuxième gauche20 joined the PS in 1974. This
‘return’ of (most of) the PSU and other deuxième gauche elements was
celebrated at the Assises du Socialisme in 1974. It also saw the highly
publicized entry into the PS of Michel Rocard of the PSU, and the
injection into PS politics of a future personal rival to Mitterrand’s
leadership. The unification of the non-communist left opened up the

rhetoric and symbolism of both the deuxième gauche and even of 1968,
to Mitterrand (who privately hated both, seeing them as having
ignored or rejected him in the mid-and late 1960s); later it would
provide the dissidents in the party and Rocard in particular with a
rhetoric that they would try to claim as their own, and propel Rocard
forward as successor to Mitterrand. In practice, the existence of a range
of factions, often vying for the same rhetorical register, as well as office
and position in the party, led to significant factional fighting within
the party, and long term personal enmities that would have major
effects upon the politics of the Fifth Republic.
The rhetoric rolled out in the form of books, pamphlets and declar-
ations, even music.21 Party posters were eye-catching and ‘trendy’ (lots
of rainbows and roses). And in a series of by-elections, the PS’ growing
popularity was confirmed. Very soon, speculation began that the left
would win the 1978 elections, and Mitterrand be nominated Giscard’s
Prime Minister – which might lead to Giscard’s resignation and Mitter-
rand’s election to the presidency. Whatever, the outcome/s it seemed
that the PS had at last hit upon a strategy that was creating the con-
ditions for an unstoppable victory. It appeared that ‘le socialisme’ was
‘en marche’, was modern and international, and was beginning to use
aspects of its rhetoric that conferred a de Gaulle like quality upon
Mitterrand. He in turn responded to this by beginning to behave with
the gravitas and majesty of a de Gaulle-like leader within his party, and
with only slightly less presidential style outside it. Mitterrand had always
been like de Gaulle, a complex character and an intellectual, but it is from
this time that Mitterrand’s character is accentuated through the publica-
tion of his writings, and the depiction of him as a sage.22
The overall unity of the left was apparently holding firm. And at the
level of meetings and joint actions and so on, the two parties gave the
impression of a kind of Popular Front celebration.23 The rapprochement
between the two parties seemed all the greater because the PCF was
going through a phase called ‘Eurocommunism’ which aligned the PCF
with other European parties, and implied a dissociation from the Soviet
CPSU, and the assertion of autonomy (and pacifism) by media-friendly
parties like the Italian PCI and the Spanish PCE to which the PCF
likened itself (in truth, incongruously given that it remained one of
the least liberal western Communist parties). The PCF abandoned the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ in January 1976.24 The party leader,
Georges Marchais, declared this on television, and it was ratified at the
PCF’s 22nd congress that year.
The Union of the left remained solid i.e. was perceived by the public
as holding firm throughout the mid-1970s, and in the municipal elec-
tions of 1977, the left gained a majority of town halls that seemed to
prefigure its taking power in the 1978 legislative elections. Of 221 towns
of over 30,000, the left had won 155, up from 98, a huge increase. In
opinion polls, eight out of ten people thought that the left would win
the legislative elections of the following year.
The PCF – to its longer term major disadvantage, perhaps even its
undoing – did, however, in true Bolshevik tradition, operate two dis-
courses, one supportive of union and the semi-magical, mythical unity
of a (re)united left marching arm in arm to power and general hap-
piness; the other, a continuous and critical series of attitudes and pro-
nouncements upon the PS, implying that as always the PS was capable
of treachery, and was really a bunch of middle class boys playing at
socialism, exalting its leader in a right wing manner beyond what was
acceptable to a leftist party. In many ways these criticisms were true,
and the contrast of solid but rather dull and old-fashioned leaders and
activists in the PCF, and the media-friendly, very Parisian, highly edu-
cated and articulate socialist figures, did, in fact, begin to make the PCF
look like the guys in charge of the workers on the shop floor, and the
PS like Champagne socialists.25 The media was beginning to enhance
this effect, in spite of the PCF embracing many of the modernistic
aspects of 1970s leftism. A lot of this poor impression was being
maintained and enhanced by the rather boorish persona of its leader,
Marchais.
One of the reasons for the PCF’s schizophrenic discourse at this
point was its early recognition – as early as a series of by-elections in
the Autumn of 1974 – that the gathering rally around Mitterrand and
the PS, to which the PCF had contributed by allowing him to become
the symbolic leader of the left, was benefiting the PS but not the PCF.
Ascertaining PCF membership figures has always been speculative, but
the party claimed in the mid-1970s around 500,000 members (800,000
in 1947).26 This was an impressive membership. It was, however, as if
unable to go beyond this, and was becoming second to the socialists,
not in members (although PCF numbers were going down and PS
numbers going up) but, more importantly, in seats and in votes. The
PCF had always and with reason, according to the bald figures, seen
itself as the senior partner (with around 20 per cent of the suffrage and
much higher membership figures) to the socialists (with a percentage
of the suffrage in the low to mid-teens). The presidential and rally
aspects of Mitterrand’s leadership were altering the relationship, and it
is arguable that the PCF not only noticed this too late, but then went
on to adopt the wrong strategy to counter it.
As the Union of the left continued through the 1970s, the PCF
became more and more critical of the PS. One illustration was the
making public in 1975 of a ‘secret’ report that the PCF leader had
apparently made as early as 1972 warning the party about the dangers
of the PS.27 The real opportunity to reveal the (eternal) treachery of the
socialists came however with the ‘updating’ of the Common Pro-
gramme. In April 1977, in the aftermath of the municipal elections,
the PCF wanted, knowing this would cause enormous difficulty within
the PS (and even more so, the MRG), a ‘maximalist’ interpretation of
the Common Programme, particularly its nationalization programme,
to be endorsed by the PS and MRG. The talks on this ‘actualisation’
(updating) of the programme broke down in September 1977.28 The
ultimate effect was the near-sabotaging of the Union of the left, and
the dissipation of its lyrical rally quality. This was intended to burst
Mitterrand’s bubble and either prevent the left from coming to power
in 1978, or if it did, without the triumphalism that seemed to be
profiting the PS. From almost certain victory assumed in 1977, the left
did not win the 1978 elections. This was in large part because the PCF
was undermining Mitterrand even more effectively than Chirac was
undermining Giscard.
On 27 January 1978, Giscard made a long and very widely reported
speech at Verdun-sur-le-Doubs29 which essentially stated two things:
that he would not step down as President if the left won, and that he
would (have no choice but to) allow the application of the left’s dra-
matic nationalization programme. Three things flowed from Giscard’s
declaration: it made the left’s success less likely by stressing its likeli-
hood and the feared constitutional deadlock it presaged; it enhanced
Giscard’s status by stressing his own presidential nature (ironically by
suggesting his future presidential powerlessness) – thereby reducing
Chirac’s, particularly as he was partly responsible for the right’s dis-
unity; and it conjured up the image of an almost Soviet style – econ-
omically catastrophic and politically repressive – take over of power
by the left (with Giscard as if withdrawn to Rambouillet in a kind of
gaullien silence).
In March 1978, the right was re-elected. In round one, the left had
gained a higher percentage of the vote than the right, but in round two
the right’s vote was mobilized to a maximum, and suspicion of the PCF
meant a weaker vote for the PCF where its candidates were in the run-
off. In round one, the PS (and MRG) came out as the largest single
party with nearly 25 per cent, the UDF won nearly 22 per cent, the RPR
nearly 23 per cent and the PCF nearly 21 per cent.30
In the aftermath of the elections, the PS lost its momentum. Its stra-
tegy since 1971 was now seriously compromised – there arguably was
no Union of the left. The ‘ligne d’Epinay’ had also meant allegiance to
François Mitterrand, but even he seemed, in large part, the victim of
the spoil tactics of the PS’ PCF allies. It was at this point that the per-
sonalism that surrounded Michel Rocard was given political space, and
used strategically against Mitterrand to try and take the leadership. A
first point to note is that Rocard was the ‘chou chou’, the darling, of
the opinion polls, like Poher in 1969, like Balladur in 1994, and Royal
in 2006, a significant political resource in a presidential system – and a
much more powerful one than in a non-presidential system. Powerful
as we shall see, but not sufficient, as Mitterrand was able to resort to a
very old Mollet-style tactic. Rocard had been a ‘personality’ since the
Grenoble Colloquium in 1966. By 1974, when he joined the PS he was
seen as the highly personalized representative of the deuxième gauche
and the ‘spirit’ of 68. In the aftermath of the 1978 election defeat (he
was still only 47), he made a widely commented mea culpa on behalf of
the party (which enhanced his image and tarnished Mitterrand’s) and
the speech seemed spontaneous and sincere (the discovery later that
he had rehearsed the speech, interestingly, damaged his reputation
– rehearsed spontaneity is seen as personal deceit). At the 1979 Metz
party conference he tried with the help of Pierre Mauroy to take the
leadership, or at least become the leadership ‘recours’, a sort of leader-
in-waiting. Mitterrand had enjoyed a kind of fused, rally style cross-
factional support until this point, such was the thrust of the ‘rally’
behind him. Only CERES, the ‘purist’ left wing of the party had
remained in internal opposition. Mitterrand maintained his leadership
by going into an alliance with CERES (as he had in 1971 to take the
party leadership) and forcing Rocard (and Mauroy) into the minority.
Mauroy (who had also helped him take the leadership in 1971),
Mitterrand would forgive by making him his first Prime Minister.
Rocard – although he too would become Mitterrand’s Prime Minister
– he would never forgive.
1978–81
After four years of major political activity, Giscard, the true winner of
the 1978 election, could look forward to three years of relative calm
(no elections, for example, except for European elections in 1979), and
according to most observers up until 1981 itself, probable re-election.

The wave carrying Mitterrand and conferring a greater status upon him
than upon Giscard had broken too early.
To a great extent, like de Gaulle after 1962, Giscard applied himself
in particular to a role on the international stage, leaving domestic
affairs to a certain extent, in appearance at least, to his Prime Minister.
Giscard was highly active in European politics, Africa and the Mid-
dle East, and relations with the Soviet Union. Raymond Barre was
reappointed Prime Minister after the election, and the new govern-
ment’s main effort was to address the still formidable economic prob-
lems that France faced: unemployment and inflation remained the
major issues.
Giscard’s emphasis upon his presidential status as an international
player reflected his continuing belief that he could ‘preside’ a stable
polity – modern, democratic and undramatic – with him at its head.
He offered meetings with the leaders of opposition parties, and tele-
vised ‘right of reply’ to governmental and presidential announcements.
Although these and other reforms were welcomed, there remained
something ‘unreal’ about Giscard’s conception of the Fifth Republic. In
1978, the UDF still held only 122 seats to the RPR’s 155. Moreover, the
RPR intensified its radicalized discourse, its comportment, and the
comportment of its leader – particularly as regards the President – to
the point where, short of joining the opposition, the RPR was per-
ceived as an anti-government and anti-President party, with Chirac
treated now within his own party as an alternative President, waiting
for power and office to be returned to Gaullism. This meant a certain
retrenchment of the party and a fall in its popularity that created for
Chirac, as we have seen, a pugnacious, brawling image more associated
with hard right politicians. This was a polity very different from the
one Giscard was portraying.
In the run up to the European elections (where political alliances
were not necessary because of the voting system), Chirac’s depiction of
his own President came close to accusations of treason, and that of
himself and his party as a near-crusade to save France from ruin and
treachery.31 This was a discourse that would be taken up by the hard
right over the following decade. For now it was that of the senior
partner in the presidential coalition32 and the capital city’s mayor.
Nothing like the quietist, benevolent, monarchical republic Giscard
was trying to depict.
This tension continued into June 1979 with the (first) European
elections taking on the quality and consequences (in France as
elsewhere) of a considerable national political event. The PCF’s and

the RPR’s virulent nationalism meant that they came in third (PCF
20.6 per cent) and fourth place (RPR 18 per cent); of the ‘pro-European’
parties, the PS gained nearly 24 per cent, and the UDF (the list was
led by Simone Veil) came first with 27.5 per cent.33 This separation of
the four parties would continue and be accentuated because the next
election – the presidential elections – would also not involve alliances
and would personalize the divisions even further.
It was clear from the European elections that the electorate had sanc-
tioned Chirac’s orientation – the Gaullists were now the smallest party
in terms of vote. Many of its traditional electorate had voted for the
UDF, and the UDF itself was growing. It claimed a respectable member-
ship of around a quarter of a million (all its component elements
included). It remained however a federation that lacked the mobilizing
power of the RPR. Moreover, Chirac, although he at last abandoned his
rottweiler advisors, Marie-France Garaud and Pierre Juillet, continued
his unrelenting anti-Giscard public stances, depicting himself – and
being treated by his party – as a rousing radical rally leader whose
mission was to block the rise of the left by thwarting the plans of a
treacherous President. The result could only be to allow the left in,
because although Giscard’s own party support was rising, his fractious
ally meant his ability to rally enough support around his presidential
persona in 1981 was in peril. In the run up to the 1981 elections, the
difficulties of the economy continued (and would continue for another
15 years). Unemployment was up to one and a half million and
inflation at 14 per cent.
The fact of the presidential elections now personalizing all political
activity meant that questions of ‘character’ (i.e. in the two American
(presidential) senses of ‘integrity’ and ‘mettle’) would inform politics
inordinately. And there was a series of scandals. Most of them, like most
scandals in France, were inconclusive and not directly linked to the
President. In October 1979, the Employment minister, Robert Boulin,
committed suicide after the beginnings of a property scandal involving
him broke in the press. In the context of a highly personalized regime,
and the monarchical style of the President, such issues lent a ‘fin de règne’
quality to the presidency.34 This was also a time of terrorist attacks. One
in particular, a bomb blast in rue Copernic in Paris, a Jewish quarter,
in October 1980, really shook public opinion, creating a sense of grave
national unease (the attackers were not caught until nearly 30 years later).
The main scandal that was to undermine Giscard personally was the
never-quite-understood ‘Diamonds Affair’. In October 1979, Giscard
was accused in Le Canard Enchaîné of having, in 1973 when Finance

minister, accepted diamonds worth millions of francs from the self-
styled ‘Emperor’, former Central African dictator, Jean Bokassa. The
problem for Giscard was twofold and was related to the issue of per-
sonal character traits. The first was that his own monarchically aloof
response to the accusations never properly answered his critics, and
this – in the context of a President who was known to be very attracted
to the exotic aspects of Africa – seemed to suggest that he was indeed
guilty of something. The second was the idea, seriously undermining
of his pretentions to great leadership status (and all this cultivated by
his possession of a seemingly noble name, and a certain monarchical
extravagance in his culinary and other tastes), of personal association
with Bokassa, a former private in the French Army, who had taken
power through a military coup. He had also been a ruthless dictator;
and while his country was in abject poverty he had had himself treated
with Napoleonic deference and pomp. Dressed for state occasions in
gold and jewels, looking like a fairy fallen from a Christmas tree, the
lampoon through association, of Giscard himself could not have been
more undermining of Giscard’s claims to presidential leadership. These
issues, high unemployment, a hostile Chirac, the possession on the left
of at least one (Rocard was another) leader of presidential status, his
tarnished image, all contributed to Giscard’s losing the few thousand
votes in 1981 that would lose him the presidency, and leave him trying
for more than a decade to get it back again, further adversely influencing
the politics of a right divided by leadership politics itself.
6
1981–88: From the République
Sociale to the République Française
It was often said at the time, both in ordinary conversation and in the
media, that François Mitterrand did not win the 1981 presidential elec-
tion, Giscard lost it. In one sense, this was true. There had been no
feeling in the months before the election of the left storming the gates
of power with its champion at its head; until the last few weeks before
the election it seemed Giscard would win again. Mitterrand had
between 1978 and 1981 lost his rally image because of the acrimonious
rift with the communists in 1977, the half-hearted and ultimately
unsuccessful (gains but no majority) 1978 legislative elections, and
most importantly, the contest with Rocard between 1978 and 1979–80
in which Mitterrand took on the old image of a Fourth Republican
politician hanging on to his power through calculated manoeuvring
against the challenge of the ‘forces vives’ to which the young and
popular Rocard laid claim. Such was the demystification of the left – its
‘gathering of forces’ image had lasted from 1971 to 1977 – that even up
until the end of 1980 newspaper editorials both in France and abroad,
and media comments generally, considered Giscard’s re-election most
likely. On his side was, as we have seen, a new Giscardian political party,
a ‘contained’ Gaullist party, and an inferior rival in the impulsive
Chirac.
However, it was clear from the shifts in the electoral geography that
the left was near-majoritarian, that the divisions within the right were
considerable, and that the question of personal image did play a role
negatively, for both Mitterrand and Giscard. Giscard faced the elec-
torate with a disadvantage, related to difficult to quantify aspects of
character. The first was the ‘Diamonds Affair’ which we have looked
at.1 The second was linked to it, portraying Giscard as possessing a kind
of regal disdain for criticism, like a bad king ignoring his subjects.
138
1981–88: From the République Sociale to the République Française 139
Many observers have described the French presidency as an elected

monarchy.2 This writer does not agree with this interpretation; seeing
it as too restrictive and with little explanatory value. It is clear from our
analysis that the images of leadership displayed by French presidential-
ism are much more complex and wide-ranging than such a term
implies, and real mistakes of interpretation (by both observers and
political actors) are made because of this intellectual shortcut. Never-
theless, in Giscard’s case, one can say that a ‘monarchical’ component
not only existed, but – and herein lies the danger – was tolerated by
the French, and is even expected. France is possibly the most protocol-
strict and formally deferential of western democracies. The problem
here is that the mythology surrounding monarchism, in France espe-
cially, is multiple and quite contradictory. The monarchical style is rec-
ognized and accepted in certain circumstances (de Gaulle and later
Mitterrand drew upon this when President). French culture also carries
a very strong element of antipathy for the monarch, particularly one
who becomes screened off from his people, perhaps by his court or his
vanity, and (à la Louis XVI) has lost the true meaning of kingship and
its relation to the nation/the people.3 This is how Giscard was being
increasingly portrayed in the months leading up to the presidential
election. And the actual character of the man played its part in this,
even at the level of his aristocratic style, and family, and title. And his
relative complacency about the election compounded these impres-
sions. In this way, Giscard could be seen as having been, and was
depicted as having been, ‘toppled’ in May 1981, and the long and lin-
gering historical connotations of defeating a republican right which
was attracted to a monarchist tradition added to this sense. The irony
was that Mitterrand would out-king them all.
Mitterrand’s own fortunes in 1981 were helped by a factor, perceived
at the time by him and by others as a major setback, but which was a
blessing disguised as a curse, namely, the consequences of the actions
by the PCF. Through its calculated sabotaging of the Union of the left
in 1977 in order to slow down the unequal distribution of left popular-
ity, and by allowing the Union of the left to become a ‘mere’ electoral
alliance devoid of the spirit which had so invigorated the left in the
1970s, the communists inadvertently freed up a swathe of centrist
opinion for the left. This situation demonstrated that Mitterrand
was neither in real alliance with nor subject to control by the PCF. By
ruining Mitterrand’s own strategy, namely, the explicit part of the
‘Epinay line’, the PCF set the scene for the Epinay line to mean only
allegiance to Mitterrand, particularly if he were to win in 1981. This
‘tactic’ of Mitterrand’s, if tactic it was, meant that he could ‘faire sauter

le verrou’ of the PCF factor. By ‘solving’ the PCF problem – i.e. the PS
seemed unable to gain power either with the PCF or without it,
Mitterrand was credited with performing a political miracle. The com-
munists themselves, trapped by the Fifth Republic’s institutions and
culture, helped perform the miracle by which they would tumble from
being the strongest single party in French politics, to being well on the
road to marginalization.
The 1981 elections
We shall not go into detail here on the election campaign or an ana-

lysis of the breakdown of the votes. These studies abound.4 What we
shall do here is look at the 1981 elections from the point of view of the
role of the personalization of politics and its effects.
Rocard in the wider opinion polls, throughout 1979 and 1980, was
ahead of Mitterrand, often well ahead. In October 1980 – having
already conceded defeat at the Metz party conference – Rocard made a
half hearted declaration of candidacy, but stressed he would not stand
if Mitterrand stood. Mitterrand declared he would stand in January
1981, was endorsed by the party (24 January), and put forward his
‘110 propositions’. He ignored the indigestible Projet socialiste that
the CERES leader, J.-P. Chevènement, had drawn up as the party’s
programme – as a prize for having helped Mitterrand at the Metz
conference.
Chirac declared on 3 February, and Giscard, last, on 2 March, two
months before the election. Giscard’s rather dry, calm approach to the
election reflected his own contradictions – he wanted to be a ‘citizen-
candidate’, but also wanted to portray the de facto calm and dignity
of his conception of his presidential self. His and most others’ views
were that this calm king-yet-quiet-citizen approach would see him re-
elected. There was an assumption that he would have little compet-
ition. In fact, there were three Gaullist candidates (Michel Debré and
Marie-France Garaud as well as Chirac), and five left candidates – six
if one includes Brice Lalonde, an ecologist, and all of them attack-
ing Giscard’s ‘bilan’ quite vocally and effectively. Giscard more or less
excluded Raymond Barre from the campaign, but in the public’s mind,
he – to date, the most unpopular of Prime Ministers – was strongly
associated with the President. Giscard gave the impression of a kind of
cognitive dissonance: the leader who could not hear the cacophony of
criticism around him because he wished, almost needed, not to.
As regards the four principal candidates, in March, Marchais and

Chirac, the two disruptive and critical ‘allies’ of, respectively, Mitter-
rand and Giscard, were on an equal 17 per cent in the polls, but Giscard,
from a high of around 40 in 1980, and Mitterrand, from a low of
around 20 were beginning to converge towards the mid-20s (in 1974,
Giscard’s first round score was almost 33 per cent). His poll was falling
as Mitterrand’s was rising.
On the first round on 26 April, Marchais’ score was just over 15 per
cent, to date the worst communist result since the 1930s. The conjunc-
ture of a weakening party with an unpopular candidate was severely
damaging in the longer term for the PCF. And to go into power in such
a weak position would prove to be doubly damaging. It was, however,
a very healthy and welcome 15 per cent for Mitterrand in round two. It
is clear that both the personality of Marchais, brash, rather uncouth,
both menacing and ordinary, was extremely ill-suited to presidential
politics; and the often abruptly changing party line (now in the full
glare of the media) was equally disadvantageous. An election at this
level of media scrutiny and on this scale was extremely difficult for the
party to ‘control’ to its advantage, as it was very capable of doing at
local level given its organizing and mobilizing capacity. Much of the
traditional communist electorate, for a range of reasons, from their
attitude to Marchais, and to Mitterrand, to left unity, and to dis-
approval of some of the USSR’s policies, and also out of a new sense
of electoral pragmatism, voted for Mitterrand, even in round one.
Marchais could not therefore do other than call for support for Mitter-
rand in round two. His own personal attitude was in danger of being
engulfed by the surge of support for Mitterrand. His insistence upon
a real PCF presence and programme also no longer acted as a vote loser
for Mitterrand given that he now had full communist support with-
out any communist ‘threat’. In round one Giscard obtained just over
28 per cent, Chirac 18 per cent and Mitterrand just short of 26 per cent.
Mitterrand had the second round support of all the left candidates,
plus for all intents and purposes, Lalonde’s. Chirac gave reluctant sup-
port to Giscard, Garaud gave none. At the level of personal image and
support, the beginning of the second round saw a movement of wider
support for Mitterrand, as the implications of what was happening
began to take hold. Giscard’s support, particularly as he could not
properly rely on the mighty RPR machine, began to lose momentum
even more.
By lowering the voting age and helping to ‘feminize’ society and the
political culture, Giscard had helped create a generation that would
vote in majority for the left. A proportion of the Gaullists also went to
Mitterrand; and more on the right abstained. Such a complex structure
of intention and attitude saw Mitterrand win the presidential election.
On 10 May Mitterrand won with almost 52 per cent, and became the
Fifth Republic’s first left wing President.
In the five weeks between Mitterrand’s election and the elections to
the National Assembly, French politics recaptured its rally aspect. The
14 and 21 June 1981 legislative elections demonstrate that the ‘rally’ is
like an underground stream that can surface quite suddenly. On the
eve of the presidential election Mitterrand was not seen as a potential
winner, only Giscard as a potential loser. The rally around the victor-
ious figure of Mitterrand began to emerge within hours of his election.
The rally was a hybrid: a rassemblement d’idées around socialism’s
dreams and mythologies, as well as a rally around the now exalted
persona of Mitterrand, and the sense of dramatic change and an excit-
ing new departure. The sense of socialism itself rising up to embrace
power began to take hold. The transformatory discourse of socialism,
well in evidence in the early 1970s but which had begun to ring hol-
low, reappeared in intense form, retrospectively depicting the previous
legislative elections of ’67 – not ’68 – ’73 and ’78 (and the municipals
of ’77), as well as the presidential elections of ’65 and ’74, as a mighty
gathering of forces, and conferring upon the current elections a sense
of historic triumph that was now far more than just electoral. The June
elections propelled the PS into government with an absolute majority.
Between the presidential and legislative elections, with his (solitary –
watched by millions) visit to the Panthéon, a single red rose in his
hand, Mitterrand’s persona as the near-mythical bringer of socialism
took on breathtaking proportions, a personal ‘appropriation’ of social-
ism that would have very significant long term consequences. In the
PS, there was competence and independence of action and simultan-
eously utter dependence upon the leader. The presidential election and
the dissolution of Parliament transformed the arrival of the left in
power into a personalist rally of vast proportions.
In terms of the institutions and the personalities, four features
are striking. The first was that Mitterrand was immediately seen as an
appropriate President, and his party appeared to be ready to govern.
For many, the most remarkable feature of 1981 was Mitterrand’s arrival
in power. But the most dynamic event in terms of how the Fifth
Republic operated optimally – and in institutional terms, the event
whose effect was most durable upon the way the Fifth Republic insti-
tutions functioned and endured – was the parliamentary dissolution
itself. The dissolution dramatically increased one of the features of the

Fifth Republic: its presidentialism, in the sense that legislative success
was seen as – and was – an emotional, as well as constitutionally
mechanical, rally of the ‘peuple de gauche’ behind the new hero.5
The second feature of the election of François Mitterrand, was that
the PS was much more powerful than it would have been if it had
entered in relative partnership with the PCF. By the same token,
Mitterrand’s authority over the whole left was dramatically increased.
The PCF was subordinated to Mitterrand now in a way it would never
have been had the 1977–81 disagreements not taken place; but this
was also true of the PS itself, which, also having in part rebelled against
the leader (at the Metz conference), was now more subordinate than if
it had not done so.
The third feature was the cultural effects of the left’s victory upon
the institutional configuration and consequentially upon political dis-
course and rhetoric. As regards the arrival of the left in power, it was
not simply that the left’s discourse had a strong rhetorical element
(and one which was itself complex in its use of its Marxian, insurrec-
tionary, social democratic, but also millenarian aspects in order to
enhance the individual leader of a collectively inspired organization),
but that the effects of this rhetoric would have strong and both imme-
diate and long term effects upon the institutions of the Fifth Republic.
The left had won the battle and had all the good songs. For two years
socialist rhetoric flooded through all aspects of political life, submerg-
ing what had been the growing ‘sensible’ character of Giscardian dis-
course, replacing it with a lyricism that was surpassing of even the
strong rhetoric of original Gaullism. This actually enabled the ‘archi-
tect’ of this triumphant socialism to avoid high rhetoric himself and
adopt, while his myriad interpreters went over the top, a quietist
but emotionally charged rhetoric which would also alter French social-
ism as a discourse fundamentally. The end result was that the Fifth
Republic as a regime was strengthened and ‘widened’, as leftist tri-
umphalism became part of the republic’s discourse, its rally rhetoric,
its heroic presidentialism, its drama and almost revolutionary nature
re-dynamized, while the quiet pronouncements of the President took
on a zen-like omniscience.
The fourth feature was that the PS’ perceived appropriateness for
government, and Mitterrand’s for the presidency, the PS’ distinction
from the right that had governed for 20 years, its programme and its
discourse, all meant that the left in power did not just consolidate the
regime, but changed it, propelling the configured institutions forward,
and encouraging the discursive and rhetorical to further inform the

institutional development of the regime. One of the most lasting yet
least tangible consequences of this type of victory was that 1981 did
feel like, for many people, the cultural victory of 1968’s thirst for
a more open, friendly, modern, just, equal society. The subsequent
U-turn, in policy terms, of 1982 and of 1983, the devaluations and
‘pauses’ (reminiscent of the catastrophic Popular Front), are usually
seen as a return to normalcy, a return after two years of madness to an
economically restraining and realistic policy i.e. picking up where
Giscard d’Estaing and Barre left off. This is true, and, to the extent
that it is inevitable that an elected government in a modern capitalist
democracy cannot easily behave any other way, in this it is not inter-
esting at all. What is interesting is not that it returned to normalcy but
why there was a year and more of ‘folly’. The ending of the left’s
‘lyrical illusions’ by 1983–84 saw not only a change in policy, but more
significantly a change in and of discourse towards managerialism
and economic modernization; but the surge of enthusiasm in 1981
changed social attitudes durably. The economic failure, however, would
also durably amplify resentment in the following years.6
The immediate ‘problem’, as it were, that had lowered Giscard’s
popularity, had dominated the campaign, and had been in part res-
ponsible for bringing the left to power, was unemployment and other
problems related to the economy. This would have enormous signifi-
cance for the new government, and its response would inflict serious
damage upon the economy and society and upon the left in France.
Unemployment, or rather its elimination, became the principal organ-
izing theme of the immediate election period, for both the PS and the
PCF; and the simplistic solutions, borne of huge expectation, would
very rapidly make the situation even worse. Given the tide of enthus-
iasm the left came in on, the expectations created by its rhetoric meant
it had little choice (and great inclination, and this included Mitter-
rand) but to hurl all its millenarian notions at the problems that the
Barre government had been wrestling with for years.
As soon as the socialists took power in 1981, the minimum wage was
raised by 10 per cent, pensions by 20 per cent, and family allowances
by 25 per cent. In December, housing benefit was raised by 25 per cent.
A vast programme of job creation began, alongside a reduction in
working hours. These immediate reforms were to be paid for by higher
taxes on higher incomes, but this would not come on stream imme-
diately (and they subsequently proved utterly inadequate). The state
would pay in the interim. The result, even before the costs of national-
ization, was massive overspending by government, a dramatic increase

in consumption, an influx of foreign goods, and because French indus-
try could not respond to such sudden demand, rising unemployment
and recession. By October, the franc had been devalued 3 per cent
(with the Deutschmark revalued 5.5 per cent). By November, Finance
minister Delors who had always been against such spending, called for
a ‘pause’.
The reforms of structure would also be very costly (although as we
shall see in the long term actually advantageous to French capitalism).
It looked like expropriation, but there was government compensation
to the tune of 43 billion francs. Bringing firms under state control
did not create any effective opposition as such. Besides, it was a very
French ‘étatiste’ idea, not just a socialist one. Nine large industrial
groups (who had themselves been merging for over a decade) were
nationalized, seven of them 100 per cent. Between them they owned
thousands of firms, employed hundreds of thousands of people, and
were all brought under state control. Alongside this, nearly all the
banks were nationalized too, so that very rapidly the state had along-
side its already nationalized industries, the near totality of the chem-
ical and pharmaceutical industries, steel, electricity, the I.T. industry,
and construction, and banking.7
While these reforms were being put through, the economy went
from stagnation into recession in the course of 1982. Unemployment
climbed past two million. From this period, in inverse proportion to
left gains after 1974, from by-election to by-election and then in the
municipal elections, with a spectacular re-election for Chirac in the
Paris municipals of 1983, the right began to revive and make gains. By
September 1983, Prime Minister Mauroy’s popularity rating was down
to 26 per cent. He had gone from most to least popular Prime Minister.
After the massive demonstrations against educational reforms in June
1984, Mauroy’s embattled government was replaced.
The new government headed by the 38 year-old Mitterrand protégé,
Laurent Fabius, which lasted until the legislative elections of 1986, was
not very different in membership from the previous one, but was sym-
bolic of major change in the socialists. Fabius promoted a new type of
socialism: ‘modern’, liberal and economically orientated. With the
replacing of the mix of old-style town hall socialism of Mauroy (and
the absence now of the four communist ministers who had resigned
in 1984) and of the rousing almost insurrectionary language of 1981,
Fabius was able to tap into those parts of socialist discourse that leaned
towards themes of modernization and rationalization. This discursive
approach (which rivalled, in fact, Rocardianism) would come to dom-

inate the PS in the years to come. 1984 also saw the real beginning of
Fabius’ personal quest to become in the long term the main leader
of the PS and eventually President of the republic. From October 1984,
Fabius began monthly TV broadcasts, explaining (à la Mendès) his gov-
ernment’s policies. Over his premiership, quite startlingly for the Fifth
Republic, his increasing popularity in the polls began to cross Mitter-
rand’s falling popularity (down at one point to 26 per cent, echoing
that of Barre and Mauroy). In actual economic performance, the changes
were not to come for a long time, although a fall in oil prices helped
in the immediate term. But the repair necessary to the economy
would inevitably mean social strife. Restructuring the already ailing
nationalized – and only recently restructured – firms and industries
(and they had been ailing before nationalization too) meant large-scale
redundancies. Fabius’ administration faced a great deal of unrest (often
backed and encouraged by the PCF, now as good as in opposition),
as well as still rising unemployment. His two year government would
not save the socialists from significant defeat in 1986 but it did
have the real, almost un-measurable, effect of shifting the perception
of socialism from archaic to modern for future use, as it were. It
also demonstrated that the near catastrophic mis-management of the
economy would be the single most important issue the left would
have to avoid in the future. Fabius’ premiership was the first significant
demonstration of this.
Fabius’ own image was strong, although dented slightly in the run-
up to the 1986 elections because he and Jospin, the party leader, began
to squabble over PS leadership of the campaign. The whole govern-
ment, indeed the left itself, was also no longer able to claim the kind of
pure moral mantle in politics it had always assumed when the Rainbow
Warrior scandal broke in July 1985 and elements within government
and the secret services were revealed as being as shadowy and complicit
as those of previous governments and regimes.8
The 1986 election
As the legislature approached its term, the President was still unable
to ameliorate his low personal popularity, in spite of changing his
government. His new government and Prime Minister had also been
unable to stem the tide of the right’s newfound popularity, although
the new Prime Minister was relatively popular; a new kind of socialism,
a new discourse, had seriously taken hold within the party and govern-
ment. As the election approached, only the government, not the Presi-
dent, could be sanctioned by the electorate. The President could, and
would, be ‘punished’ by the electorate, however, almost in a personal
way by humiliating him with a right wing government. This aspect of
Fifth republic politics had never presented itself before, although it
could have happened to de Gaulle in 1967, to Pompidou in 1973 and
to Giscard in 1978. In 1986, however, it was a certainty. The question,
therefore, was not whether Mitterrand could ‘win’, but how he would
respond, how he would comport himself, when his government was
thrown out of office. One further possibility was that an overwhelming
rightwing landslide might indeed force him from office, ending the
Mitterrand era. The next question therefore was, was there any way to
minimize the landslide? In the Fifth Republic, it is arguable that the
electoral system was the great stabilizer of the regime – more perhaps
than the presidency itself, forcing the parties to organize into two
overall blocs or around two poles. Occasionally – as in 1968 or 1981 (or
1993) – the system allowed, by a few percentage point gains in round
one, overwhelming landslides in round two. Backed by Mitterrand, the
government (Pierre Joxe was Interior minister) introduced proportional
representation. It was thinly justified because it had, in fact, appeared
in Mitterrand’s 110 propositions of 1981.
One of the effects of proportional representation is to free the parties
from alliances with one another. The opposite happened with the main-
stream right. The UDF and RPR decided not to allow organizational
strife to break out, and united essentially around the proposition of the
reversal of the election change and the denationalization of all that
the socialists had done. At the individual level, however, candidates
for the 1988 presidential elections began to manoeuvre. A period of
tension began between Giscard and Chirac, the former constantly, but
ultimately unsuccessfully, trying to (re)impose his leadership upon the
right. This period also saw his other former Prime Minister – who had
no real organizational powerbase – begin to stake out his own claim to
presidential status, for Barre’s star had ridden high in the mid-1980s
given that the left seemed, after all, to be applying his policies. The
role of Cassandra can be a strong political resource, other things being
equal. We say other things being equal for it is often the case that the
Cassandras are outsiders without a strong party support base. In mid-
1985, Barre was seen by public opinion as the favourite to win the
1988 presidential elections. The problem with this is that it is a fra-
gile popularity if it does not enjoy the support of a political party.
1988 was beginning to impose itself even before 1986. There was the
Jospin-Fabius rivalry over leadership of the 1986 election campaign,

but Rocard too began his once again hopeful attempt to stand. He
resigned from government in April 1985 over the change to PR, depict-
ing himself as a social democrat who was nevertheless a staunch sup-
porter of the Fifth Republic. The most noted effect and most analysed
of the changes to proportional representation in 1986 was the electoral
opportunity offered to the Front national and Jean-Marie Le Pen. From
the European elections (they had ten seats) the FN had been moving
from its insignificant scores through to a persistent 10 per cent and
more in opinion polls, a figure that would become the basis of Le Pen’s
presidential aspirations (in 1988, 1995 and most spectacularly in
2002).9
For the moment, this would inevitably mean the FN’s entry into
the National Assembly in 1986 (they gained 35 deputies with 9.72 per
cent of the vote). The mainstream right might have had to face the
dilemma of whether to work with them in the Assembly. The com-
bined left gained over 42.5 per cent of the votes, and seats, the right
44.6 per cent, that is 288 seats, an absolute majority of just two seats.10
Chirac came into power with almost a ‘hard right’ image and agenda,
and with the boorish and rather frightening Interior minister, Charles
Pasqua, these two slightly mitigated by the more reassuring unofficial
deputy Prime Minister, and the only Ministre d’Etat, Edouard Balladur.
On the left, the communists continued their collapse (they now only
had the same number of deputies, 35, as the FN). The socialists gained
just over 30 per cent, well down on 1981, but a significant percentage
in a PR system. They remained the largest group in the National Assem-
bly. And the party’s electoral base was now a more ‘positive’ one – with
a more even spread throughout the country, throughout the social
classes, and across gender lines. Socialism itself however was for the
moment in disarray in terms of policies, direction, leadership, potential
leadership, and strategy.11
1986–88
The two-year period between 1986 and 1988, that is to say the long
anticipated crisis caused by the critical asymmetry of the two electoral
cycles (it had been expected by many to occur in 1978) between legis-
lative and presidential power, did not just, simply and paradoxically,
strengthen the regime once again, but transformed it. In one sense, the
democratic sense, the defeat of the left, and the sanctioning of an
extremely unpopular President according to the opinion polls, was in
theory the assertion of parliamentary ascendancy over personalized

rule. The scenario which developed was the opposite: a democratic
leader acting as a bulwark against a rather frightening right wing.
The right came to power in a kind of swaggering Bonapartist way, the
President gradually becoming the guardian of a gentler, more inclusive
Fifth Republican democracy. Several of the new government’s initial
actions were designed to affront, humiliate and hopefully hound from
office the weakened President. Mitterrand responded by wrapping
himself in the constitution, conferring an immediate ‘republican’ legit-
imacy upon himself. He gradually extended such to the nation as
a whole, ‘inventing’ as it were another, simultaneous, nation to the
one which had just, in all but constitution, ‘overturned’ him; and he
moved in harmony with these ‘imagined’ elements between 1986 and
1988 until the ‘real’ France caught up with him. His ability to treat the
National Assembly as the wreckers rather than the people’s valiant
champions was one of the strongest examples of the ‘use’ and function
of symbolic politics, and an illustration of the miscalculation – in sym-
bolic terms – of his opponents, in particular Chirac and Charles
Pasqua.
Mitterrand’s comportment after the election of 1986 was politically
exemplary in that he projected his role as strictly in accordance with
the constitution (which it was but that is irrelevant). The constitution
became the ‘Constitution’ and himself therefore a republican cham-
pion.12 This is one of the fundamental French myths, the obligation to
identify the patrimony, cherish it and pass it on to the new gener-
ations. It is not just a republican myth but a Gaullist one too. After
1986, Mitterrand acted as an ‘arbiter’, drawing upon the ambiguity of
the notion of the President as ‘arbitre’. He pushed the sense of the term
in the opposite direction to de Gaulle’s use, namely that being the
arbiter meant he could act personally to defend France (de Gaulle);
being the arbiter meant he could intervene personally to protect the
republic (Mitterrand). By using the – very limited – constitutional powers
at his disposal, Mitterrand blocked and slowed down government init-
iatives where he could. In practical terms, his action was pointless, in
symbolic terms, the impression he gave of trying to protect the French
against a band of bullies was of enormous significance.13 The effect was
to undermine the authority of his opponents as it implied they were
careless of the Republic-as-patrimony. We should note the irony of
this, the socialist Mitterrand defending the Fifth Republic against
the Gaullists, Mitterrand the author of the most outspoken attack upon
the Fifth Republic.14
In policy terms, the real conflict between the right and the left (the
new government and the President) was the question of privatizations.
The conflict was constitutional and, much more importantly, personal.
In the guise of a constitutional wrangle, France witnessed between
1986 and 1988 a series of moves between the President and his adver-
saries in which he outwitted them all, storming back to power two
years after having been utterly unpopular and almost having been
forced to resign.
Chirac profited from a stronger image on important issues like
security and law and order. Nevertheless, his rather burlesque efforts to
assert himself in protocol and foreign affairs always made him look of
lesser stature than Mitterrand. His impatient manner made him seem
impetuous, his language could not equal the literary, almost wise, and
philosophical register Mitterrand now used. Mitterrand had to be
careful not to be too meddling in government affairs. The overall trend
was one of Mitterrand’s inexorable rise in popularity, and Chirac’s
inexorable decline. The issue of political leadership had become one
almost exclusively of ‘character’.
In 1987, Lionel Jospin, the First secretary of the PS, had been
instructed to prepare for a further Mitterrand bid for the presidency;
and the media, coaxed by presidential advisors and encouraged by the
response of public attitudes, began to depict Mitterrand as a kind of
father of the nation (or uncle, ‘Tonton’), the beloved leader who unified
the nation (‘La France unie’ would be his election slogan), and brought
into being a kind of adoring ‘Génération Mitterrand’. Perhaps for the first
time in the Fifth Republic, politics was being truly driven by opinion
polls, the parties – all of them – less and less able to impose themselves
as national vectors of opinion (this would become more and more the
case in the years that followed), beyond acting as cheerleaders. Mitter-
rand’s popularity now meant that, on the left, the former ‘darling of
the polls’ Rocard could only, once again, say he would run if Mitter-
rand did not. And his position was complicated further by the fact
that, according to the polls in 1987–88, he might beat Chirac but would
lose to Raymond Barre if they faced each other in a run-off. The
72-year old Mitterrand (he was also ill, suffering from/in remission
from cancer but this was not widely known; he had actually been diag-
nosed in 1981), arguably at the end of his career, had become France’s
most popular politician, and took his place alongside de Gaulle as one
of France’s most eminent figures.
Mitterrand did not declare his candidacy until 22 March, four weeks
before the election, the other candidates having spent weeks if not
months arguing only with each other. Mitterrand was thus able to
maintain a kind of presidential serenity as he cruised back to power. He
wrote a Lettre à tous les Français (published in 25 newspapers and
widely circulated as a free-standing document; it was a long document
of policy propositions, philosophical musings, and personal com-
ments). The French seemed to quite like the idea. Unlike with polit-
ical manifestos and other election material, millions of them actually
read it.
With his party, Mitterrand was quite reassuring, declaring to them at
each of his rallies that they knew he was still a socialist; but the rallies
had become little more than hail to the chief events, with Charles
Trenet singing ‘Douce France’ replacing more strident socialist tunes. In
truth, Mitterrand had already emotionally split from ‘his’ party – and
it, painfully, confusedly, frustrated by its own impotence, with him or
without him, was beginning to split from him, in spite of the wild cel-
ebrations that anticipated their return to power (once again on his
coat-tails).
The problem with Barre’s campaign was twofold; and this too was
now – and would remain – a feature of the Fifth Republic: the centrist
candidate always generated sympathy (a yearning for a non-partisan
politics has real texture within the political culture), but when a cam-
paign gets underway a left/right split forces the candidates to adopt
more left/right partisan positions. Second, Barre was not the leader of
the UDF and although he had support, he lacked authority and could
not call on the campaigning team active at all levels of the polity that
supported Chirac. Therefore, although Chirac’s first round vote remained
at his usual 20 per cent, Barre’s fell from an impressive mid-20s in the
polls to 18.5 per cent on the night (third place).
For the PCF, the combination of social change and the pressure of
the personalized and de-ideologized institutions continued its relent-
less crush (although in the legislative elections it did slightly, and tem-
porarily, better). Georges Marchais, now seen as both irrelevant and
unpopular, did not dare stand as he had in 1981. A fall guy was found
in the stolid, solid, and irrelevant figure of the leader of the PCF parlia-
mentary group, André Lajoinie, who went on to gain a mere 6.76 per
cent of the vote. Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of
the Soviet Union, the French communist party was in terminal decline.
The party was in so little control of its political environment now that
it could not even stop a dissident former high-ranking member of the
party, Pierre Juquin, from himself standing (and in fact their combined
total corresponded to the higher PCF vote at the legislative elections).
Juquin gained 2.10 per cent. The less than 7 per cent for André Lajoinie
demonstrated beyond doubt that the French communist party was
finished as a major player in politics. The far left party’s humiliation
was compounded by the far right’s success. Le Pen’s vote was an
astounding 14.38 per cent, an event that would inform French politics
for the foreseeable future. He was close to Barre’s result, a mainstream
candidate, an ominous sign.15 We should stress here two aspects of the
1988 presidential elections, epitomized by the two weeks between the
two rounds: dramatization and personalization. The two weeks saw
both ‘actors’, in particular Chirac, treating the political stage in a truly
theatrical way, in fact to the detriment of his own image, as it allowed
Mitterrand to quietly outperform him as it were. The campaign was
highly personalized anyway because of the two year long clashes between
the two main candidates. By the start of round two the character traits
of the two men had crystallized around Chirac as hard and combative
and Mitterrand as wise and statesmanlike.16
Mitterrand’s vote in round two, two weeks later on 8 May, marked
a striking 8 per cent difference between himself and Jacques Chirac
(54 per cent to 46 per cent). The scattered vote of round one possibly
had a significant effect upon round two. Partisan allegiances were weak-
ening, and Mitterrand’s success can only be explained by a significant
vote from not only the left, but the ecologists, the centre, and the
FN. Mitterrand’s vote went well beyond that of the left. It is arguable
that Mitterrand himself failed to grasp the significance of this in the
aftermath of his triumph.
There was a contradiction in Mitterrand’s success. If he were now the
unifier, the rassembleur of the nation, as if above politics, how could he
now descend into the arena as the leader of the socialists in a legis-
lative election? And he did neither, or rather both: he did call for and
campaign for the PS, but half heartedly; and on two occasions sug-
gested that he hoped the PS did not win too well (it didn’t). He wanted
his party to be the party and government of ‘ouverture’. The problem
with this is that there was not – outside a few individuals – a strong
party political ‘centre’ that was available to the left. Mitterrand was
doubly estranged from his party given that the post-Jospin leadership
had gone to Pierre Mauroy rather than to Laurent Fabius, Mitter-
rand’s own choice. The result was confusion everywhere on the non-
communist left. Mitterrand appointed Michel Rocard, as the Prime
Minister of ‘ouverture’, and although Rocard was still popular in the
country, it was an ill-kept secret that Mitterrand held his younger rival
in contempt.
The overall abstention rate for the ensuing legislative elections was
an unheard of (in any of the Republics) 34 per cent.17 The right (led, in
fact, by Giscard) again buried its differences and campaigned under
one banner without ‘primaries’ so that the UDF and RPR were not
pitted against each other in round one (the Chirac government had
restored the single constituency two round system). On the extreme
right, the FN, at just under 10 per cent could not fight in round two,
the system was organized against it – it gained one seat. The PCF was
now down to 27 seats. The PS and its immediate allies gained
276 seats, 12 seats short of an overall majority (the mainstream right
gained 271 seats).18 Mitterrand made appeals to the centre – which sent
confusion through his own party. The ambivalences and ambiguities
that had come together to carry Mitterrand back triumphantly to
power had created a series of confused strategies and dispositions and
turned Mitterrand’s triumph into something much more equivocal.
Personalized politics would play an even more consequential role
within the institutional and political set up, leading to a by and
large failed second septennate, which, on Mitterrand’s triumphant
re-election, had seemed so full of promise.
7
1988–2002: The Long Decade of
Vindictiveness, Miscalculations,
Defeat, Farce, Good Luck, Good
Government, and Catastrophe.
The Presidency Right or Wrong
If we take the period 1988 to 2002 as a whole – Mitterrand’s second

term and Chirac’s first term – we see two septennates, one of the left
and one of the right, and an almost symmetrical pattern suggestive of
the problems of presidentialism. In each case there was an initial thrust
of intense enthusiasm, then legislatures that followed on but seemed
non-correspondent with the enthusiasm of the presidential election.
The legislatures (at least Rocard, Cresson, Bérégovoy, Juppé) brought
bathos to government after the excitement of the presidentials. Both
septennates also ushered in, before the end of their terms, cohabita-
tions in the wake of enormous presidential unpopularity (1993; 1997);
and the governments ushered in (Balladur; Jospin) were enthusiast-
ically received, in inverse proportion to presidential popularity. Both
Prime Ministers were expected to win the following presidential elec-
tion (Balladur, 1995; Jospin, 2002), but both were dramatically cast
aside in round one.
The single factor shaping these dysfunctional developments in
the context of the anticipated (1993, 1995, 2002) and unanticipated
(1997) electoral calendar were the actions, the miscalculations, of the
Presidents themselves. Mitterrand’s personal ill-feeling towards Michel
Rocard and personal miscalculation in appointing Edith Cresson had
inordinate political effects. Chirac’s personal miscalculation in 1997
almost brought the presidency into ridicule.
This period therefore illustrates in its complexity the propensity for
individual presidential initiative to cause the regime to function very
badly. Added to this is the continuing role of drama in the process,
pitching drama against process. Drama itself was also beginning to
154
1988–2002: The Long Decade 155
blend with ‘headline grabbing’ and with personal clashes. The roller-
coaster socialist governments of the 1988–93 period were dramatic
through the miscalculations of the President. The same was true in
1997. The drama created by Cresson’s premiership in 1991 was con-
sequential for the socialists and probably unnecessary. The clash
between Chirac and Balladur between 1993 and 1995 was also both
consequential and unnecessary. The resumption of nuclear testing by
Chirac in 1995 was very consequential for France’s diplomatic relations
especially, and was quite unnecessary. All of the ‘unnecessaries’ were
related to avoidable personal decisions. Given the centrality of the
characters of the Presidents and their decision-making, the ‘unneces-
sary’ had become by 1988 and beyond as likely as it was consequential.
1988–93: System dysfunction and occasional chaos
Rocard
The 1988–93 period is one that is scarcely written about, rather like the
period 1969–74. There was a great deal of press coverage, particularly
given that in quick succession there were three unhappy Prime
Ministers, but scholarly coverage is limited. There are periods in the
Fifth Republic that are more easily ‘understood’ and therefore interest-
ing. The ‘classic’ periods (1958–69; 1981–88; 1997–2002) stand out and
are followed by lulls in scholarly attention. The 1988–93 period how-
ever is one of the most revealing; and this because the regime becomes
dysfunctional. Let us examine why. The 1993–95 period was equally
dysfunctional, although in this case was much written about. Leader-
ship rivalries, however acrimonious and detrimental (to party, to
government etc) usually drive the Fifth Republic on depending upon
circumstances, the conjuncture, leadership initiatives, and perfor-
mance. In some circumstances – 1988–93 being an extremely good
example – the scope given to leadership initiative also gives scope for
true misjudgements, major mis-calculations, bad decisions, and the
undermining of the dynamic of leadership politics. In Mitterrand’s
second term, presidential supremacy is used and abused to the significant
detriment of the Republic’s fashioned system.
The Mitterrand/Rocard relationship was not simply a leader/lieu-
tenant one like all non-’cohabitationist’ executives before and since,
but a (potential) reconciliation of competing ‘presidentialisms’ and a
symbolic recognition of the ‘new’ left by the ‘old’ left. The nearest
model for such a relationship was king/dauphin, and something akin
to this had been given to be expected: essentially, Rocard would
respect Mitterrand’s supremacy. Rocard would be accorded dauphin-

like status by the President1 and would be given scope to act ‘presiden-
tially’ within his government. Initially, these necessary conditions were
maintained, the latter point conveyed by Rocard’s open letter to
his government2 and his ‘personalist’ asserting of his authority (e.g.
sacking his Health minister within days (7 July), reminiscent of Giscard
with Servan-Schreiber).3 Such a presidential style was perhaps necessary
for Rocard but was fragile (cf. Chaban-Delmas).
The ‘Rocard method’ of government, which we shall look at below,
contrasted with this initial leadership persona, style and image, and
the inconsistencies between the assertion of authority and the drive for
consensual decision-making was itself partly responsible for Rocard’s
relative failure to overcome political obstacles on his way to leadership
ascendancy. The relationship between Rocard’s governmental style and
approach on the one hand and his desired leadership image on the
other was never resolved, particularly in the context of growing real-
ization of the President’s disdain for his Prime Minister’s leadership
qualities. Essentially, the ‘Rocard method’ of policy negotiation was
rather like that of Tony Blair in Northern Ireland a decade or so later,
that is to say, to maintain antagonistic actors as interlocutors, relent-
lessly, against the odds, moving into a labyrinth of compromise and
negotiation until a settlement or solution was found. Rocard’s major
success in this was to find a working solution to the strife in the over-
seas territory of New Caledonia, a seemingly intractable situation.
It is debatable whether this method of negotiation, dialogue, and
compromise was successful in any other domain. Rocard had long
emphasized the role of ‘civil society’ and ‘les forces vives’ and the need
to include these better in the political process, and transcend France’s
perpetual confrontations.4 Rocard’s approach was explicitly a call for a
new kind of politics, and implicitly a criticism of previous leadership
styles, and the presentation of his own. In practice, in the context of
French politics and society, it is arguable whether Rocard’s approach
and ‘method’ had anything other than a negative impact. Opening
negotiations as a process rather than as an adversarial series of nego-
tiating positions that would arrive at an outcome was alien to French
socio-political relations. Talking in order to say that there was, for
example, no money on the table, was arguably strategically inappro-
priate in the French context. It was as if Rocard were introducing
overnight a version of a West German ‘co-gestion’ model into a French
framework in order to de-dramatize politics. It is difficult to identify
cause and effect in this area, but Rocard’s premiership saw, even in
French terms, a major escalation of (almost incessant) strikes, marches,

demonstrations, near-riots, heavy police actions, and so on. It was as if
the Rocard method provoked or encouraged hostility, the opposite of
what it was claiming to do. Throughout 1989 and 1990, one profession
after another rebelled, and many of these were public sector strikes
that strongly affected services (e.g. transport, health). As well as the
huge public sector, there were strikes in the automobile industry, tele-
vision, radio, the banking sector, prisons, Air France, shipbuilding, the
post office, the Metro and RER, agriculture, haulage. The doctors went
on strike. In 1988, there was a highly publicized nurses’ strike. In 1990
there were highly publicized demonstrations by further education stu-
dents. These latter two saw the President sympathize with the strikers,
as he had during cohabitation with Jacques Chirac, further under-
mining Rocard’s position. And the government’s response was ulti-
mately not the Rocardian one, but the classic French governmental
response of a refusal to give in followed by concession or surrender
depending upon the success of the strikes and demonstrations. By the
autumn of 1990, Rocard’s popularity began seriously to fall.
Our focus here is not on the economy, but here too Rocardian gov-
ernment did not bring a competence or style that was essentially any
different from other governments. And much of Rocard’s ‘image’ was
based upon the notion that he, economically expert and a modernizer,
stood in contrast to the ‘old’ left’s economic incompetence. His eco-
nomic reputation, therefore, began as a political resource that – like
Giscard’s – lost capital as the economic revival failed to appear. The
economy in the period of Rocard’s premiership did not do particularly
well, nor particularly badly. There was a certain economic revival init-
ially, although GDP growth fell over the three years from around 4 per
cent to around 3 per cent then to around 2 per cent. Some industries –
the automobile industry for example – saw very strong performances,
partly due to world demand. Inflation remained stable, prices too.
Unemployment hovered around 10 per cent throughout. The point to
note is that Rocardianism, a kind of Third Way before its time, did not
bring a new politics, a new prosperity, or a new relationship between
politics and civil society. Moreover, the often very uninteresting leg-
islative programme (e.g. a great deal of parliamentary time taken up
with relatively inconsequential reform of TV and radio) was often mired
in sterile debate, and the bolder initiatives – the RMI, a programme to
help and train the unemployed, the CSG, a tax to try to cope with the
pensions crisis, and the ISF, a super-tax on very high incomes – really
produced very little in the way of revenue.
At the electoral level, the general trend continued – high abstention,

a weakening of support for the mainstream parties, and a grow-
ing support for the growing number of ‘anti-system’ parties.5 It was
as if the de-dramatization of politics that Rocard sought actually
de-politicized society in terms of its traditional political activity, but
the result was a continuing politicization of the social, so that political
de-alignment and disengagement were accompanied by protest and a
tendency towards political extremism, particularly on the right. At this
time, half the electorate voted (in Cantonal and European elections,
for example, with abstention often between 30 per cent and 50 per
cent) for parties that were not PS, UDF, or RPR.
All the political parties at this time were also trying to cope with the
consequences of the leadership politics of the Fifth Republic. At times,
throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, internal party leadership
competition was a cacophony. The PS was locked into a (pre) post-
Mitterrand leadership struggle, and whoever won (Fabius or Jospin, in
fact neither did really at this point) would be anti-Rocard. The RPR was
also in a (very premature but quite understandable) post-Chirac leader-
ship struggle with something akin to factions appearing in the once
monolithic party. Both the right (Pasqua) and the left (Séguin) of the
party were trying (again ultimately unsuccessfully but setting off a
series of reactions that would go on for 15 years or so) to use rally pol-
itics (and a rather unholy alliance between themselves) to oust the
Alain Juppé (i.e. Chirac’s) party leadership. And in the most mono-
lithic of them all, the PCF, dissidence was rife, even though this never
contributed to a reversal or the party’s misfortunes.
On the extreme right, the FN went from strength to strength,6 profit-
ing from both the problems of unemployment, but especially from the
rising temperature of debates around immigration, Islam and racism.
The ‘headscarf affair’7 triggered major debate but inconsequential gov-
ernment action. Even Rocard went on TV in December 19898 to say
that France could not just go on accepting immigrants. Such assertions
rather lost him his gentler image without really strengthening his
would-be tougher image. In December 1989, the FN had a spectacular
success at a by-election, winning the seat, further evidence that the
Rocard government had no better solutions to the political and social
problems confronting France, problems that were now teeming into a
now highly mediatized public political space.
Corruption was the final issue tarnishing the image of government.
Rocard himself was never involved or implicated in any wrong doing,
but his party was, his ministers (mainly strong Mitterrandists) were.
The scandals ranged from illegal channelling of money to help party

funds, to insider share dealing, corruption for personal profit, and false
accounting. These scandals, paradoxically because they were often well
covered up, seemed endless. It was also the case that from this time the
new, younger cohorts of French magistrates were going about their
business with the vigour of investigative reporters (and investigative
reporting – never very strong in France – was also seeing a revival).
Irrespective of Rocard’s integrity, such a string of scandals, some as we
have said involving his own ministers, made him – like his President
– seem part of the wider malaise.9
Cresson
In such a situation, the Gulf War of 1991, in which France took
part, politically came as a relief. The beginnings of international con-
flicts usually see an executive’s popularity rise. For Rocard, however,
although his popularity rose, the advantage was really all Mitterrand’s
as he took sole control of this aspect of foreign policy. At the end of
the war (the events ran from January to May), as politics was returning
to normal, Mitterrand sacked his Prime Minister on 15 May 1991, and
appointed Edith Cresson the same day. To say that Rocard was sacked
without ceremony, in a rather undignified manner is doubtless true.
What is significant for us is that such cursory disrespect is a character-
istic of Fifth Republic presidential leadership. Whether it is always
advantageous to the user is debatable, for only momentarily did it halt
Mitterrand’s unstoppable slide into unpopularity, and was further evid-
ence of the disadvantages of power concentrated into a single persona
when misjudgement and vindictiveness are allowed such play to not
even Machiavellian purpose.
Edith Cresson’s appointment was greeted initially with puzzlement
and then rapidly with hostility from the media, all of the opposition,
almost all her own party, and then the public. Within one month,
her popularity ratings were so low it made the system of measuring
popularity inappropriate. She became, almost instantly, France’s least
popular Prime Minister. More significantly, she began to drag Mitter-
rand’s popularity down with her until he too had his lowest ratings
ever. He added to her isolation by quite rapidly distancing himself
from her, having realized his mistake. The 1992 regional and cantonal
election results were an early indication of the government party’s
collapsing popularity.10
In terms of Cresson’s own image, it became almost immediately
‘unreadable’. She was a Mitterrandist (although without a real base in
the party), the first female Prime Minister, an attractive woman, and
yet she came across as very ‘unfeminine’, voicing very crass, stupid
views – near racist comments about the Japanese (‘ants’), homophobic
comments about the British (from an interview given four years before,
but given wide publicity), allegedly cruel comments about sending
illegal immigrants back in ‘charters’ (echoing the hard-right Charles
Pasqua’s comments when Interior minister – and even connoting ideas
of ‘déportation’ – a taboo notion in France), and speaking generally in a
way that was considered inappropriate if not indeed rather ‘common’.
The huge potential capital of such an innovation, a woman as Prime
Minister, was squandered within days. Her policies (a strong emphasis
upon ‘delocalizing’ significant parts of the public service including
L’ENA) caused great opposition from lobbies without achieving much
(she had only two years in office at most). The economy was also per-
forming badly at this time. GDP growth had been around 4 per cent
under Rocard. In 1991, GDP was 0.6 per cent, in 1992 barely above
1 per cent, and in 1993 it was again below 1 per cent.11 Unemployment
too continued to rise, and passed the 3 million mark. Businesses were
going bankrupt at an alarming rate, and the RMI training allowance
and social security spending generally were enormous and acted solely
as unemployment benefit rather than supporting ‘insertion’ (training).
Social unrest was high and widely reported: nurses, dockers, lorry drivers,
farmers, in turn held huge demonstrations in Paris and elsewhere, and
a growing sense of ‘insecurity’ was widespread and was linked to a
growing animosity to immigrants and the whole issue of how the gov-
ernment was tackling the issue of immigration. The right (and hard
right) exploited the issue, leaving the government to try to outbid the
right in toughness.
The Cresson premiership offers insights into the nature of French
political leadership because she threw into relief three aspects that
hitherto had been less noticeable: party, gender, and protocol.
Her appointment was perhaps the first in the Fifth Republic where
hostility from inside the party was so intense. No Prime Minister since
1958 had faced such vociferous opposition from within their own
party. Both in the party and in her government, Cresson was sur-
rounded by not simply rivals but enemies. And unlike Rocard she had
no courant of her own in the party. Several of the party bosses, the
éléphants12 had hoped to be nominated Prime Minister, and her nom-
ination infuriated these first and second rank leaders within an already
very internally divided party. Both in terms of leaders and ideology,
the party was in a struggle to survive in the painful twilight of
Mitterrand’s presidency and beyond it. Cresson was, moreover, sur-

rounded by Mitterrandists who were closer to him than she was, and as
her, and his, popularity kept falling, she lost, almost immediately, even
his support. Mitterrand had made a bold appointment. It rapidly
became evident it was a major misjudgement.
The second aspect of interest to us is the question of gender.13
Leadership in the Fifth Republic until this moment, with the excep-
tions of a few presidential candidates and a handful of women minis-
ters, had been almost exclusively male at national level. Much of the
hostility to Cresson seemed to have a very sexist edge to it as if in a
world of men she had no place.14 Two things are thrown into relief by
her premiership. First, the mythology around Fifth Republic leadership
in France is chivalric and male. This means that the public ‘mediation’
of a female will be problematic in that no ‘language’ had been estab-
lished. Second, and this point is related to the first, Cresson’s own
image as a woman was mediated, was managed, extremely badly. The
brusque and aggressive ‘Thatcher’ style that had been currency in the
UK for a decade did not seem to fit well in French political culture;15
perhaps the nearest mythical female authority archetype – perhaps a
throw back to France’s Catholic past – was a kind of Madonna figure.
Cresson, however, perhaps in an effort at virility, came across as the
antithesis of such a female figure: her image within days of taking
office was that of someone who was abrasive, racist, homophobic and
uncaring. We shall return to this issue of female image and the mytho-
logies informing it when we examine Royal’s presidential candidacy
in 2007, but can note here the apparent role of stereotypes and of
perceived negative and positive ‘female’ character traits.
This brings us to the third aspect that the Cresson premiership high-
lights, and that is the role and function, in French political culture
more than in any comparable country, of formality, protocol and con-
vention. The important role of protocol in France can go unnoticed,
that is until it is broken. And Cresson broke it. It is also true that the
media’s role in developing her negative persona was relentless. Cresson’s
‘unfeminine’ and especially casual tone was completely unknown in
French political society. Of the Stock Exchange she said ‘J’en ai rien à
cirer’ which is close to ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s’, and the expression
became indelibly and negatively associated with her. Her inappropriate
tone revealed a requisite register of political language that she – the
first woman Prime Minister – failed to observe.
The appointment itself suggested the misuse of Mitterrand’s personal
powers. The sacking of Rocard suggested a vindictiveness that had
over-informed the President’s judgement, the appointment of Cresson

a caprice. And these perceived misjudgments coincided with a series
of other miscalculations on his part, throwing into even higher relief
problems of his ‘character’. Throughout his presidency, in foreign
policy, Mitterrand, like his predecessors, had stature. In his second
septennate especially his European policy lent him the status of a
visionary. From 1989, however, a series of misjudgements – over
the unification of Germany, developments in the collapsing Soviet
Union, in Yugoslavia, and later Rwanda, all seemed to coalesce into the
impression that Mitterrand was losing his grip (his hidden illness from
cancer was also becoming more obvious and known in the public
domain). In 1992, Mitterrand miscalculated again. Certain of a large
majority in favour of the Maastricht Treaty he called a referendum, and
on 20 September he won his referendum but by less than one per cent
(with a score of 50.81 per cent). Without Chirac and Giscard’s support
he would have lost, so that even the symbolic presidential majority he
wanted to affirm had dissipated. Before the end of his second term,
Mitterrand had also to face public consternation at the idea that his
connections to the Vichy regime had been much stronger than had
been assumed.16 The appointment of Cresson demonstrated how
fragile and how complex presidential decision making was within an
institutional configuration that encouraged personalized initiatives.
Bérégovoy
After 11 months in office, for the sole reason of her unpopularity,
she was replaced on 2 April 1992 by her Finance minister, Pierre
Bérégovoy, whose task it was to act as the last stand ‘dernier carré’ in an
attempt to save the governing party from electoral disaster in 1993.
The problem for Bérégovoy was that it was already too late to stem
the tide. The Cresson premiership coincided with and accentuated
what had become a factor of the Fifth Republic (under de Gaulle,
Giscard and later at the end of Chirac’s second term), a very negative
sense of a ‘fin de règne’. The political climate was still mired in a series
of ‘affairs’ and scandals, most of them financial scandals involving
illegal party funding but also individual profiteering. Most involved
the party in government, the PS, and one involved Bérégovoy’s own
personal loan to purchase a Paris apartment. Nothing could bring com-
fort to the last months of the socialist government as it faced a right
wing electoral landslide in the 1993 legislative elections.
By the standards of any French elections, March 1993 was a crushing
defeat for the outgoing government. Out of 577 seats, the socialists
had won only 64. The communists were now down to 24. The left had
fewer than a hundred seats. The UDF had 207 and the RPR 242. Many
leading socialists lost their seats, including, very significantly in terms
of future developments, Rocard and Jospin. Even the viability of the
party at a national level was in question. Mitterrand was still in office,
paralysing the party and hindering its reprise. In terms of its first round
vote in 1993, the left overall had gained 31 per cent of the vote which
was not perhaps as dramatic as it might have feared, but the right had
44 per cent and in round two, 57 per cent.17 Given the French system
whereby round two has an amplifying effect, the right demonstrated
that it could dominate the regime once again. The right had not
had this kind of dominance since 1968. Such a majority also meant
the near-certain prospect of gaining the presidency. Over the next
two years, the fortunes of the left and right seemed to play themselves
out without reference to one another, but with leadership rivalries
dominating all developments.
1993–95: Balladur. Almost President
On the left, Jospin withdrew from political life, and Rocard took the
leadership of the PS from Fabius, triggering another internal leadership
struggle that would help neither of them. The party suffered another
blow on 1 May 1993 when the ex-Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy,
suffering from severe depression, shot himself in the head and died.18
In the European elections of 1994, the PS did so badly (14 per cent)
that Rocard’s leadership was ruined (as were, forever, his presidential
hopes). The PS leadership was taken by a relative unknown, Henri
Emmanuelli, a Mitterrandist from the left of the party. At the 1994
Liévin conference, there was un appel by many in the party, a call to
the one remaining potential PS leader, Jacques Delors, President of the
European Commission, to stand for President. He was completely
out of kilter, personally, ideologically, temperamentally with the now
ineffective left-leaning PS.19 The party, now linked symbolically, dis-
cursively and organizationally to the presidentialism of the Fifth
Republic, seemed to have no direction or purpose at all, and possibly
no candidate for the 1995 elections. From 1971 onwards, the party had
turned its ‘party purpose’ to ‘rally purpose’ around a rally leader. Now
it did not have either.
On the right, one of the strangest effects of the leadership element in
the Fifth Republic’s configuration was about to unfold. In parenthesis,
chance played a significant role. The UDF also lacked a clear leader.
Giscard, still not stepping aside for younger leaders such as François
Léotard, had a paralysing effect upon the UDF similar to the effect Mitter-
rand had on the PS. And the UDF was, in 1993, the junior partner to
the RPR. This meant that the initiative (role of Prime Minister and
membership of government) fell in 1993 as in 1986 to the Gaullists.
However, Chirac did not take the premiership. Given subsequent
developments it is impossible now to establish whether this was a bril-
liant or foolish move. For a while in 1994 and 1995, it seemed to have
been a mistake of monumental proportions. This reminds us of the
crucial role that individual judgements and perceptions had on the
republic. Chirac, judging that the premiership attracted unpopularity
(and it is true that no sitting Prime Minister has to date won the presi-
dency, and only two Presidents have been Prime Ministers in the Fifth
Republic), decided to put forward his former deputy Prime Minister
and advisor, Edouard Balladur, as Prime Minister. Chirac was also wary
of the humiliations Mitterrand (1986–88) and Giscard (1974–76) had
subjected him to, although this aspect would probably not have come
into play given Mitterrand’s failing health and the fact that he would
not stand again. Chirac, moreover, calculated that Balladur, com-
petent, ‘prime ministerial’, but without a power base in the party (in
fact, he seemed more of a UDF style politician, a fact which would take
on great significance) seemed the perfect substitute for Chirac while he
prepared for the presidency, and undertook to develop a presidential
image and stature. But the presidential rivalry would not develop
between President and opposition Prime Minister, nor between left and
right, nor between Mitterrand and Chirac, but astonishingly between
Chirac and Balladur, whose popularity as Prime Minister propelled
him into standing for the presidency against Chirac. Throughout 1994,
it seemed that they would be the two run-off candidates, both mem-
bers of the same party, while the PS would face something close to
meltdown.
Balladur’s government was a ‘balanced’ centre right government
with major Gaullist figures (e.g. Pasqua, Juppé – the young Nicolas
Sarkozy had his first ministerial post as Budget minister) as well as cen-
trists and UDF figures like Veil, Méhaignerie, Léotard and Bayrou.
Balladur began his premiership boldly and decisively, and immediately
established that he was not under Chirac’s influence. Not only was
Balladur popular, his high popularity was maintained throughout his
premiership (over 60 per cent positive ratings). The economy was still
in difficulties, in France as elsewhere, although France would lag behind,
say, the UK in its recovery, with unemployment still high (12 per cent
and rising throughout 1994), a factor that would play heavily in the
presidential election. The government continued with its 1986 privat-
ization programme. The fortunes of the government, however, would
revolve almost exclusively around the persona of the Prime Minister.
Popular in the polls, Balladur eventually declared his candidacy for the
presidency, triggering the division of the right, and a power struggle
between himself and Chirac.20 Of this compelling clash we should note
here five points, all related to Balladur’s persona.
First, Balladur’s popularity in opinion polls was high and was sus-
tained. He was seen as a competent figure, in relative harmony with
the President and bringing a certain centrist, almost Giscardian feel to
politics, in contrast to Chirac’s impatient hyperactive style when Prime
Minister in 1986. We should add, however, that public popularity has
enormous, although often elusive, political effects; it informs people’s
fortunes, and can be media driven or led, but can evaporate at crucial
moments of an electoral process, and is also often in a critical relation
to party political organization. Rocard’s political life was dominated
by this interaction. We should also note that Balladur’s style was
undramatic and patrician, and it was as if his popularity was based
upon this.
Second, Balladur’s persona, part real, part invented and sustained
by the media, was quite novel in contemporary French politics. He
was something of a dandy, somewhat precious (it was rumoured he
addressed his wife as ‘vous’), with a certain aristocratic ‘English’ style of
dress – of shoes, shirts and suits reminiscent of Savile Row. His speech
was also quite archaic and ‘plummy’. His aloof and somewhat sancti-
monious image was sustained and amplified by his depiction in Plantu’s
cartoons in Le Monde. And in comedy sketches his appearance and voice
were imitated and exaggerated as in the now highly popular nightly
prime time ‘Bébête Show’. In all of these, Balladur was depicted as a
king or cardinal, often being carried in a sedan chair by footmen. This
meant he would enter the election campaign itself as a kind of exag-
gerated Giscard figure: aristocratic, Louis XVI-ish, monied, and aloof.
Third, Balladur’s premiership developed a reputation for weakness.
The line between appearing to search for compromise and consensus
and appearing weak is an unclear one. Balladur clearly wanted to give
the impression – reminiscent of the Rocard style – of listening, nego-
tiating and compromising. His own ‘method’, like many before and
since in Fifth Republic politics, gradually took on the image of a Prime
Minister fearful of another ’68. In French politics, the kind of con-
frontational street politics by a range of interest groups that had taken
permanent hold in the 1980s continued. Air France workers, followed

by students, followed by fishermen, staged highly publicized and often
dramatic confrontational demonstrations in 1993 and 1994. Balladur’s
method – after the initial period of possible negotiation – was essen-
tially to capitulate to the demands of any protest that seemed as if it
might escalate. As we have said, this form of politics had become
endemic in French politics, but the personal image of Balladur had
added to it the idea of the ‘cardinal’, frightened and panicked by ‘the
mob’. Not a good image to have on the eve of a presidential bid.
Fourth, although not implicated in scandal himself, towards the very
end of his premiership three of his ministers became embroiled in finan-
cial scandals, one of which, involving Alain Carignon, was very serious
(he had apparently made nearly two million pounds corruptly; he received
a three year prison sentence); but the three together appeared – once
again, but now on the right rather than the left – to suggest that the whole
political class was corrupt, and that Balladur’s team was no exception.
The overall effect upon Balladur’s image was to lend a range of qual-
ities to his political persona on the eve of his battle with Chirac:
distant and aristocratic; unconcerned about the poor and weak (unem-
ployment was still rising, and his hard line Interior minister, Charles
Pasqua, associated Balladur further with the notion of heartlessness);
possibly treacherous – ready to betray Chirac – underneath his patri-
cian image; and secretly fearful of ‘the crowd’ like an ancien régime
monarch. These qualities surrounded Balladur at the moment he threw
his hat into the ring. He had a major boost to his image when he and
Pasqua more than successfully handled an airplane hostage crisis on
Christmas day 1994, but this did not feed into his public persona as it
might have done when the campaign began. It was as if the persona of
Balladur as a man of drama and action simply would not graft onto his
political image. Chirac’s campaign, quite startlingly organized around
the opposites of Balladur’s image: left wing (yes!), crusading, caring,
populist, healing, reforming, threw Balladur’s into high, almost comic,
relief. As the campaign opened, Balladur, clearly uncomfortable as a
campaigner amongst the people, stagnated in the polls and then went
down past Chirac’s rising star. Crucially, and this is our fifth point,
Chirac had the party machine behind him, Balladur only a small team
(including Nicolas Sarkozy) and fragile public opinion, and could not
counter Chirac’s newfound populist rally image and barnstorming
depiction of politics as drama. Balladur became de facto the UDF’s can-
didate: in 1988, 1995 (and 2002 and 2007) the ‘UDF’ candidate was
beaten in round one by the Gaullist candidate.
The two year period of Balladur’s premiership is interesting to us for

what it demonstrates about the curiously powerful role personal rela-
tions and character can play. Balladur was ‘not supposed to’ run for the
presidency. And he did because he thought – thanks to his unexpected
popularity ratings – he could win. No Prime Minister before him had
maintained such high opinion poll ratings for so long. His premiership
was in some ways, on privatizations and immigration/nationality, a
reprise of the 1986 government. He had, however, given it a more con-
sensual feel. He seemed to get on with Mitterrand in a way Chirac had
been unable to. The period of two years was arguably not enough for
any real economic benefits from government initiatives to pay off. The
economy (on a prediction of 2.6 per cent growth) actually went into
negative growth, –0.08 per cent in 1993, and unemployment kept
rising. It was falling by the end of 1994 – although France was also by
this time well into the debate over ‘exclusion’, that is, not only the
unemployed but a growing ‘underclass’. Chirac had been campaigning
since the beginning of November 1994 on a notion, novel for the
right, of ‘la fracture sociale’ and how to heal it. From the opening of
the campaign Balladur’s public image stalled and, losing its stature,
immediately appeared inadequate to the presidency.
The duel between Chirac and Balladur demonstrated both the space
offered to personal politics as well as its virulence and its unpredictabil-
ity within the Fifth Republic. Once the public had got used to the
reality of the Chirac-Balladur conflict, it seemed an almost allowable
luxury to have two mainstream right candidates fighting for the crown.
With the sudden surge in popularity of a possible Delors candidacy,
the perilous nature of such rivalry emerged. Delors became a possible
winner, with only Balladur being seen to be able to possibly beat him.
Suddenly the pressure on one of the two to ‘stand down’ (even before
official declarations of candidacy) increased dramatically. Chirac’s
fortunes were saved by Delors himself who declared his non-candidacy
on 11 December 1994.
Regarding the serendipitous effects of personalization, Jospin’s
sudden reappearance on the political scene (he declared his own candi-
dacy on 4 January 1995 in the aftermath of Delors’ declaration) helped
Chirac, but also revived the PS, and overnight let it become once again
a national level party with presidential prospects. Jospin was less pop-
ular than Delors, but he was much more appropriate for the party: at
national level, he could represent all the factions in the PS. He, unlike
Delors, was truly a party man. He took the party’s nomination against
the implausible Mitterrandist candidate, Henri Emmannuelli, and went
on to challenge Chirac. Delors’ deciding not to run meant Balladur’s

crucial presidential raison d’être on the right was gone. Sarkozy had
said on 4 December that Balladur was the only candidate who could
beat Delors. Without him a classic left/right dual between the left led
by the PS and the right led by the RPR became possible once again.
Jospin asserted his ‘new’ leadership of the revived left by coming first
in round one with 23.03 per cent of the vote. Chirac was second with
20.48 per cent. Balladur, with 18.58 per cent, was out of the race.
Le Pen gained a resounding 15 per cent. The TV debate between the
run-off candidates was uneventful. On 7 May Chirac was elected by
52.64 per cent of the vote.21 Jospin went on to lead the left; Chirac led
a very divided right, even though it held a huge parliamentary major-
ity from the legislative elections of 1993. One of the ‘losers’, now
treated as a scheming fallen traitor, and fighting for his political life,
was the ex-Budget minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.
1995–97: Balladur out, Chirac in; Jospin up, Chirac down:

Politics as farce
Jospin had not been seen as likely to win the 1995 election. His cam-
paign (like the 2002 campaign where he was expected to win) was
uninspiring and lacklustre (the sparks had been created by the Balladur-
Chirac clash), but his seeming austerity and integrity did make him
– and therefore the left with him – credible once again, and back in the
mainstream of the Fifth Republic. The party had once again a potential
President governing a presidential party. The question would be
whether his party leadership style could be translated on to a presiden-
tial level. Here is a demonstration of how a credible leader might trans-
form a party’s fortunes. In the aftermath of the election, Jospin indeed
began to project the image of the man who had truly saved, united
and rebuilt the party, and made it ready for government. Moving away
from politics in 1993 suddenly made 1993–95 seem like a symbolic
traversée du désert that further enhanced Jospin’s symbolic status as the
wise leader returning to save the left.
The left however had not won the election, and legislative elections
were not called in the wake of Chirac’s win, given that the right had
such a crushing majority. Chirac appointed his close lieutenant, Alain
Juppé, as Prime Minister. Juppé was also seen as a possible successor
to Chirac’s presidential leadership at some point in the future, so
the Chirac camp seemed, once again, in control, with the cowed
Balladurians having no choice but to offer support to the extent they
were allowed to. Having said this, and even though Chirac had
formally led the Gaullists in 1993, this Assembly was not really ‘his’.
Like Giscard in 1974, the President led an Assembly that did not act as
a legitimating ‘rally’ to personal leadership because it predated his
election.
The thrust of social conflict was carried into the post-election period
in part because of the now near-permanent confrontational nature of
French politics. Railway workers, teachers, hospital staff, bank staff,
hauliers, one after another in the autumn of 1995, led massive social
protests. The thrust was maintained because the platform that Chirac
had stood on in the campaign itself and the rhetoric he had used was
one of the need to repair a ‘social fracture’. Such a bold and leftist dis-
course was thrown into relief, almost into disbelief, by the character of
the government appointed. Juppé’s image was that of the cold, socially
indifferent, mandarin technocrat unheeding of the calls for social
change. His response and, generally speaking, policies (on tax, budget
cuts, balance of payments) were designed to get the economy into
better shape with all the short term sacrifices this would entail. These
were the policies of a straightforward right wing conservative gov-
ernment. Unemployment continued to rise, now to an all time high
(12.5 per cent), so that the aftermath of Chirac’s election saw a kind of
‘third round’ of the presidential elections in the form of major demon-
strations against the government. The left was able to associate itself
with these while the PS, now under Jospin’s leadership, began to recover
its confidence.
Chirac’s popularity fell along with Juppé’s because of the starkly
contrasting image of Chirac as candidate and Chirac as President.
The ‘social fracture’ (a discursive invention irrespective of whether it
reflected a reality) seemed to be unhealed. The idea therefore that
Chirac’s new government was a cynical betrayal of presidential
promises was widespread. The rhetoric had been empty. The image of a
kind of indifferent harshness was further reinforced by the highly
unpopular resumption of nuclear testing. Subsequently in an unrelated
incident in the summer of 1996 some very rough treatment was meted
out (and highly publicized in the media) to a group of homeless ‘sans
papiers’ taking refuge in a church. In a very short time, the idea of a
wise, returning Chirac, renewed and transformed by his own traversée
du désert, was squandered.
The campaign against Juppé (and Chirac) was also pressed within the
governing majority, and in exactly the terms engaged by the strikers
and the left: the need for compassion, the lack of social vision, the cold
technocratic nature of the governing ethos, and so on. And at a very

personal level, another ‘scandal’ about the fractional rent paid by
Juppé on his Paris flat created a sensation and the collapse of his popu-
larity. A short-lived but ultimately quite significant series of oppos-
itions took place within the right itself, further fragmenting it in terms
of personalities, ideology and discourse. The government had UDF
support but this was lukewarm, and the Balladurians were in disgrace,
so that as the government’s unpopularity grew, these elements (some
of them ministers): Léotard, Millon, but also Giscard, began to make
public comments on the narrowness of vision and inappropriate style
of President and Prime Minister. The biggest threat, and clearest evid-
ence that the ‘social’ vision of the 1995 presidential campaign had
been betrayed, was the vocal opposition of the populist leftist Gaullist,
Philippe Séguin. He also embodied (and recreated in national dis-
course) an earlier, half-forgotten (pre-Chirac) Gaullism of social inclu-
sion. He was even supported in this by another pre-Chirac Gaullist, the
right wing Charles Pasqua. All of these criticisms, with Séguin using
his presidency of the National Assembly almost as a counter pole of
vocal opposition to the government, encouraged still further the idea
that the Juppé government was completely out of touch and lack-
ing integrity, and that he, Séguin, embodied the spirit of inclusive
Gaullism, recently revived rhetorically by Chirac himself. In this
difficult situation for an embattled government (ironic, given its parlia-
mentary majority), Chirac (and Juppé, and Chirac’s chef de cabinet,
Dominique de Villepin, and Chirac’s influential daughter, Claude) made
a monumental political miscalculation. Feeling that the majority
no longer offered authority and legitimacy to the government and
President, Chirac – only two years into his term – decided to call early
legislative elections. The miscalculation was even greater in that it was
seen as a cynical move to legitimate government in order to push
through further austerity measures, this time to prepare France for
joining the new European currency. Chirac was seen as lacking polit-
ical integrity first through what he said, and now through what he did.
The calculation was that the right’s majority was so great it would be
returned with a policy-legitimating, albeit reduced, majority. The elec-
tions were called suddenly in April 1997 with only a month’s notice.
The 1997 dissolution was not caprice, but was a clear illustration
that the scope for personal misjudgements of great consequence had
become integral to the regime. A further feature of this period as regards
the image of the President was that, since his election, Chirac had
not made a single speech that was impressive or captured the public’s
imagination or the public mood or the spirit of his own 1995

discourse.
The result of this gathering of negative features was the wiping out
of the right’s huge majority. It lost 220 of its 477 seats, and the elec-
tion of a left wing coalition headed by the now still austere-seeming
but moral and competent leader, Jospin. The left won 42 per cent of
the vote, the right only 31 per cent (with the far right gaining an
unprecedented legislative 16 per cent). The President was humiliated,
and Jospin’s reputation (and Séguin’s as another potential presidential
rival; he took the leadership of the RPR) and potential presidential
image enhanced dramatically.22
1997–2002: The eternal cohabitation. Good government,

and catastrophe
The outcome and consequences of the 1997 legislative elections demon-

strated political miscalculation on an almost comical scale, and threw
into relief the constitutional strangeness of the republic itself. The pre-
vious two cohabitations were politically aberrant but were of only two
years duration, and could therefore be seen and lived as a kind of tem-
porary ‘conjuncture’. In 1997, the Fifth Republic faced for the first
time, the almost nonsensical situation of a five-year left wing legis-
lature under a right wing President, and this simply because the latter
had personally miscalculated. Another reason Chirac had dissolved
the Assembly was his utter conviction that the PS was all at sea and
that Jospin had no real political leadership skills. The humiliation that
accompanied this near-farcical situation was all Chirac’s.
For Chirac, as for Mitterrand between 1986 and 1988, the way
forward in terms of retrieving his authority was discursive and sym-
bolic. This was in part provided for him by the fact that no one now in
the Fifth Republic, outside the extreme left (and even they played the
game), contested the authority of the presidential office itself, even
though no precise definition of what this actually was could be elab-
orated by anyone. A lame duck President was, therefore, possible because
there was consensus on the legitimacy of the office itself. Throughout
the legislature, Chirac used all the presidential occasions he could to
counter Jospin’s claims to leadership and the government’s success.23
His main platform was the 14 July interview (instituted by Mitterrand)
in which he would criticize and undermine his government over,
for example, its inadequacies concerning taxation policy, the ‘wind-
fall’ taxes of 1999, the five-year presidency, or towards the end of the
legislature, Jospin’s Trotskyist past, and so on.24 Chirac would generally

criticize the government on all of its policies, the 35 hour week in
particular, seen as the highly controversial centrepiece of government
policy. The overall attempt – we say attempt because, for many,
Chirac’s criticisms were empty given that he had created this situation
– was to depict himself as vigilant and far-seeing, and his own govern-
ment as lacking in foresight and lacking in effort. Many of his declar-
ations were of the kind to urge the government to do more and
increase their efforts. Chirac also had the further presidential advan-
tage of events like the successful Football World Cup of 1998 and Euro
2000, which France won, to great national acclaim, and a range of high
profile international meetings and talks, for example to the German
Bundestag in June 2000, and the reaction to 9/11 (2001) in which
French solidarity with the US was officially expressed by Chirac alone
as the legitimate and only ‘national’ voice at international level. In
this domain, Jospin’s own efforts, like Chirac’s as Prime Minister
under Mitterrand, were never particularly successful, and sometimes
were diplomatic disasters like his being pelted with stones, and putting
himself in serious danger, by a crowd in Palestine after a contentious
speech on Middle East politics. Each leader made attempts to lift his
status, Jospin in part by insisting upon his busy prime ministerial com-
mitments, and Chirac acting as if he were not responsible for the situ-
ation he found himself in. All the actors still behaved, however, as
if the presidency remained, or should remain, the centrepiece of the
regime, even though it was sometimes a major contributor to the
regime’s dysfunction.
By the time the 2002 elections approached it is probably true to say
that Jacques Chirac had regained – more or less – the electoral poten-
tial he had always had in the run up to a presidential election (1981,
1988, 1995…): give or take one or two percentage points, around
20 per cent. Like Mitterrand in 1986, he had accepted his punishment
as it were, been forgiven, and regained some of his popularity.
The left came into power, suddenly and relatively unprepared. Under
the circumstances, Jospin’s leadership in the sense of managing a coal-
ition government was startlingly better than had been anticipated. It
was true that the essential ingredient of this – his unquestioned leader-
ship of the PS – had been assured since his score in 1995 (and in 1994
a PS rout had been predicted). This was now crowned by the left’s
1997 win. The PS entered the 1997 National Assembly with 254 seats,
35 seats short of a majority. The majority was achieved with the sup-
port of several political parties: the PS was joined by the PCF, the
Green Party, Chevènement’s Citizens’ Movement, the Left Radicals and

several left-leaning independents. Together they constituted the ‘plural
left’. Such a coalition would be difficult to maintain throughout a
whole legislature. It was partly due to Jospin’s surprisingly good man-
agerial skills that the coalition endured more or less intact until 2002.
One of the prices to pay for this, however, was that concessions, wheel-
ing and dealing, negotiations, compromises, and so on had to be
undertaken in order to keep the coalition intact.25 The effect of this
was to hold Jospin’s own image within a managerial status, and restrict
his presidential aspirations to a kind of solid, competent claim. And
from 2000 Jospin’s government began to lose its collegial character. It
was as if the 2002 election campaign itself would decide the question
of Jospin’s presidential potential.26
From May 2000, two crucial and related developments took place:
the reversal of the order of the presidential and legislative elections,
and the alignment of the presidential and legislative term by making
the presidency a five year term like the legislature, so that in theory
they would occur at the same time. Reversing the timing of legislative
and presidential elections would reassert presidential influence and
most probably give to whoever won, a sound majority in the Assembly,
thus reasserting presidential dominion, diminished since 1988. The
second would, it was argued, rationalize the republic and hopefully
rid the republic of its ‘cohabitations’ and weak Presidents. Each of
the measures, the second an artful Giscardian move to counter the
regime’s Gaullism, had, for those who supported them and those
who opposed them (Jospin supported both, Chirac opposed both), the
opposite effects from those intended: Jospin hoped to profit, and lost,
Chirac feared to lose, and won.
A further misjudgement was Jospin’s repeating Chirac’s misjudge-
ment of 1997. By 2001, Jospin’s disdain for Chirac, who seemed to
some corrupt, amoral, and ethically and strategically bankrupt, would
prove disastrous, for he displaced his own view onto the national level,
assuming the French would do nothing other than cast the President
aside. Everyone had miscalculated, especially regarding the outcome of
round one of the presidential election of 2002.27
2002: Jospin snatches defeat from the jaws of certain

victory
We should draw attention to two things about the 2002 presidential

election campaign, for these throw into high relief the unpredictable
nature of French politics and the role of chance. The first is that
this election, the most attention-drawing (both nationally and inter-
nationally) in round two, perhaps even more so than 1981, was, until
the evening of the first round, barely on anyone’s radar, even at the
national level. There was very little interest in the campaign. Apathy
was demonstrated by the abstention rate, but equally by the almost
complete lack of public and media interest; until, that is, the political
earthquake of Le Pen’s vote, itself in part the result of a generalized
apathy and political abstention by the electorate at large. Jospin’s
achievements had been legion, not least his apparent competence, par-
ticularly at his presiding a difficult coalition for a whole legislative
term, and being the Prime Minister of possibly the most effective left
wing government France had seen. He had also presided the introduc-
tion of the (albeit controversial) 35 hour week, initiatives on youth
employment, privatizations, a decisive fall in unemployment (the bane
of all governments for over 20 years), better economic growth, record
tax returns, improvements to the health insurance scheme, and legis-
lation on ‘parité’ (equal gender representation), the PACS (civil part-
nerships open to both homosexual and heterosexual couples), and the
restriction of the unpopular ‘cumul des mandats’ to reduce the number
of jobs (councillor, mayor, MP and so on) a politician could hold at
one time. Few governments, especially leftist ones, could claim such
competence.
Jospin and the 2002 campaign

Like Jospin in 2002, Balladur in 1995 had been seen as the favourite,
but unlike Balladur, Jospin had the powerful socialist party behind him.
In a word, there had never been, since Pompidou, a Prime Minister
(and certainly not a leftist Prime Minister) more successful, and now
better placed and ‘positioned’ than he. Not since 1969 had a candidate
had such a clear run at the presidency. His rival, Chirac, was seen by
many as having achieved nothing. We need to ask therefore what were
the factors that led to the collapse in Jospin’s fortunes. We can identify
four linked factors, and they each centre on character and persona.
It is true that policy convergence and familiarity had brought the
two men together in the public’s eyes. But Chirac had in the weeks
before the campaign, largely through the public relations efforts of
his daughter Claude, taken on once again some of the ‘battling Jack’
aspects of his former persona. And campaigning from a position of per-
ceived weakness has often been a major strategic advantage to candi-
dates in the Fifth Republic. He also stressed, from January onwards,
again and again, the Le Pen-like theme of ‘sécurité’ (law and order) and
Jospin’s government’s failure to address the problem, thus dividing
them from one another, and depicting Jospin as a traditional leftist,
unconcerned with the law and order worries of the ordinary citizen.
Second, Jospin seemed as if he no longer controlled the plural left. The
plethora of left candidates was simply a political reflection of the state
of the parties, but it seemed as if they were standing because he was
not qualified alone to stand against the right. From April to June it was
a ‘complex mix of disenchantment, demobilization and protest’28 but a
mix that reflected badly on the left’s candidate. These candidates and
their electorates would all have supported Jospin in round two, but in
round one they wanted to stress their own part of the left and gain
ascendancy over the other parts of the plural left; they did this by
stressing the failure of the mainstream left candidate to capture their
aspirations. In all, there were eight candidates standing for the left.
Jospin’s persona as a rallying figure at election time was flawed (there
had been only four candidates in 1995).
Third, there were real errors of judgment by Jospin. There was the
prematurely centrist statement that his presidential programme was
not a socialist one.29 He also seemed quite strikingly tired throughout
his campaign (this, in fact, through over-activity). And Chirac stayed
quite relaxed yet lively during the campaign proper. This was com-
pounded when Jospin miscalculated terribly by referring to Chirac as
too old and worn out, which the media transformed into an unaccept-
able and ageist personal attack, while it drew further attention to the
fact that Jospin actually seemed sullen and exhausted and Chirac not
at all.
Fourth, Jospin seemed aloof, and not particularly likeable. Even here
Chirac’s friendly rogue-ishness contrasted with Jospin’s apparent cold-
ness, an image of almost un-Frenchness. Whatever the public thought
of Chirac – and he gained only his usual 20 per cent – Jospin inspired
no enthusiasm, and enough of a lack of it to trigger, by French stan-
dards, a huge abstention rate (along with spoiled ballot papers, over
30 per cent), enough to allow the ‘third man’, Le Pen, a man who inspired
public feeling in inverse proportion to Jospin, to overtake him, creating
a first-round humiliation that the French presidential elections had
never before seen. Even Balladur’s result in 1995, and Barre’s in 1988,
and Chaban’s in 1974 were less of a personal defeat than Jospin’s (and
Defferre had never been a front runner in 1969).30 The image in 2002
was not of the defeat of the left after five successful years but the per-
sonal defeat of Jospin for being of inadequately presidential stature.31
The republic saved – by presidentialism
2002 marked a moment of drama of a kind that has occurred many

times since 1958 and which seemed to question, even threaten, the
republic, and in the end reasserted it. Chirac’s Soviet-style second
round vote demonstrated a profound republican commitment by the
French.32 Chirac (helped by a relentless barrage of anti-Le Pen media
opprobrium, and the almost complete mobilization of the left in
Chirac’s favour) crushed Le Pen with 82 per cent of the vote. Chirac
refused to debate with Le Pen between rounds one and two; and
Le Pen’s round two campaign never took off. In the period after his
victory, Chirac had a political ‘magic moment’, as it were, to address
and respond to this suddenly acquired political capital. The vote was
not about him though, nor, ironically in a presidential election, about
a person, but about republicanism itself.
The left, lost again
On the left, in spite of the heady commitment to the republic in

round two, in the aftermath of the 2002 ‘events’ there was complete
disarray.33 The case of Lionel Jospin demonstrated – in defeat rather
than in victory – the extent to which the republic had become organ-
ized (or in the post-Jospin period, disorganized) around persona and
around persons. And Jospin’s elimination in round one was clearly
experienced by him as a personal trauma. The highly competent and
successful Prime Minister of five years was as if swiped away. Jospin’s
stunned and stunning exit from politics meant that he might make a
come back in the Fifth Republican manner. It was however extremely
unlikely such a return would be successful because of the nature of
his style and cool relationship to his constituencies and potential con-
stituencies, and because of the overwhelming nature of his humilia-
tion. His defeat seemed less cruel than pathetic; and there was a strong
sense that Jospin’s character and comportment had themselves helped
create a situation which meant his support in round one of 2002, or at
any other time, was lukewarm, shallow, fragile.34
The major consequence for the left of Jospin’s defeat was organ-
izational but had significant symbolic and practical consequences. On
both the right and left, throughout the history of the Fifth Republic,
the ‘heroic’ President and the workaday Prime Minister have informed
all leadership relations in the polity, not just those of President and
Prime Minister. Because of the nature of symbolic leadership in the
Fifth Republic, it has become a prerequisite that ‘pretenders’ to as

well as occupants of the presidential throne, are seconded by a non-
threatening administrative leader who makes no claim to exceptional
status. This occurred as early as the young UNR where – through the
sidelining of Jacques Soustelle – leadership remained in the adminis-
trative service of providing rally support to no leader other than
de Gaulle. When Jospin became Prime Minister in 1997 he was replaced
as First secretary of the PS by the loyal, down-to-earth, hard-working
and rather jolly François Hollande, who was to act as a loyal servant to
Jospin as Prime Minister and to keep the party ready for his bid for the
presidency (Jospin had himself been Mitterrand’s loyal hard-working
First secretary). In the aftermath of 2002, Hollande became, incongru-
ously, the leader of the mainstream left. His position, moreover, was
strengthened by the rivalries that re-emerged after Jospin’s departure;
he protected ‘the machine’ from the several minoritarian and divisive
leadership contenders: Fabius, Lang, Strauss-Kahn, along with later
contenders, like Aubry, Dray, Mélenchon, Montebourg, Delanoë and
others who might be seen as manoeuvring to take the leadership of the
party. Throughout the subsequent period, therefore, Hollande led the
party, year after year, as a kind of permanent caretaker leader, accept-
able to all as a guarantee of party unity. This meant that the PS, never a
serious party of government in this guise, faced a decade or more of
stagnation or decline. Royal’s stunning emergence as the party’s and
the media’s candidate can in part be understood in the context of
Hollande’s pedestrian leadership after the 2002 disaster. We shall look
at this in the next chapter.
Beyond neo-Gaullism
The first main consequence of the re-election of Chirac was a kind

of take-over of the whole right by the Gaullists. Led by the former
Prime Minister, Alain Juppé, the party firmly back under the control
of Chirac’s supporters, the Gaullists created a new party, the UMP, that
would (in theory) incorporate all of the mainstream right. It is true
that in many ways it did federate the UDF and RPR into one mass
party. Although there had appeared to be two main mainstream rights
with separate and organized ‘sensibilities’, these were now minimally
different, and yet had created debilitating rivalries, particularly as regards
presidential contenders: the Chaban-Giscard, Giscard-Chirac, Chirac-
Barre, even Balladur-Chirac confrontations had been partly created and
certainly sustained by the division of the right. Nevertheless, partly
because it was a more powerful party machine with an activist base,

this was a predominantly Gaullist undertaking. One of the UDF’s leaders,
François Bayrou, refused to go along with the merger and maintained
the UDF, in a much reduced capacity, on the political map, and would
go on to stand against Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.
The second consequence for the right was related to Chirac’s
own standing. Given the highly-charged emotional re-election of the
President, it is worth speculating whether the relative failures of his
second term (his second quinquennat term was largely seen, rather like
the previous five years as regards his own successes, as a non-event35);
were largely related to the discrepancy between Chirac’s own character
and political leanings, and the potentially national rally status he
might have enjoyed. It is also arguable that Chirac’s second term was
rather like Mitterrand’s and perhaps even de Gaulle’s; there seems to
be a dynamic lost in the second term (even though this might not
apply in terms of legislation actually passed) that contrasts with the
more vigorous nature of the first term.
Chirac began his new presidency in a politically unassailable pos-
ition. His ‘gesture’ to the middle ground was the nomination as Prime
Minister of the, formerly UDF now UMP, centrist, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
Raffarin was a significant choice in that he did represent the centrist,
non-Gaullist part of the governing majority. Indeed Raffarin’s image
was reminiscent of that other earlier right represented by Antoine
Pinay, Alain Poher, and Raymond Barre.
The true conflict, the real power struggle, however, was taking place
elsewhere, between two of the right’s main figures, Dominique de Villepin
and Nicolas Sarkozy. Chirac’s second term was essentially the two – and
largely separate – stories of Sarkozy’s bid for the leadership of the right
and Royal’s bid for the leadership of the left.
8
The Presidential Election of 2007
In this chapter, we shall concentrate our analysis on Ségolène Royal

and Nicolas Sarkozy, and look in particular at how they used the
opportunities provided by the Fifth Republic’s institutions and culture,
its ‘settlement’; and how these created the conditions of their leader-
ship ‘performance’. We need also to bear in mind the gender factor, for
Royal’s presence: the first major female contender for the presidency
throws into relief in a startling way many of the unspoken, implicit
characteristics of the presidential settlement.1 In the case of Royal,
because her gender and the mediation of ‘the feminine’ in her candi-
dacy, both by the media and by her, was central to her campaign, we
shall concentrate upon this aspect. Sarkozy dramatically downplayed
her gender (her opponents in the PS strategically should have followed
this example). As a woman she raises different and often new aspects
to analysis. We therefore need to be aware of not only her role as a
woman in politics, but also the representation of her as a female ‘char-
acter’ and feminine persona in the political realm, and the wider polit-
ical and cultural responses to gender.
Ségolène Royal
Let us look then at Ségolène Royal’s political trajectory; her ‘persona’;

and the campaign itself.
The trajectory
Marie-Ségolène Royal was from a military, provincial, old-fashioned
and, in her teens, after the separation of her parents, a church-mouse
poor family. She was educated at Sciences-Po and the ENA. Something
of a loner, and a very hardworking student, she became part of the
179
group of friends around her jovial and popular fellow student, François
Hollande. She became his girlfriend and subsequently partner for over
20 years, having four children with him. After ENA, they both entered
the civil service. Hollande, on the suggestion of a senior colleague at
the Cour des comptes, Jean Rosewald, went to work with Jacques Attali,
Mitterrand’s private advisor. Royal joined him, and both worked for
Mitterrand’s 1981 campaign. Hollande later went on to work for the
new socialist government’s spokesperson, Max Gallo, and Royal for
Mitterrand’s team. She worked on social questions, to which she added
the environment. Mitterrand noticed her and was impressed by her
knowledge of ‘women’s issues’ and her skill at organizing a dossier. In
1983, she became an official advisor (chargée de mission) and worked,
along with many others, for the President. In the den of vipers, she was
unpopular with many people, seen as a newcomer and without legit-
imacy in the President’s entourage. He found her intriguing, amusing,
and efficient. Her relative freedom enabled her, with Hollande, to
become involved in a series of often semi-secret initiatives (not always
successful) on behalf of Mitterrand. Hollande, in particular, was involved
in the behind the scenes setting up of SOS-Racisme (where the couple
became friends with Julien Dray in particular). It was Hollande who
introduced Bernard Tapie into Mitterrand’s circle.2
The Mitterrand years

In 1988, Royal made a last-minute appeal to Mitterrand for a con-
stituency for the legislative elections. She impressed him even more by
winning the seat, in Deux-Sèvres. There clearly was ‘something about
her’. As an MP, she avoided parliamentary debate and took up ‘causes’,
often attention-catching ones that would catch the public’s – and the
media’s – interest: getting rid of summertime time, opposing the legal-
ization of brothels, opposing TV programmes considered bad for chil-
dren. Her style in TV interviews was quite dramatic. She attracted
attention, and she conflated left wing and very traditional ideas invari-
ably related to children, family, the environment, lifestyle, and social
issues. All of these aspects would be revived two decades later.
In 1992, in the last stand ‘dernier carré’ 11-month government of
Pierre Bérégovoy, Royal was made Minister for the environment (which,
incidentally, meant that Hollande would not be made a minister). As a
minister, Royal became even more aware of the media and of her status
as a woman in politics. Like Sarkozy, she cultivated the image of some-
one involved in frantic activity, and in causes. When a minister, and
heavily pregnant with her fourth child, Flora, and working more or less
The Presidential Election of 2007 181
right up until giving birth (even involving a trip to Brazil in May),

she made use of the media to emphasize here identity as a working
mother. She was photographed with her new-born daughter for Paris
Match. Such a gesture was seen by many as a demonstration of the new
kind of woman who could reconcile motherhood and career, by others
(including her feminist colleagues) as distasteful self-promotion and
publicity-seeking. This dual image would accompany her, in shifting
proportions, throughout her career, and would play a decisive role in
her presidential campaign. As a minister, she appeared to ‘get things
done’, and got two environmental laws on to the statute book, along
with a number of other measures in the dying months of the Bérégovoy
government.
In March 1993, only 54 Socialist MPs survived the right wing elec-
toral landslide. Not only was Royal re-elected, she was returned to the
National Assembly with an even larger majority than in 1988, the only
PS MP to increase their first round vote.3 Returned to Parliament, she
was among a much reduced number of big names. Rocard, Jospin and
Hollande amongst others, had lost their seats. And in a much reduced
PS landscape, Royal gained a wider reputation as an unorthodox,
outspoken politician on a range of issues. Royal’s political career was
informed by various factors, including her own determination and
competence, but also – like Sarkozy – bravado. She seized all oppor-
tunities for promotion and self-promotion that were available, and
exploited exhaustively the issues associated with a new generation of
‘liberated’ post-’68 women: issues which, paradoxically, defined them
as women: family issues, morality, children, equal rights, the environ-
ment, sexuality, social policy, and so on. She also pushed her image as
a committed and successful working mother. One of the characteristic
features of the Fifth Republic was that of patronage in the context of
‘good fortune’. Royal’s political relationship with Hollande, then, more
importantly, Attali, then Mitterrand, and later others such as Claude
Allègre, all afforded fast-track opportunities. Her status as a successful
MP and then minister also brought her fame and success beyond that
of her party, and her drive meant that, as women were sought to fill
crucial posts (and there were few of them), she was there and available
with growing knowledge and experience in a field dominated by men.
Once again, this would inform her later successes, and some of her
failures. We should also note her relative distance from the party.
Although a Mitterrandian, she was not really in anyone’s inner circle
in the PS, and she was very much on the outer edge of the presiden-
tial circle. She did not have, for example, strong association with or
influence within a PS courant. This absence of the ‘discipline’ of a party

faction would also become enormously significant later on.
In the barren PS years between 1993 and 1995, Royal maintained her
distance from the party machine, while her partner Hollande became a
significant player within it. She nevertheless spoke out on virtually all
issues – ignoring the allocation of roles within the PS parliamentary
group – much, once again, to the exasperation of many of her col-
leagues. In March 1994, she played a highly publicized role in support-
ing Turkish MPs, particularly women MPs, facing imprisonment for
standing up against their government. She flew to Ankara and spent
the night with MPs in a besieged Parliament.
In 1994, with a great deal of behind-the-scenes activity from Hollande
and his associates, many in the party, including Royal, worked for a
Delors candidacy in the presidential elections. This never happened,
yet the incident is revealing of the party, the regime, and Royal’s sub-
sequent comportment; the Delors ‘moment’, where even the far-left
of the party were prepared to rally to him if he came forward, showed
that the whole of the PS would follow any credible leader who might
win them the presidency. It was also a demonstration that an ‘outsider’
without a personal faction but with a political base or reputation of
some kind could gain the party’s support. Royal herself had even con-
sidered running for the PS’ presidential candidacy at this time, to the
amusement and incredulity of some. She criticized both the outgoing
and incoming leaders (Emmanuelli and Jospin); a criticism that would
damage her subsequent prospects of high office.
The Jospin years

Jospin’s credible presidential challenge to Chirac in 1995 earned him
the leadership of the party and, therefore, in the wake of Chirac’s dis-
solution of the National Assembly in 1997, the premiership. Jospin
made Hollande his spokesperson in 1995 and First secretary in 1997
when he became Prime Minister. Hollande’s holding the highest party
office was not actively used by Royal either at this time nor later in her
presidential bid (Hollande in fact hoped to run himself), but it did
Royal no harm by keeping her close to the centres of power when she
needed this. She was able to use a direct line to Hollande, or occasion-
ally through Hollande to Jospin. Jospin, however, like all of the PS ‘ele-
phants’, had little consideration for Royal. He eventually offered her a
post as Junior minister for schools. She had been a full minister under
Bérégovoy. It was only with the protective patronage of Jospin’s close
ally, Claude Allègre, Minister for education, that she got this job.
Allègre’s ministry was beset with its own problems, and in March 2000
he resigned. Royal was moved sideways, not upwards, and became
Junior minister for the family. We should note also the perceived
lack of team spirit and many individual initiatives, many of which
contributed to Allègre’s isolation and eventual resignation. She also
acrimoniously lost several of her close collaborators in the period
1997–99,4 much as she had when Minister for the environment in
1992–93, and as she would as President of Poitou-Charentes after 2004,
and indeed as presidential candidate in 2007. Royal again applied her-
self to her new junior post with intensity, again gaining media cover-
age; Le Monde called hers the ‘Ministry of the one o’clock news, and
family and women’s magazines’.5
Royal was seen publicly as a kind of Minister-mother; speaking out
about and introducing legislation related to social issues such as the
treatment of paedophiles, the reform of school reports, against school-
girls wearing ‘thongs’, the promotion of the morning after pill, pater-
nity leave, and so on. These headline-grabbing issues thrust her into
public view, but there was a risk they would ‘hold’ her later in the sym-
bolic category of someone who could not/did not ‘aspire’ to the higher
more visionary affairs of state. Jospin’s animosity, and the fact that
he restricted her to junior posts concerned with social and family
policy in his 1997–2002 government would have long term effects.
As a junior minister, she maintained the pattern of activity she had
developed strongly in 1992: personal association with high-profile
policy issues; thorough knowledge (usually) of the dossier; followed by
a media announcement; the dramatic and frantic (over)working of her
team; a showdown ‘bras de fer’ with any opposition; and, finally, a
highly mediatized and noisily triumphant outcome, if successful, or as
low a profile as possible, if not. Her invasion of others’ space and her
‘activism’ meant that she often ‘upstaged’ with her proposals senior
female colleagues such as Élisabeth Guigou and Martine Aubry, incur-
ring their long term disapproval and eventually acute animosity, and
more significantly in terms of her persona, a question mark over her
feminist credentials.
In the 2004 regional elections, Royal became, in a relative PS land-
slide, the only female President of a Regional Council, Poitou-Charentes,
having crushed the Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s team, and
taken the region, against all expectations, for the left. Her reputation as
a female giant-slayer6 (and with her own meticulous attention to the
media) was enhanced even further. When she became President of
the Poitou-Charentes regional council in 2004 she again lost personal
support, as she was considered by some who worked closely with her
as aggressive and difficult. Having said this, her adversaries in 2007 in
the battle for the presidential nomination underestimated – because of
her reputation – the support networks and devoted collaborators she
did have.
From the local to the virtual

From this moment, ‘Présidente’ Royal used her local base as a spring-
board to national prominence. She used essentially the same method
she had always used: media visibility, grand gestures, hyperactivity. To
these, however, as we shall see below, she added the ‘construction’
of an enormously successful political persona. From the 2004 cam-
paign onwards, she developed concertedly the idea of listening to the
‘people’: the local people, the citizens, and those opposed to big busi-
nesses, those without a strong voice, and being with them, being
among them. In the regional campaign itself, she had used not only
constant dialogue with the media but also a high profile low profile, as
it were, a kind of meet-the-people approach more concerned with ‘her’
people than with la politique polticienne. As a high profile politician
with a strong local base, she began to appear favourably in the polls at
national level.
From this developing listening-tribune style, she transposed all of
the discourse, symbolism, mythology and most importantly, her own
image, from local politics onto national politics via the internet. From
here her own website, Désirs d’avenir was born, set up in December
2005 by Benoît Thielin (see below). She became the darling of the
media, especially the mushrooming ‘women’s lifestyle’ magazines, and
of the polls, the polls and the media from then on dynamically inter-
acting. In January 2006, she visited Chile to meet and support the
soon-to-be-elected first female, and socialist, President of Chile, Michelle
Bachelet, and was treated by the army of journalists accompanying her
as Bachelet’s French socialist counterpart. Jack Lang made the same trip
a fortnight later – accompanied by not a single press photographer. In
late September 2005, in Le Monde then in Paris Match, she made it clear
she was interested in running for the presidency (her internet blog-
gers had long been encouraging her to do so). Throughout 2006, her
opinion poll ratings soared. In April, on television, she said she would
‘probably’ be a candidate, and on 29 September she declared herself a
candidate for the nomination. In November 2006, in a party with over
80,000 new members, she took the nomination with a stunning first-
round absolute majority (60.65 per cent) leaving her two rivals miles
behind (Dominique Strauss-Kahn took 20.69 per cent, and Laurent Fabius
18.66 per cent).
Ségolène Royal and ‘Ségolène’

The persona of ‘Ségolène Royal’ emerged dramatically into the public’s
consciousness in the course of 2005 and 2006. Her characteristics were
all positive. At the end of 2005–06, as she began to become a house-
hold name, she was seen as – and probably in this order – first, a pretty
woman, extremely attractive for her age (early 50s); second, an intelli-
gent, cultivated woman; and third a socialist with strong feminist
views and strong ‘un-socialistic’, ‘conservative’ views on social issues
such as children’s exposure to television violence, teenage sexuality,
family values and so on. Her disarmingly lovely smile became almost a
trademark,7 and as she began to rocket in the polls and dominate the
media, France faced with enthusiasm the novelty and possibility of
this intelligent and sexy woman (a picture of her in a blue bikini and
baseball cap on the beach in the summer of 2006 circulated widely)
becoming France’s first woman President.8
Royal thus joined and began to transcend the evolving series of
First Lady stereotypes that France had known: the intelligent, Catholic
Yvonne de Gaulle, the Socialite Claude Pompidou, the Jackie Kennedy-
like Anne Aymone Giscard d’Estaing, the campaigning and feminist
Danielle Mitterrand, the intelligent, honest (long suffering) and polit-
ically-minded Bernadette Chirac; and the range of other well-known
women figures: Huguette Bouchardeau, Marie-France Garaud, Françoise
Giroud, Simone Veil, Dominique Voynet, Arlette Laguiller and others,
as well as Royal’s until then, more famous contemporaries, Élisabeth
Guigou and Martine Aubry. Royal’s candidacy posited a kind of natural
or cultural progression in French culture with the idea that she, as a
woman President, a First Lady of a new type, represented this evolution
in French political culture.
We should also bear in mind that the post Royal was aspiring to was
not the premiership, but the French presidency which combined polit-
ical power with all the symbolism of a (personified) state, so that the
womanly and smiling Ségolène triggered in the national imagination all
the myths surrounding Marianne, i.e. France as a personified woman.
This image began to blend with its opposite, the image she had had
hitherto as a down-to-earth, intelligent working mother who bought
her clothes from Galeries Lafayette.9 And as a politically active and
intelligent woman, Royal was able to combine these several qualities to
become ‘un ensemble de signes que l’on appelait Ségolène’.10 As she
became more well-known, it is not an exaggeration to say that 2005–06

saw the media saturation of the Ségolène phenomenon (at many times
and for long periods only she and Sarkozy captured national attention).
Further qualities, therefore, were added to the composite of the intelli-
gent, feminist mother. The myth of the woman – in a man’s world –
who, through determination, would ‘overcome’ would serve her well,
and was real enough. Added to this now was, at times, a near-Madonna
style image of ‘Ségolène’, beaming, open armed to her followers.
From virtual to presidential

It was from her ‘outside’ position as President of Poitou-Charentes that
Royal fashioned the image that would storm the party’s presidential
nomination process. She began to develop a kind of frank-speaking,
attentive, listening, neighbourhood-sensitive image, bringing in the
‘voice’ of local people and picking up artfully on the ‘ras-le-bol’ atti-
tudes as expressed in the Euro referendum, and in opinion polls. In
2005, she enhanced her physical personal image. Her slightly jutting
canines were levelled, and her clothes became more mainstream and
modern. Her appearance became more professional looking, moving
away from her earlier tendency to be somewhat hippy with leggings
and braided long hair. Her hair as well as her skirts got shorter, and she
often wore smart, stylish suits, and, in particular a (symbolic?) white
jacket. On 16 October 2005 she said ‘il faut redonner un désir d’avenir
à la France’11 and the site Désirs d’avenir was born as a kind of symbolic
rallying ‘response’ to her. It acted as a kind of virtual site for discus-
sion, and a gathering of ideas around her persona. Although Royal had
herself supported the ‘oui’ vote for the 2005 referendum on Europe,
she had realized that many ‘nonistes’ used the internet.12 In a few
weeks there had been 200,000 hits; and 6,000 policy proposals had
been made to Désirs d’avenir by its users. She went on to develop an
interactive book. 950 local committees were later created, with her
team acting as the guardians of her ideas, and as her spokespersons
interpreting her ‘thought’.
The notion of a vast rally was being created in response to a ‘desire’
she had seen, or sensed. Désirs d’avenir was France’s first internet rally.
The quality of the site and its ideas were rather mediocre. But this was
not important. Désirs started setting up regional committees through-
out France. In November 2005, Jack Lang had introduced the idea of
an online 20€ subscription to the PS (in part to launch his own source
of support within the party). This acted as a massive stimulus to Royal’s
fortunes. By the time of the election of the party’s candidate, the
party’s membership was up by tens of thousands. Many of these joined

in response not to Lang, nor the PS itself, but to Désirs d’avenir and
Royal. In September 2006, the ‘virtual’ rally held its first real rally, a
celebration of devotion to Royal. She responded, treating supporters as
disciples and presenting herself as a ‘chosen’, almost mystical leader,
asking her people to ‘carry her’, to give her strength to help her scale
the mountain, for without them she could do nothing, with them she
could vincit omnia, and so on.13 In all of these meetings, she controlled
the way she entered a room and went up onto the stage, how the
microphones and other acoustics and the lighting were organized. She
often talked to her audience without a script or with very discreet
teleprompts, and walked freely around the stage with a wireless micro-
phone, even reaching out and touching members of her audience, like
a rock star at a concert. She became for many of her followers an ‘Evita’
figure. What an irony that several of the party bosses had assumed they
had an insignificant minor rival in Royal. And from late 2005, the
party’s main contenders for leadership, unaware themselves of how the
party (the republic, in fact) truly functioned, began to make a series of
fundamental mistakes that carried Royal and her new Madonna-like
persona almost effortlessly to massive victory within the party.
Instead of attacking her in terms of competence, a series of remarks
attributed to (although denied by) several of the ‘elephants’ began to
circulate (e.g. who will look after the children? – Fabius; this isn’t a
beauty contest – Lang or Mélenchon, it was not clear: all of which she
published on her site). These sexist remarks made Royal appear as a
victim, and vindicated her own female and feminist struggle. In similar
vein, the French commentator and political columnist, Alain Duhamel,
published a book in 2006 on the 15 pretenders to the throne, and
missed her out.14 To Royal’s ‘missionary’ rally was added a kind of sym-
pathy rally. Her self-depiction as a victim in a macho world seemed
even more vindicated, and she came across as much younger and more
modern, and feminine, than the old sexist fools she was challenging.
One author referred to ‘la façon rayonnante dont elle pétrifie les
caciques du parti’.15 There was a religious, tele-evangelist, element to
Royal’s candidacy. By the time of the nomination competition, Royal
had effected what Lambron calls an ‘Epinay télématique’.16 She had, it
seemed, come from nowhere, seen and conquered.
The campaign
Royal’s victory in the PS primary election against the two main con-
tenders, Fabius and Strauss-Kahn, was stunning. She had a first round
clear majority of nearly 60.7 per cent. The other contenders and would-be
contenders, such as Hollande himself, had all needed each other to
try to block Royal’s ascent.17 As a result, they appeared as a clique of
male plotters, outdated and out of touch, desperately trying to stop the
unstoppable, ever-smiling Royal.
The Royal case is a very striking demonstration of how, in certain cir-
cumstances, one can ‘take’ the party without having a faction. Having
no faction actually helped, in that it generated a kind of trans-factional
rally that surged foward and gathered around her. The explanations for
her defeat, however, are the same as the reasons for her earlier success.
They relate to party, but even more importantly lie in the persona of
Ségolène Royal and her fortunes after her election to the presidential
candidacy on 16 November 2006.
Royal’s response to the vanquished was a disdainful one. She had
been their victim, and as a result was very cool towards them, ignoring
them and later criticizing them during her campaign.18 There was not
only her personal hostility to her opponents, there was a kind of logic
to her moving on from the party to the notion of a wider rally. Asso-
ciating with Fabius and others might have seemed like a non-rallying
‘compromise’ with the ‘old guard’, the factions she had so affected to
disdain. This, however, was seen by Sarkozy as Royal’s first big mistake,19
for without the incorporation of the party and the party machine
into her campaign, she had no truly sound national organization, Désirs
d’avenir having, by now, local committees but none with any real
national campaign organization knowledge upon which to rely. Her
team was not at all experienced in something like a presidential elec-
tion, and as her campaign team moved into her HQ in the Boulevard
St Germain in January 2007, it had no organizational structure to cope,
for example, with the thousands of requests for appearances, inter-
views, meetings, and candidate responses. These just piled up in cup-
boards.20 Soon telephone calls were not being answered, and no one
could get through to the people running the campaign, such as Julien
Dray. Within a month, the campaign was in hopeless disorganization.
The party itself, with Hollande still First secretary was offered no part
in the campaign. For support, she turned incongruously to the PS dis-
sident, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a dreadful choice in that, although
he had a certain reputation as a kind of leftist Gaullist, he had no power
base anymore or constituency in the wider public, and was seen by
many in the party as responsible for the 2002 PS catastrophe.21 Royal
also compensated for Chevènement with a strange campaign asso-
ciation with his opposite, as it were, the ‘new left’ philosopher, highly
intelligent (and equally prima donna) Bernard-Henri Lévy. He offered a

wider social and intellectual kudos, and helped create the image of her
as the wise woman taking wiser and private philosophical advice, but
arguably no extra votes. The new fragility and uncertainties of Royal’s
position were translated into a directionless campaign. What is of enor-
mous interest in terms of our analysis, in terms of the mythologies
surrounding women, and the stereotypes of women in the social and
political sphere, is that most of her former advantages combined with
the negative aspects of her campaign and turned them all into liabili-
ties: her silences, her failing to ‘engage’, her looks, her inexperience,
her ‘gaffes’, her lyrical tones, her association with ‘women’s’ issues, as
well as not really having the backing of her political party, her dis-
regard for her PS colleagues, and her perceived inability to work collab-
oratively, all began to make her appear as an isolated woman, perhaps
out of her depth; and all this against the juggernaut UMP carrying
Sarkozy forward.
In both foreign policy and economic issues, Royal stumbled badly at
the beginning of her campaign. In order to give herself status and lift
her persona to another level, she visited Lebanon and Israel, and later
China. None of these visits added to her presidential image. In China,
she seemed unaware of criticism of China’s human rights record, and
seemed to make up words (‘bravitude’ for example). The press, hitherto
indulgent, began to turn on her, highlighting her policy incompetencies
– over Turkey and the EU, over nuclear energy, Quebec, over how many
nuclear submarines France possessed, over economic policy generally;
and when her much delayed ‘100 propositions’ campaign manifesto was
presented to the public in mid-February, it was met with indifference.
In terms of the campaign itself, Hollande, speaking on behalf of the
party, talked of tax rises, which she countered. The squabbling within
her entourage was now becoming publicly apparent. Montebourg,
an advisor, criticized Hollande (17 January 2007, making the very per-
sonal remark on television that her only real problem was him), and
she had to suspend Montebourg from her campaign. Another advisor,
Eric Besson, left her camp and in a stunning media coup joined Sarkozy,
and, stressing Royal’s incompetence, published a damning book (a best-
seller, selling 130,000 copies) in the middle of the campaign. Royal’s
‘campagne romanesque’22 was in danger of turning into farce. She began
to appear as an inappropriate candidate without a real programme, and
now with a faltering personal image. She was evasive about her own
personal fortune, seeming suddenly like other politicians (and yet not
as competent). Her career and image as a ‘women’s’ minister began to
appear inadequate, and in interviews she became more and more

defensive and ineffective. One of Sarkozy’s first acts as a candidate in
January 2007 was to set up a team that would identify and highlight
every mistake she made, and persuade his most media-friendly UMP
deputies to publicly criticize her, correction upon correction of her
policy mistakes.
As the two main candidates began to campaign, Royal gave the
impression of avoiding Sarkozy just as she had avoided her rivals within
the party. Moreover, Sarkozy’s own Achilles’ heel – an intemperate per-
sonality – was brought under strict control. He even instructed his own
campaign team never to be aggressive towards her, and certainly not
‘as a woman’. In the TV debate between Sarkozy and Royal, between
the two rounds, Royal also lacked the ‘statistics at one’s fingertips’
approach, appearing still without traction. She came across as more
aggressive than he, in an attempt to counter her developing image as a
‘weak woman’. This was a deliberate approach on her part, but had the
effect of compounding the confusion of her persona and character
overall and coming too late in the campaign to alter significantly
public perceptions of her. It is probable that one of her greatest failings
was her reluctance until this point to counter attack, to assert herself
publicly, and so on. This would, of course, have altered the whole
persona.
Between rounds one and two, her own party almost rebelled against
her as she tried to negotiate with the centrist candidate, François
Bayrou, who had gained over 18 per cent of the vote.23 She knew she
needed these votes if she was to win; but now with the clear hostility
of the PS barons towards her, Bayrou’s unwillingness to cooperate, and
Sarkozy’s image of confidence, she looked a lonely and vulnerable
figure. She treated defeat as a kind of triumph of ‘her’ people which
also looked rather pathetic, particularly as she lost to Sarkozy with
46.94 per cent to his 53.06 per cent: not a stunning defeat, but not the
kind of whisker of defeat like Mitterrand’s in 1974.
Ségolène Royal is of enormous interest within the study of leadership
politics in the Fifth Republic. We shall return to this in our conclusion.
Here we can say that her detonation of a rally – Désirs d’avenir – on
the margins of the party, as if ‘on the edge’ between politics and the
people, is both a classic and a novel illustration of the springs of lead-
ership politics. And like other Presidents and candidates in the republic
– de Gaulle, Mitterrand, Le Pen, for example, she generated great emo-
tional allegiance. Conquering the party ‘as if’ an outsider was also a
classic feature of Fifth Republic politics. In her case we also need to
stress how her gender and some of the myths surrounding it carried
her up almost irresistibly to the party’s candidacy; and how gender and
other myths surrounding it almost irresistibly carried her down to
defeat.
Nicolas Sarkozy
Like Ségolène Royal, Nicolas Sarkozy had been in the public eye
for more than a decade. In his ‘camp’, the mainstream right, Sarkozy
had been a significant although maverick player for two decades and
more, and in active politics for three. He had seemed to triumph
and fail in equal measure, so that his political trajectory seemed
to constitute a personal ‘adventure’ played out in the media. Like a
Thatcher, a Giscard, or a Le Pen, his received or perceived character
was well known (although not necessarily accurate, and this would
become crucial as the election approached): impetuous, intelligent,
unpredictable, tireless, temperamental, a friend of the rich and famous,
extremely provocative, and sometimes very aggressive, perceived by
some as a dangerous right winger, by some even as a danger to demo-
cracy; possibly, moreover, the only mainstream right politician since
de Gaulle truly popular amongst working class people, egocentric,
driven, and entertaining.
The sixth President of the French Fifth Republic, seemingly so distant
from the republic’s founder, reveals – like Royal – the ‘mechanics’, or
the ‘grammar’ of the Fifth Republic. Let us divide our analysis once
again into trajectory, persona, and campaign. We shall analytically
narrate his political trajectory, bearing in mind our criteria of culture
and institutions; identify and analyse the perceived ‘character’ Sarkozy,
in particular the interrelationship of Sarkozy and the media; and nar-
rate the ‘emergence’ (and triumph) of the candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in
the 2007 election campaign itself.
The trajectory
In many ways, the trajectory captures the man.
Sarkozy grew up, for the most part, in Neuilly, a well-to-do Parisian
suburb North West of Paris (just beyond the Arc de Triomphe and Palais
des Congrès). His origins were modest – the son of a Hungarian immi-
grant, a businessman – and he was brought up with his two older
brothers, largely by his mother alone. He was arguably too young
(in May ’68 he was 13) to have major political views in the late 60s
although his older siblings were ‘mobilized’ by ’68 but on the right,
against the Russian crushing of the Prague Spring rather than by the
leftist millenarianism of May.
Neuilly’s favourite son

Unlike so many on the right in French politics, and indeed on the left,
he started, in the brief ‘Chaban’ period in the early 1970s, as a very
ordinary but highly active Gaullist militant: helping to organize halls
for speakers, canvassing, bill sticking, and so on. It is interesting that
he was drawn to Gaullism rather than the fast-developing Giscardian-
ism of the early/mid-1970s, preferring the adrenalin of the rallies and
noisy Gaullist populist crowds to the more mandarin, regal accents of
the Giscardians.24
In this period (he became a local councillor in 1977, aged 22), his
tireless activism saw him always ‘involved’, always pushing forward,
seizing every opportunity, and always taking risks to propel himself
forward and upwards. At this early stage, Sarkozy was learning the tools
of the trade in a way few other French politicians have: writing
speeches, meeting the Gaullist barons, being actively involved as the
UDR moved through the Pompidou and Chaban periods to Chiraqu-
ism, ‘working’ a hall, working with like-minded young activists, organ-
izing big rallies. It is also interesting to note the strange feature of
French politics, epitomized by Sarkozy: the need, in the republic of
apparent ‘lone’ heroes, for parrains, godfathers, connections and pistons
of one kind or another. With Sarkozy, the relationships first with
Peretti, Mayor of Neuilly, then Tomasini, then Pasqua, then Chirac,
then Balladur, were sometimes almost Oedipal in their intensity,
dependence and later conflict. Institutionally, it is clear that from the
post-de Gaulle period of the Fifth Republic, a patron-like indulgence
becomes the norm. With the death of the mayor, Achille Peretti, in
1983, and considering that Pasqua (a very controversial figure for a
posh place like Neuilly) might not gather the support necessary for an
electoral majority, Sarkozy with the discreet support of the then
general secretary of the party, René Tomasini, gathered a conspiratorial
entourage that would stay with him for the next 25 years, and made
a successful bid for the mayoralty at the age of 28. Using his Neuilly
base which he ‘worked’ brilliantly, le petit Nicolas, as he was known
to his indulgent constituents, could always rely upon it as a personal
as well as partisan fiefdom. He became MP for Hauts-de-Seine
which includes Neuilly in 1988 (age 33). In the municipal elections
of 1989 he was voted mayor with 75 per cent of the vote in the first
round.25
Sarkozy was supportive of his local ‘boss’, the new Interior minister,
Charles Pasqua, rallying support for him in 1986 when Pasqua’s polit-
ical judgement had been seriously questioned over the death of Malik
Oussekine.26 He was rewarded with a brief chargé de mission post
by Pasqua. It is at this time too that Sarkozy began a long and highly
personal, collaborative relationship with Jacques Chirac’s daughter,
Claude, who gradually became Chirac’s principal strategist. Sarkozy
was also involved with her in helping organize the mega pop concerts
(loosely associated with the new rightist government) of figures like
Johnny Hallyday and Madonna. And against the national trend (like
Royal in 1993), Sarkozy was elected to the National Assembly in the
wake of Chirac and the right’s defeat in the presidential and legislative
elections of 1988.
As early as 1988, major Gaullist politicians of both the populist and
conservative wings, such as Pasqua and Balladur, were beginning to
regard Chirac as a liability. Such a perspective meant that a re-aligning
and a matrix of new allegiances began. Sarkozy, with unabashed
opportunism, began to move towards Balladur. With Balladur, the
relationship was a strong mutual-admiration-society, and very father-
and-son-ish. From the early 1990s, the media too began to notice
Sarkozy – and he responded to journalists very positively, nurturing his
personal relationships with them; he was always ‘available for com-
ment’, and receptive to them, gradually becoming a major media char-
acter within the political right. Sarkozy would draw upon both the
party and the media to propel his political life forward.
Balladur’s favourite son

Following the serious defeat of the left in the 1993 legislative elections,
after the Rocard, Cresson, and Bérégovoy governments, Sarkozy became
Budget minister in Balladur’s government, his first very high profile
appointment. Sarkozy was still only 38. As a minister, he became better
known. In terms of his perceived skills, he, like Giscard, could talk
at length and authoritatively in the National Assembly without
notes, and was seen as very competent (whether he was is debat-
able, some27 seeing his period at the Budget as having the function
of spending wildly in order to get Balladur elected to the presidency in
1995).
There are moments in Sarkozy’s political career where the multiple
allegiances become one (and ‘the one’ becomes the betrayal of others),
and he acted with all the risks involved. This too should be noted, that
one of the features of Sarkozy was his willingness to risk being at the
centre of things, always placing large bets rather than watching and
waiting. He made a fateful and politically almost fatal decision.
In the spring of 1993, Balladur’s opinion poll popularity began to
rocket and it would remain high throughout his premiership. As late as
December 1994, it was universally assumed that Balladur would be the
next President (with Sarkozy in a major ministerial post).
With Chirac’s victory in 1995, the Balladurians were cast into the
wilderness. And Sarkozy was seen as the worst of the Judases. On
the nightly satirical TV puppet program Les guignols de l’info, Sarkozy
the betrayer was portrayed as a mini-Satan. He was now notorious, and
worse, seen as having badly miscalculated. Having said this, Sarkozy
still possessed his Neuilly base, and soon the need within the RPR to
effect a reconciliation to counter the suddenly victorious left in 1997
would draw him back into favour.
Return from the wilderness

In 1997, Sarkozy took the leadership of the party in a bizarre alliance
with Séguin. Sarkozy became the first unofficial, then, in January 1998,
the official number two of the party. Chirac ‘forgave’ the impetuous
young Judas. They had not in fact met for nearly five years, since
1993.28 Moreover, from this period, the temperamental Pasqua began
his journey outwards from the RPR in a quixotic attempt to revivify
Gaullism along quasi-RPF lines. And Séguin, angry at the lack of recog-
nition for his support for Chirac in 1995, also started to behave errati-
cally in a manner that would lead to his relative eclipse from French
political life (and Juppé was still ‘out’ because of the 1997 debacle). By
spring 1999, Sarkozy was General secretary of the Gaullist party.
Sarkozy’s lifelong attitude to the party characterized his approach
(and would again when he retook the presidency of the new UMP in
November 2004). Unlike Juppé, for example – in fact unlike anyone
apart from Chirac and Pasqua – Sarkozy enjoyed a dynamic rapport
with the activists, and thrilled to the large enthusiastic rallies. Activists
who had whistled and booed him for his betrayal, now looked to him
once again. The still declining fortunes of the right, however, were
reflected in the poor 12.82 per cent the RPR gained at the 1999 Euro-
pean elections. Sarkozy had thrown himself into this campaign. His
failure meant his resignation as General secretary. Once again Sarkozy
seemed to fall from a great height to near political oblivion. During
this period of yet another personal defeat, Sarkozy did two things
– wrote and published biographies, books, articles, personal reflections,
and philosophy, and books of ideas, and journalism (most of which
was actually very readable and interesting, which is unusual for a

practising politician29); and he mended fences with former enemies.
He maintained his friendship with Balladur but also renewed his
friendship with Bernadette Chirac.
Sarkozy and ‘Sarko’

Three major moments marked the ‘creation’ of Sarkozy’s public per-
sona before the 2000s: his role in the Neuilly school hostage crisis, his
relationship with Edouard Balladur, and his marriage.
Sarkozy the hero

On 13 May 1993, a man styling himself as the ‘Human Bomb’ with
explosives tied to him and wires trailing from him, took 21 children
and their teacher hostage in a primary school in Neuilly. The Mayor,
and recently appointed Budget minister, Sarkozy, led the negotiations
with the hostage taker. Arguably more dangerous than a rational ter-
rorist, ‘Human Bomb’ was deranged. Sarkozy, with the cameras of the
world upon him, showed great courage: entering the school alone,
negotiating with ‘Human Bomb’, stepping through the potentially
lethal wiring system in semi-darkness, bringing out children one by
one, as halting negotiations developed. Seven times he entered the
school, bringing out children. The stand-off lasted two days. In the
end, marksmen shot the hostage-taker dead. Sarkozy, like the hero in
now-familiar hostage films, tired, brave, with distressed children in his
arms, became a national hero. Whatever subsequent appraisals of his
character, this very real courage and assumption of public duty were
henceforth constituent parts of his public persona.
Sarkozy the minister

The second element of Sarkozy’s public image was his appointment as
Budget minister. This in itself was an interesting choice as it allowed
Sarkozy to learn about all the other ministries while gaining a reput-
ation in economics (of which he knew little), a prerequisite in contem-
porary politics for the public persona of major political figures.
It was at this time that Sarkozy became a truly nationally known
figure (he entered the Figaro ‘Baromètre’ in May 1993), and although
until then had worked under the wing of the RPR leader Chirac, it
was as Balladur’s activist and mercurial protégé that Sarkozy came to
national prominence. This is when the ‘Sarko show’ truly began. He
also had new national prominence as the government’s spokesperson,
an early and astute indication of his understanding of national politics:
as spokesperson he was constantly on television and in contact with

journalists. As Balladur’s star began to rise between 1993 and 1995,
Sarkozy became the Prime Minister’s strongest public supporter (with
the prospect of becoming possibly the new President’s Prime Minister).
Sarkozy, therefore, epitomized political opportunism of the highest
order in the abandoning of a loser and the backing of a winner. Balladur,
of course, did not win. Chirac won. Sarkozy’s fall, therefore, was all
the more dramatic for his having been so prominently involved. The
persona of Sarkozy – ambitious and impetuous – took on an Icarus-like
quality.
Sarkozy’s public persona therefore was colourful and dramatic. He
had demonstrated the courage of a hero in the Neuilly hostage crisis,
but had – through vanity and ambition – crashed out of politics into
possible oblivion.
Sarkozy the lover

The third element of Sarkozy’s progression towards becoming a house-
hold name was his publicly-lived private life, specifically, his marriage
to Cécilia Albeniz a beautiful half Spanish, half Romanian ‘socialite’
(though slightly bohemian), mother of two.30 Here we begin to see a
real conflation of public and private, and his own formative and active
role in that change.
The Nicolas and Cécilia (she became known very quickly in the
popular press simply by her first name) ‘couple’ entered public life
as a kind of ‘celebrity couple’ when he became Budget minister. She
became heavily involved in his public life, had an office at the ministry
(where she intervened/interfered in a great many issues). She was
flamboyant and he, though powerful, was as if emotionally dependent
upon and publicly enamoured of her. This sought-after celebrity was
given a further twist when it became public knowledge that, at the
time of Sarkozy and Cécilia’s affair at the end of the 1980s, they were
not only each married (with two children), she was the wife of one of
the best-known faces in French public life, the popular broadcaster,
Jacques Martin (who had been married to Cécilia by the Mayor of
Neuilly, Nicolas Sarkozy…). Sarkozy’s life acquired a kind of glossy
tabloid celebrity, tinged with the same kind of either ruthless or
impetuous quality that characterized his public life. The gossip column
status of their ‘couple’ did not harm Sarkozy’s political career; in fact it
gave it a wider media status, and this at a time when public interest in
certain public figures was beginning to increase because of the growth
of popular glossy magazines. Sarkozy’s passion for Cécilia was admired,
and added humanity to the tougher, public side of his character. It did,
however, later on, inform the public fate of Sarkozy’s persona in a
potentially negative and certainly unpredictable way; for his seemingly
total emotional involvement with Cécilia meant that, when their rela-
tionship first faltered, he seemed lost. A week before the 29 May 2005
referendum on the EU constitution, all the newspapers headlined not
the referendum but the apparent split between the Sarkozys. Sarkozy’s
behaviour in the aftermath of the split, so heartbroken, he uncharac-
teristically cancelled TV appearances, propelled his image from human
to potentially unstable. Crucially, during the presidential campaign of
2007, their revived marriage once more began to disintegrate.
The image of Sarkozy was therefore a mixture of many traits, but the
underlying principle was that he triggered great public and media
attention; and all three – the Neuilly hostage crisis, Balladur’s election
defeat, and his high-profile marriage, were major media events. At this
time, Sarkozy was coming to be seen by many in the media and the
wider public as a likeable character, eternally friendly (when he wasn’t
screaming in anger and vilifying someone…), highly personal and
emotional in his relationships, loveable in his inconstancy, on a highly
publicized roller-coaster of a political career, and infinitely more enter-
taining than most. He remained, however, a highly provocative figure,
perhaps unsuitable for the highest office. Since the early 90s, with all
his fortunes and misfortunes, and his volatile character, the question
on people’s minds therefore was, would he make it? Or would he auto-
destruct? From 2002, Sarkozy as a media ‘character’ came almost to
dominate daily life. From 2005 he was joined in this by Royal.
From the moment of his appointment as Interior minister in 2002,
Sarkozy became the most ‘activist’ minister the Fifth Republic had
seen, becoming involved in a series of highly mediatized events. On
the first night of his appointment, when he visited a run down council
estate to ‘see for himself’, one of the vans with him was hit by a brick.
The police – and the public – loved this unusual ‘hands on’ approach.
He was repeating his high profile media presence of almost ten years
previously, but now with an even higher profile ‘law and order’ role,
and with a ‘Sarko’s back’ type bravura.
From the period of the major defeat at the European elections in
1999, Sarkozy set up a team, almost a ‘commando’ team,31 which acted
as planners, liaising with, relating to, measuring, and pre-empting the
media and the wider polity, analysing opinion polls, commissioning
polls, focus groups, developing slogans, press releases, and generally
attempting to ‘mediate’ the character of Sarkozy himself, anticipating
and even creating public opinion, and turning their candidate into the
‘representative’ of French ‘opinion’.
On highly popular television programmes such as 100 minutes pour
convaincre (e.g. 12 November 2003, the programme where he said
he dreamt of being President ‘not just while shaving’, and the same
programme again (3 March 2005) where he said he would run for
President even if Chirac ran again), Sarkozy – as Royal would also
– sent the viewing figures into the, by French standards for this kind of
programme, very high five million plus.
From 2002 onwards, as a public performer in articles and books, and
press conferences (of a very presidential type), TV appearances, public
speaking, and acute attention to and indulgence of the press, Sarkozy
dominated French politics. ‘Ainsi se forge une image’.32 He dominated
the media also in great part because he appeared, through his dyna-
mism and presence, to be the only French politician bringing forward
ideas; the only one listening, the only one offering solutions. Like
Ségolène, Sarkozy’s opinions were never confined to his ministerial
brief. It is true that many of the voters were frightened by the hard
aspects to Sarkozy’s image33 so that notoriety accompanied his fame.
This was the as if ‘final’ version of Sarkozy; all we have stressed before,
but tough, perhaps too tough for presidential office.
Following Sarkozy’s election to the leadership of the UMP in November
2004, the UMP membership almost tripled to 330,000 (we saw a similar
phenomenon in the PS in 2005–06). The party’s ‘rally’ tradition and
media image34 had been revived, but had now shifted its allegiance
from Chirac to ‘Sarko’.35 In plebiscitary manner, Sarkozy proposed to
the UMP membership a ‘one person, one vote’ system for the selection
of the presidential candidate. Sarkozy also excelled in the staging of
these huge rally events. This time, he used a publicity agency whose
chairman, Richard Altias, was involved in the staging of the event.
Cécilia was too. She and Altias soon became more than friends. Sarkozy’s
private life became once again of major media interest on the threshold
of the election campaign.
In May 2005, Cécilia and Sarkozy separated. What the public glimpsed
was someone with an almost adolescent emotional dependence upon
Cécilia and an equally adolescent, only half-hidden display of ‘hurt’.
This strangely ‘humanizing’ development was fused with the other
aspects of Sarkozy’s image and ‘character’ with still two years to go
before the 2007 election: driven, attention-seeking, hard line, prone
to temper tantrums, yet affable, a loyal friend, and helplessly in love
– Sarkozy and his love life became even more the stuff of the ‘la presse
people’ (the French equivalents of OK Magazine, Hello etc).36 Sarkozy

seemed to express a whole range of exaggerated human qualities: all of
the above, plus a kind of fearlessness, a vanity, a need for recognition
by father figures and beautiful women. And he displayed paradoxical
qualities: distance and familiarity; loyalty and ruthlessness; flamboy-
ancy and modesty; action and reflection; cynicism and honesty. There
seemed to be a strange accumulation37 of images of the man, human
in many respects but offering a virile toughness to the French. The
diminutive but pugnacious Sarkozy was poised to beat any man. His
adversary was to be a woman. The virile, competitive, right wing male
versus the intelligent and attractive left wing female was to create a
very new phenomenon, in part because of the characters of the two
protagonists, in part because of their gender, and in part because of
their ideas. This was the first ‘sexed’ presidential election France had
ever seen.
The campaign
Before the campaign, Royal appeared unstoppable, and was ahead of
Sarkozy in the polls. The potential, however, was unrealized because of
the zigzags in her campaign, its insufficient and ‘pointilliste’ approach,
the ambivalence and weaknesses of her programme, the way the media
turned on her, and her own increasingly faulty delivery and campaign
comportment. Sarkozy’s campaign was the opposite: vigorous, well-
run, well-planned, decisive and highly active, and with significantly
less media hostility in the closing stages of the campaign. One of his
potential problems – that he would be too vigorous and appear over-
virile and ‘agité’ against the wiser woman – did not materialize, partly
because Royal’s campaign was so weak. This weakness allowed him to
do two related things: first, be less strident and more thoughtful and
appear less ‘virile’ and therefore less like the Sarkozy people feared,
while appearing more effective than she. Second, it enabled him to add
further complexity to his ‘character’, going beyond his right wing
image and some of the connotations of a darker, more sinister side,
and encroaching upon Royal’s (and Bayrou’s) discursive and symbolic
territory. This was partly due to his speech writer and advisor Henri
Guaino who helped nuance his character. The fortune and fate of each
of the two characters, ‘Ségo’ and ‘Sarko’, would now determine the
outcome of the election.
Guaino’s nuancing of Sarkozy’s character involved two things:
dealing with how the male Sarkozy behaved vis-à-vis the female Royal,
and the taming of Sarkozy’s character. Sarkozy had a reputation for
outbursts of anger, frightening those around him, calling people ‘crétins’

or ‘cons’, and threatening physical violence in the boorish manner of
‘je te casserai la gueule!’, and so on. He also had a reputation for
lacking reflection, and was seen as always stressed. He had mitigated
this through some of his more reflective writings. But this wild style,
which had helped him develop his dynamic reputation, was in danger
of making him seem inappropriate as a President. A female candidate
might be the most dangerous candidate Sarkozy could face.
The huge UMP rally of 14 January 2007 launched the campaign. So
adoring of Sarkozy was the rally that some felt it might be counter-
productive. He was voted for by 98 per cent of the party (on a 69 per
cent turnout). Just three days previously at a press conference, he had
seemed too fiery, too driven. The speech at the 14 January rally trans-
formed everything, and set the tone for Sarkozy’s campaign. Sarkozy
gave a highly personalized speech, but not a strident one. He spoke
of himself – ‘J’ai changé’ – and of history, of the traditional Gaullists
(and his adversaries), but also of many historical figures: Zola, Hugo,
St Louis, Voltaire, Pascal … He was evoking a certain idea of France,
but not just of the right. He spoke even of the left’s heroes, Jaurès
and Blum, and of Georges Mandel. The (beckoning) office of President
– like Prince Hal, like Thomas Beckett – was as if imposing a con-
fessional aspect upon him, perhaps even transforming the persona, as
if conferring the wisdom of kingship.38 From the following morning,
he began to climb dramatically in the polls. And as the ‘rally’ grew,
many centrists, and the ‘social’ Gaullists, began to declare their sup-
port. A week earlier (9 January), Juppé, who had for a long time been
thought to be the main Gaullist candidate, gave him his support. Chirac
and de Villepin never really did so, but by now this simply made them
seem irrelevant.
By defending himself against the excesses of his own character,
Sarkozy was making sure he did not come across as a bully, as threaten-
ing, particularly to a gentle woman, and that he was ready for king-
ship. The fact that Royal was not truly Madonna-like was irrelevant.
The fact that she became much less so as her campaign faltered, allowing
Sarkozy to appear more ‘quietly’ confident (and arguably in a ‘male’
though not strident way), was very relevant.39 Royal herself began
quite early in the campaign to come up against many stereotypical
female negatives – uncertain, capricious, slightly scatterbrained yet
controlling, and perhaps, too, not so nice, and also given to temper
outbursts. As Sarkozy’s perceived character began to turn ‘nice’, her
own appeared to be going in the opposite direction. This alteration of
an apparently fixed public persona is an extremely dynamic element

in leadership politics, particularly at such moments as a presidential
election.
By the beginning of 2007, with the defeat of all rivals on the right
and the left, the now highly mediatized pair, Sarkozy and Royal, were
the two main candidates. Bayrou, the UDF, centrist candidate, entered
this privileged space and made a good showing for a month or so,
for two reasons. First, although Sarkozy, and later Royal, were avidly
courted by the media, there was a danger that the campaign was
losing momentum and interest: ‘on sait tout de leur enfance, de leur
adolescence, de leurs douleurs, de leur histoire familiale. Un petit vent
de lassitude souffle sur la France’.40 France was perhaps at last begin-
ning to tire of the media saturation of the two rivals. Also there was no
dissident socialist Chevènement, or Radical (and female) Christiane
Taubira41 to threaten her (as these had threatened Jospin in 2002), and
no major Le Pen threat (although he stood) to Sarkozy. Not only did
Sarkozy ‘steal’ some of Le Pen’s discourse, Le Pen’s 2002 ‘success’
ensured his 2007 failure. Bayrou presented himself as the simple, gen-
tleman-farmer, straightforward – not ‘Parisian’ like the other two, a
‘social’ centrist, Catholic, drawing upon a significant resource in the
culture. He was also good on television, appearing as the non-elite can-
didate. The second reason Bayrou could step into the limelight was
that the two main candidates, aware of the volatility of their very novel
positions, actually avoided each other: if Sarkozy appeared patronizing
or sexist, it might irrevocably affect him (though he managed not to);
if Royal seemed inadequate to the task (which in fact through ‘avoid-
ance’ she did), she would falter; so for a large part of the campaign
each tried to project themselves upon the public, but did not confront
the other. And, for a time, Bayrou – whose electorate would be crucial
to Royal in round two – became ‘relevant’. Bayrou also swept up much
of the support that Royal was losing because of her poor campaign.
As we have seen, from Royal’s trip to China at the beginning of
January 2007 onwards, her own campaign began to go seriously wrong
in terms of the public deployment of her persona. By 18 January, she
had fallen ten points in the polls since November 2006. ‘Gaffes, mal-
adresse sur la justice chinoise, rumeurs sur son patrimoine, cacophonie
sur les impôts, dissensions internes sur sa stratégie, incartade d’un
de ses porte-parole’.42 And so it went on, her mistakes and the media’s
seizing upon them (much more than upon Sarkozy’s mistakes),
made her look incompetent, with the result that Sarkozy looked
supremely competent. Although at various points Sarkozy himself (in
his characteristically hot-tempered outbursts) criticized his team and

was reported as flying into his adolescent rages, his campaign was
infinitely better organized than the often inert Royal campaign. We
have mentioned Guaino’s ‘makeover’ of Sarkozy, pushing him to the
left of what was ‘expected’ of him (to the consternation of some on
the right; he later went even further by ‘dropping’ such names as
Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Bernard Kouchner). This knocked Royal
further off balance. Also, in the campaign itself, Sarkozy’s speeches,
based upon a market research team (working with him since early
2006), were those that the public/s wanted to hear (e.g. he declared
himself to be in favour of Sunday opening because it had been found
that majority opinion was in favour). We say public/s as Sarkozy’s
speeches were as if ‘made to measure’ for his discrete audiences: for
farmers, a speech for farmers, for the police, a speech for the police,
and so on. Sarkozy directed nearly all his speeches at specific user-groups
(he made just one or two ‘rousing’ speeches; e.g. Bercy, 29 April), which
now stood in contrast to what was beginning to appear as Royal’s Désir
d’avenir grandstanding.
There were no major ‘themes’ to 2007 as there had been in 1995
(fracture sociale) and 2002 (sécurité) and most earlier presidential cam-
paigns. This had the advantage of allowing Sarkozy to appear calm and
undramatic, but it also meant that the election was even more ‘about
the candidates’ – and his low-key speeches were about policy, so that
his speeches were not just ‘policy speeches’ but his ‘considered’ views
on policy. Conversely, Sarkozy had clearly given the impression to his
party, particularly the new and younger members who had joined in
droves after he took the leadership, that this was now a party buzzing
with ideas, that there was a rally of opinion behind him, and that this
was the as if destined meeting of a man with a rising tide of support.
And with the presidential election, the moment of destiny had arrived.
Royal had done exactly the same with her supporters, but not with the
party as a whole. Sarkozy, moreover, as others before him (e.g. Rocard,
with less success) had a real straight talking ‘parler vrai’ – itself a rhetor-
ical style and resource, but no less ‘down-to-earth’ for that. Sarkozy’s
discourse and style seemed, therefore, both practical and much more
than that. The ‘parler vrai’ image of Sarkozy was reinforced by his
TV appearances. On ‘J’ai une question à vous poser’ (TF1 5 February
2007), eight million people watched – and he gave the impression of
‘knowing his dossiers’, a failing of Royal’s at this crucial time that
threw his own image of competence into higher relief. On the same
programme on 19 February, Royal exceeded his viewing figures (nine
million), and acquitted herself well (her poll rating rose by 2 per cent),
but the general view was being firmly established: he was competent
and could control his ‘unpresidential’ attributes, she was much less
competent, and arguably not presidential.43 The TV appearances of
each of them (and of Bayrou) sent the polls into large fluctuations,
so that the campaign itself saw a series of what we might call judged
performances.
In terms of his perceived character, Sarkozy had rarely been associated
with scandal in any corrupt way. The Canard revealed (27 February)
Sarkozy’s getting at a knock-down price, from the Town Hall’s favourite
property developer, the purchase of and decoration/extensions to his Ile
de la Jatte home in Neuilly. Such revelations (now almost a regular aspect
of presidential campaigns) were potentially damaging, particularly as the
whole campaign was based upon character. We can make two brief
points. First, the allegations were responded to with a clear ‘let’s wait and
see’ approach, so that nothing concrete would happen before the elec-
tion. Second, Sarkozy was seen as the kind of man (close to money and
power for 30 years) who might be involved in such an affair, and there-
fore, paradoxically, the allegation had less clout; much less clout than the
revelation of Royal’s grosse fortune,44 and where, in fact, Sarkozy seemed to
display a greater openness (and she had been in the super-tax bracket for
two years – Sarkozy for one…). It is possible she had been libelled in the
press (Depêche du Midi), but her ratings fell. Sarkozy’s did not. Sarkozy,
because he had repositioned himself as much more ‘human’ and access-
ible, and because he seemed to exude a ‘parler vrai’, presented a character
who was not corrupt, or prey to temptation, and was straightforward and
approachable. These developing traits, in the context of his now being
the favourite to win, meant that the presidential campaign was becoming
in part a referendum on Sarkozy rather than a duel between the two of
them.45
One month before the polls, a staggering 40 per cent of the public
were still undecided. On the question of persona, the Royal team was
trying to transform the formerly radiant and Madonna-like image of
Royal into a more serious presidential one. The result was to project
her image as simply a rather glum, almost unhappy woman. This dif-
ficulty of development in image change suggested that she was locked
into a view of her that was informed strongly by stereotypes. He also,
mid-March, dwarfed her ‘presidential status’ rating by 52 per cent to
18 per cent (with Bayrou at 21 per cent). In the weeks before the first
round, it seemed that when Sarkozy made mistakes or stumbled his
ratings were not seriously affected. The Canard revelations, a flurry of
uncertainty about the Sarkozy-Cécilia relationship in March–April,

an edition of Marianne with a long article on whether Sarkozy was
a danger to democracy (suggesting he was) which sold a staggering
400,000 copies, a brief storm of ‘blog’ activity suggesting he was going
to withdraw from the race for a series of reasons; none of these issues
had a serious effect.46
The left/right divide between the two candidates was emphasized by
each towards the end of the campaign in order to try to make Bayrou
seem irrelevant.47 It worked, and probably improved Royal’s ratings
more than Sarkozy’s. On the eve of the debate, the only real danger for
Sarkozy was his confrontational reputation. The over-virile Sarkozy
entered round one with something close to a calm presidential image.
Any virile brutality towards Royal would trigger a lot of sympathy for
her, but in its absence, she entered the first round seemingly rather
lost. In the last week of the campaign she cancelled several interviews.
The turnout for round one was 84 per cent. Sarkozy polled 31 per cent.
He had federated the right. She too with 26 per cent had more or less
federated the left. In the two weeks that ensued, Sarkozy maintained
his equilibrium – and his left-leaning style.48
The only thing that could alter Royal’s declining position was for her
to perform outstandingly in the TV debate before voting in round two.
Just as the turnout for round one had demonstrated, public interest
remained high; 20 million people watched the debate. The debate was
almost exclusively a question of the success of the characters of the
two candidates, and revolved around the potential weakness of each.
Royal had to demonstrate that she was ‘presidential’ through know-
ledge; Sarkozy that he was ‘presidential’ through poise. Most com-
mentators suggested that any display of temper or sexism could lose
Sarkozy the presidency. What happened was an inversion of characters.
He presented himself as polite and serene, she as fiery and a fighter. We
can see in her a kind of incongruity of mixing character traits to create
effects, while his apparent calm was ‘comprehensible’ on the eve of
his taking the highest office. The TV debate was neither a great success
nor a great failure for either candidate. The lengthy and close-up
display of character made both candidates tend towards caution, par-
ticularly Sarkozy. Royal did not, however, excel on policy or dossier
knowledge. Her Madonna image, powerful though ultimately limiting,
had given way in the previous week to that of a more ordinary woman.
Sarkozy corrected her at one point for her heated temper; she was
pleased to be able to display a more fiery side. But ultimately this rela-
tively intimate display of the candidates became an appraisal of who
seemed the most competent politician. And Sarkozy did seem to fulfil
that role best. In the run-off round, Sarkozy won by quite a big margin
of 53.06 per cent against 46.94 per cent for Royal.
Although the most ‘macho’ of all France’s Presidents had won, France
could very well have chosen a woman.49
Conclusion
Our study has demonstrated the inordinately significant role of ‘perfor-

mance’, that is to say the acts, the rhetoric, the projection of the image
of individual political actors within a culturally and mythically
informed configuration of institutions. These acts and performances
are constitutive of the republic itself. The republic ‘is’ what people ‘do’
and how they do it. And by ‘people’ we mean politically significant
individuals performing within the spaces created for them by the Fifth
Republic. These individuals have a consequent political persona, part
real, part imagined. The persona performs within and in relation to the
institutions and on a culturally, institutionally and circumstantially
defined scale of drama, spectacle and ritual. This has major political
effects, often realigning the institutions themselves and their direction.
It is the performance and the fortunes of the political persona and its
relationship to its contexts and audiences that determine the political
process.
More than this, because of the bringing of a dramatic individual to
the heart of the republic in a dramatic situation in 1958, and his estab-
lishing of active personal prerogative, individual acts affect and change
as well as constitute the regime. The examples of this are legion. A
most dramatic example was de Gaulle’s ‘Françaises, Français, aidez-
moi’ television and radio appeal to the French public for help in defea-
ting the military coup attempt against the new regime in 1961. The
gesture and the words themselves, ‘help me!’, triggered a response that
defeated the coup.1 The word was literally mightier than the sword.
A less dramatic example, equally intriguing, is how Sarkozy’s ‘J’ai
changé’ assertion at the beginning of his campaign for the presidency
in 2007, transformed perceptions of him, and conferred upon him
the one quality he had been searching for: by admitting, by publicly
206
Conclusion 207
performing his confessional assertion of his humanity, he became

présidentiable.
Both the de Gaulle and Sarkozy examples here demonstrate the role
and importance of audience. The Fifth Republic invites its audience/s to
participate in a variety of ways. It is here that ‘opinion’ becomes a major
player. Opinion polls conducted and published by IPSOS, SOFRES and
Sondages characterize, give character to, opinion by means of the extra-
polation to the national level of a sample of respondents to questions
who express views on a range of topics. Our own characterizations
suggest that a more difficult to quantify but more participative role is
played by opinion, or a range of opinions, and that opinion, like
persona, is both ‘real’ and imagined (and this imagined quality plays a
role at the discursive level and by extension at the political level).
Opinion may only express itself through simply being an audience, or
through the ballot, and here the aggregate of opinions becomes
‘opinion’. What is important is that it is shaped by, created by and
responds to discursive phenomena such as a direct address from political
actors. The way in which it responds or the reasons it does so within a
range on a scale of intensity will be fashioned by a range of indirect and
contextual culturally, discursively and circumstantially defined influ-
ences. The Fifth Republic brings opinion very close to the stage if not
onto it, where personality politics interacts with it in a dynamic way.
It is also the case that a further aspect, less reliable than scholarly
interpretation, has undoubtedly come to have real effects within the
polity, namely hearsay. Many assumed characteristics of individual
leaders cannot even be used in political analysis because evidence for
them is lacking. The sexual lives of French Presidents, the intimate
relationships between certain politicians, or between certain politicians
and certain journalists; all of these are hearsay, yet they have political
consequences. And in as much as many of the French believe a range
of things about many of the political figures we have been analysing,
their views affect the way politicians are perceived and, therefore, have
consequent effects upon political persona, and upon the way persona is
interpolated in the public sphere.2 A further point to add here is that
hearsay is in part now almost mainstream. A great many of the studies
today on political actors, many of which we have used in this analysis,
are of a different kind from, for example, Sciences Po’s well-docu-
mented studies. But they are no less influential for that. At one level,
they are testimony to a thriving polity, an active and thoughtful
reading public, and the speed and immediacy of publication reflects an
acute interest in politics by the French. But we have to stress that many
studies today of, say, Sarkozy or Royal have no footnotes, few refer-
ences and so on, and yet often make very bold claims. They are them-
selves often strongly informed by hearsay. They are usually written
moreover by a Parisian elite – often very good journalists – who know
one another, often know their subjects personally, and write, as jour-
nalists often do, without quoting sources and so on. One has therefore
to be careful, but this literature is now as important in informing us
and influencing the political climate and creating persuasive images of
political leaders as more scholarly works.
A final point to make on the role of hearsay is that because it usually
involves sexual or private or financial or legally questionable issues, it
is compelling; but it is also compelling because it is hearsay, that is
to say, it has a strange ‘confirmed’ quality because it is unverified, but
circulating. Our shared knowledge and the symbolic status of alleged
liaisons, for example, between Sarkozy and others, or Royal and others,
even during the 2007 election campaign, seem to confer a reality upon
them. They cannot help but have impact upon perceptions of the
political actors involved.
As regards the sexual/gender dimension of the Sarkozy/Royal con-
frontation, Royal’s political image was significantly affected by her
gender and her attractiveness. By definition, the widely circulated
photo of Royal in a bikini affected perceptions of her. Her gender, in
mainstream leadership politics, was novel enough to alter the focus of
the public’s attention, and indeed our own attention, so that analysis
must focus more upon her image ‘as a woman’ in order to properly
understand her significance and effect.
On Sarkozy and Royal we can make a further comment related to
gender and persona. It is generally the case that ‘image correction’ of a
candidate is seen as a dangerous thing to do. Sarkozy’s case, however,
triggering myths of the return of the prodigal son, or Prince Hal’s self-
ennobling preparation for kingship, modifies this view. Change in
character can be truly advantageous. Related to this, is the fact that a
similar development did not help, did not seem to take place success-
fully, in Royal’s case. Sarkozy’s persona mediated federated traits, often
contradictory ones. This did not happen in Royal’s case as the cam-
paign unfolded, even though she had ‘fused’ successfully in 2005–06
the Madonna and the working professional woman images. Was this
inability to nuance her persona related to her being a woman? Does
the projection of complexity of character present more of a challenge
for women? Or was media reporting based upon misogynistic stereo-
types? Or was the movement of his persona from ‘tough’ to ‘tender’,
Conclusion 209
and hers from tender to tough the central issue? And why did his mis-
takes and errors draw less attention than hers? What is the relationship
here between performance and context?
This brings us to a point of great interest, that is, the question of
the medium of transmission of political persona. First the radio, news-
reel, and print press, then television and publicity agencies, and lat-
terly (from the mid-2000s) the internet have played a major role in
the mediation of political persona in both language and image. It is
possible, moreover, that the web, almost unused in the 2002 election,3
and the rise in the 2000s of celebrity culture,4 has seen the division
between public and private begin to break down, as well as the defin-
itions of these begin to change. It is possible this has created a para-
digm shift in the mediation of leadership. The Sarkozy presidency
(2007–12) is a particularly acute expression of a new public-private
mediation of leadership persona. We should stress, however, that the
underlying factor, whether it is the radio or the internet, is the entry
of the individual into the paradigm in a dramatic way. Sarkozy’s
behaviour has significant effects because of the way de Gaulle brought
performance and a form of individualism into the heart of the republic.
De Gaulle created a performative space that all his successors have
filled in a particular way.
The founding emphasis upon drama in the context of the media has
meant that drama has come in many forms. Since 1958, drama has
been necessary for leadership to perform: it is true that ‘calmer’ forms
of leadership have been attempted, but drama – the sense that time
is speeded up, something fateful is about to happen, and personal
intervention is an imperative – has appeared and reappeared on the
political stage again and again since 1958. There is good drama, and
bad drama, successful and not so. There have been successful and very
unsuccessful attempts to use and exploit drama, or even, sometimes,
create it in reality or, failing that, in discourse or projected image. Cat-
egorizing what is real drama and what is not is probably impossible.
There is, however, a dramatic ‘sensibility’ in the French polity, and this
has a range of implications for the performance of individuals. Algeria,
Petit-Clamart, the 1962 parliamentary dissolution, the mis en ballotage
of 1965, the events of 1968, are all events which display themselves
dramatically and to which de Gaulle responded or tried to respond.5
The 1986–88 period, the dramatic appointment of Cresson in 1991
and its alarming consequences, Chirac’s offering drama and inter-
ventionism (‘la fracture sociale’) to Balladur’s calm competence, Chirac’s
assertive resumption of nuclear testing, the fateful decision to dissolve
Parliament in 1997, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s triumph in round one of

the 2002 election, and so on; each of these is an event, some-
times ‘created’, but always with significant consequences for a range
of actors and for politics generally. And events such as these recur
inordinately in French politics. Moreover, for a series of reasons: a
multi-party system, a long tradition of dramatic politics, an acute
national political sensitivity, an asymmetrical presidential and legis-
lative cycle (at least until 2002), acute political rivalries, and a
very personalized political system; one of the most predictable
elements of the Fifth Republic from 1958 to the present has been
its unpredictability. This role of the ‘unexpected’, of fortuna, also
means that personal interventions, responses, failures to respond,
and so on characterize political activity, so that political trajectories,
political careers become a kind of adventure, for better or worse. The
political careers of Mitterrand, Chirac, Jospin, Le Pen, Royal, Sarkozy,
and more than all others de Gaulle, have been political careers
peppered with triumph and despair, and these latter make political
life an ‘adventure’, and reinforce its personal aspects.6 What this
means in French political life is a great deal of volatility; and the
creation of long standing loyalties as well as enmities.
We can say, in a sense, that de Gaulle invented the presidency and
gave it a particular set of characteristics in 1958 (e.g. chivalric, redemp-
tive, dramatic, focused on him), and after 1958 gave it a further set of
characteristics (e.g. controversial, in a dramatic tension with the
parties, authoritative, and prone to the unexpected). The main charac-
teristic however that arose from these additions was the ability to add
characteristics, and characteristics that range from visions to vindic-
tiveness, from philosophizing to caprice. This he bequeathed to his
successors, and each of them has added formative and consequent
characteristics and qualities. One can identify, therefore, a generic pres-
idential style, yet it is one which has evolved and accrued qualities as it
has done so.
The focus upon individuals and their central role reveals and mobil-
izes myths informing the French polity. The myth de Gaulle brought
to the heart of the polity was chivalric – the hero with a devotional
attitude to the (feminine) national entity who, through trial, courage
and fortitude saves the beloved country and triumphs. He then serves
as consort and protector. The arrival in 2007 of a mainstream woman
candidate not only threw this myth into high relief, it also saw the
entry into the political culture of a set of myths about women or
woman, some of them advantageous, some contrasting with the virile
Conclusion 211
nature of the underlying myth, but all consequent within this singular
republic. Royal’s candidacy was also an object lesson in how a woman
attempted to inhabit a space hitherto inhabited almost exclusively
by men, using mythologies created by men, demystifying and dom-
esticating some while mobilizing and being mobilized, and perhaps
overcome, by others.
De Gaulle clearly brought from the edge to the centre of the polity
the chivalric myth. He also brought in myths that are related to Europe’s
Christian heritage. Perhaps these are there all the time in Western pol-
ities. It is the case that the Western polity itself has, in part, a Christian
foundation; notions of justice, fairness, reward, community, rights and
duties have their roots in Christian thought as much as in Enlighten-
ment thought; and allegiance to de Gaulle had a strong devotional
element to it. And in French politics generally one can talk not only
of support, but of allegiance, and sometimes not only of allegiance, but
of devotion. And the compagnons de la première heure, in fact, for each
of our leaders, are true disciples. There was the David v. Goliath aspect
to the 1965 election, and the Madonna connotations of a woman can-
didate in a Western democracy, and the deployment of the idea of
‘kingship’ as sacred; clearly all have religious connotations, and real
political effects. We should also bear in mind how Sarkozy’s move
from bête noire to présidentiable had the strong flavour of the return
of the prodigal son, and a very strong flavour of the confessional.
There is a matrix of myths and mythologies triggered by the image,
comportment, or discourse of political leaders.
De Gaulle personalized the presidency further by bringing to it
and its highly publicized role his mistakes and foibles as well as his
strengths. He would not himself have admitted that he made mistakes,
but high profile mistakes humanized the role, giving it further depth.
His ‘Montreal’ mistake, his all too human failings of judgement in
1968, his foolish referendum in 1969, and his highly personal and
emotional resignation gave further psychological depth to his persona.
De Gaulle added ‘folly’ to the list of presidential characteristics (and
perhaps tolerance and forgiveness of folly to the attributes of ‘opinion’).
The resignation itself, as we have seen, stressed, in its momentary
negation, the emotional bond between the character of the President
and his audience, the French, giving it a new lease of life.
These character traits thus became part of the presidency. Part generic,
part individual, the character and persona of the Presidents have defined,
consolidated, and sometimes threatened the presidency. De Gaulle’s
arrogant personality always, but also his, Pompidou’s, Giscard’s, and
Mitterrand’s sometimes cavalier dismissal of their Prime Ministers, was

in part the assertion of the ascendancy of the office itself, in part
impetuous caprice. And these ‘characters’ – plus all the hearsay that
has accompanied them – have shaped the regime and its direction. In
Sarkozy’s case, in the run up to his 2007 election, there was hesitation
over his ‘eligibility’ in terms of the volatile aspect of his character. We
have seen the myriad mistakes made when the personal is given such
scope. We have noted how the play of the personal can take on star-
tling aspects. Mitterrand’s treatment of Michel Rocard by dismissing
him unceremoniously in 1991 had major consequences. His appoint-
ment of Cresson made the overall situation dramatically worse, and
doubtless contributed to the right’s electoral landslide in 1993. Chirac,
by unnecessarily dissolving Parliament in 1997 and ushering in five
years of ‘cohabitation’ with the left, brought ridicule upon the presi-
dency. There is a Homeric quality to the Fifth Republic in which the
gods give rein to their pettiness and their passions, and which con-
trasts continually with an Aristotelian concern with process and
harmony – the aim of good government.
Misjudgements by people of people, moreover, have had major
political effects. Giscard’s underestimating Chirac in 1974 had enor-
mous consequences, as did Jospin’s underestimating him in 2002.
Fabius and Strauss-Kahn’s failing to grasp what Royal was doing on
the margins of the PS’s power structures cost them their candidacies
for the presidency in 2007 and altered the PS fundamentally. In a
polity where individuals have such salience, judgement and mis-
judgement have major consequences. And such are more likely given
that a further feature of presidential stature, from de Gaulle onwards,
right up to Royal and Sarkozy, is that they freely or of necessity claim
to be an authority on just about everything – and as candidates are
expected to be.
One feature of the presidency that we have underlined throughout
our analysis is its ambivalence, none more so than its conflation of the
political and the ceremonial and the significant consequences of this.
In much of the literature on 1958 and its aftermath, great emphasis
is put on the mixing of the roles of Head of Government (or govern-
ment’s most significant and powerful actor) and Head of State. And the
conclusions are, normally, that de Gaulle used (and abused) the second
to further his aims concerning the first, that he used his symbolic status
as a pretext to intervene in the political. Our analysis has demonstrated
that the real key to the Fifth Republic and its originality is to see things
the other way round, namely that the real Gaullist settlement was the
Conclusion 213
politicizing and mobilization of the ceremonial, ritual and symbolic.

The Gaullist settlement is not the politicizing of the presidential, but
the ‘presidentializing’ of the political.
The Presidents of the Fifth Republic, the presidency itself, and the
presidential elections have been popular in terms of both approval and
celebrity. In one sense, this is what truly distinguished the Fifth
Republic from the Fourth, and led to the successful establishment and
continuing ascendancy of the presidency and of the regime generally:
people liked it, and were attentive to the life and times of its leaders
and would-be leaders. Following the personalized life and times of
Presidents and aspirants to the presidency is fun: and this in contrast
to the Fourth Republic where not only did people have no faith in
their politicians, they barely knew who they were. This trivial detail is
of enormous consequence. Political leaders, particularly the Presidents,
have been maintained in and by the public’s consciousness and the
media for 50 years. This is in large part because of the personalization
of leadership. And of course media coverage has extended exponen-
tially, and personalization lends itself enormously to this. De Gaulle’s
presidency filled the newspapers and magazines – was usually front
page news – for ten years. And incidents like the Petit-Clamart assassi-
nation attempt made him a true media star: his only apparent remark
after the fusillade – ‘they don’t know how to shoot’ demonstrating
his wit and his courage.7 De Gaulle also had a monopoly on the broad-
cast media (his justification was that his enemies ran the print media).
Publicity agencies, television, and Paris Match have kept all the Presi-
dents in the public view; and the elections to the presidency have
invariably been the most popular political moment in the life of the
republic (the first round of 2002 being the fateful exception). We need
to stress, however, that the new millennium brought a new dimension
to the presidency and to politics generally, which has altered politics
qualitatively. All of the Presidents in the second half of the twentieth
century both reflected changes within the culture, in their affiliations,
their policies and in their style and comportment, and also informed
and inflected change – Pompidou brought the presidency more down
to earth, Giscard made it modern, Mitterrand made it no longer the
domain of the right, Chirac made it less pompous. With Sarkozy,
however, a sea change has occurred. The celebrity culture of the 2000s,
the explosion of ‘la presse people’ and politicians’ – particularly Sarkozy’s
– reaction to it have brought popular culture, reality TV, and the
invasion of the ‘public’ by the ‘private’ into the presidency, and vice
versa.8 Sarkozy’s private life and relationships are narrated public
knowledge. The presidency has therefore become, in part, a part of the

‘reality’ media. This does not mean this will always remain the case. It
does mean the presidency has entered a qualitatively new phase that
will see major evolutions in the image, rhetoric, and style of leaders
and contenders for leadership.
Notes
Introduction
1 In 1947, de Gaulle founded his own political party, the ‘Rally of the French
People’. It was initially successful electorally and gained an estimated one
million members; but its popularity faded, and he eventually closed it down
in 1953.
Chapter 1 1958: The Gaullist Settlement and French

Politics
1 For a detailed discussion of the growth and influence of the press, radio and
television, see J.K. Chalaby (2002) The de Gaulle Presidency and the Media
(Basingstoke: Palgrave).
2 Opinion is usually taken to mean opinion as measured through opinion
polling and often brought together in annual appraisals such as SOFRES’
L’Etat de l’opinion published yearly (Paris: Seuil), in SOFRES and IFOP polls
and the quarterly publication Sondages: Revue française de l’opinion publique
(Paris: Chancelier), or in the Figaro Baromètre devoted to the popularity of
politicians. It is clear that we use the term much more widely to refer to the
views, perceived views, imaginings (and forgettings) of individuals aggre-
gated by polling organizations as well as other collective political or social
actors. See J. Charlot (ed.) (1971) Les Français et de Gaulle (Paris: Plon). See
also, G. Dupeux, A. Girard and J. Stoetzel (1960) ‘Une enquête par sondage
auprès des électeurs’, Association française de science politique, Le référen-
dum de septembre et les élections de novembre 1958 (Paris: Presses de la FNSP),
pp.119–193.
3 We do not wish to choose one definition of culture out of the hundreds of
definitions and approaches. We shall use the term here to designate the for-
mative and shared ensemble of traditions, attitudes, values, symbols, mem-
ories and dispositions that inform a national community. For a discussion
of the topic and its application, see J. Gaffney and E. Kolinsky (eds) (1991)
Political Culture in France and Germany (London: Routledge).
4 See J. Gaffney and D. Holmes (eds) (2007) Stardom in Postwar France
(Oxford: Berghahn); H. Mendras with Alistair Cole (1991) Social Change in
Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), an earlier version
of which was published as H. Mendras (1988) La seconde révolution française,
1965–1984 (Paris: Gallimard); M. Larkin (1997) France since the Popular Front
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp.176–222.
5 C. de Gaulle (1954, 1956, 1959, 1970, 1971) Mémoires de Guerre and Mémoires
d’Espoir (Paris: Plon).
6 The range of literature on Algeria and on the creation of the Fifth Republic
is vast. Among the most interesting are W.G. Andrews (1962) French Politics
215
216 Notes
and Algeria (New York: Appleton); P. Viansson-Ponté (1970–71) Histoire de la

république gaullienne I (Paris: Fayard); P.M. Williams and M. Harrison (1960) De
Gaulle’s Republic (London: Longmans); J. Charlot (1983) Le Gaullisme d’oppos-
ition, 1946–1958 (Paris: Fayard); J. Touchard, ‘La fin de la IVe République’,
Revue française de science politique, 8, 4, December 1958, pp.917–218;
S. Bromberger and M. Bromberger (1959) Les treize complots du 13 mai (Paris:
Fayard); Sirius (H. Beuve-Méry) (1958) Le suicide de la IV e république (Paris: Le
Cerf); J. Ferniot (1965) De Gaulle et le 13 mai (Paris: Plon); J. Lacouture (1985)
De Gaulle 2. Le politique (Paris: Seuil); J.-C. Maitrot and J.-D. Sicault (1969) Les
conférences de presse du général de Gaulle (Paris: Presses universitaires de France);
A. Siegfried (1958) De la IVe à la Ve république (Paris: Grasset); J. Touchard
(1969) Le gaullisme (Paris: Seuil); P.M. Williams (1970) Wars, Plots and Scandals
in Post-War France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); C. Nick (1998)
Résurrection (Paris: Fayard); L. Terrenoire (1964) De Gaulle et l’Algérie (Paris:
Fayard); R. Salan (1974) Mémoires, vol. 4, L’Algérie, de Gaulle et moi (Paris:
Presses de la cité); B. Tricot (1972) Les sentiers de la paix: Algérie, 1958–1962
(Paris: Plon); P.-M. de la Gorce (1963) La France et son armée (Paris: Fayard). On
the new constitution, including – already – a 20-page bibliography, see the
entire issue of Revue française de science politique, 9, 1, March 1959.
7 On 6 February 1934 a demonstration by far-right groups led to a riot in the
Place de la Concorde, just over the river from the National Assembly. For
many at the time and since this incident – in which 16 died and thousands
were injured – was seen as a moment when the Third Republic was almost
overthrown.
8 For a partisan but very interesting study see J. Valette (2008) Le 13 mai du
général Salan (Sceaux: L’Esprit du livre).
9 In J. Lacouture (1985) De Gaulle 2. Le politique (Paris: Seuil), p.468.
10 ‘Assumer’ is an interesting word in French. It means ‘take’ or ‘take on’ in a
constitutional sense but also implies both the taking responsibility for
something and the taking on of a mantle.
11 Also, taking on personally the attributes of the republic is to symbolically
conflate ‘la chose publique’, the res publica, and an individual. This is very
unusual. One has a sense that in spite of his being a major player in 1958,
Mollet had no idea of the symbolic consequences of his actions, in particu-
lar his creating the conditions of de Gaulle’s performance.
12 See R. Rémond (1983) 1958: Le retour de de Gaulle (Brussels: Complexe),
p.81. In 1958, the daily print run for newspapers nationally was about
eleven and a half million; J.K. Chalaby (2002) The de Gaulle Presidency and
the Media (Basingstoke: Palgrave), p.9.
13 See C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon), pp.4–10.
14 For a compelling discussion of de Gaulle’s sense of his burden but also on the
relationship between this reconciliatory aspect of his character and humour,
see R. Gary (2000) Ode à l’homme qui fut la France (Paris: Gallimard).
15 See J. Lacouture (1985) De Gaulle: Le politique (Paris: Seuil), pp.476–477. For
good general coverage of the period see pp.447–489, and P. Viansson-Ponté
(1970–71) Histoire de la république gaullienne (Paris: Fayard), pp.19–60.
16 The government looked remarkably similar in its political make up to his
government of 1944. See J.-J. Becker (1988) Histoire politique de la France
depuis 1945 (Paris: Armand Colin), p.77.
Notes 217
17 See S. Berstein (1989) La France de l’expansion (Paris: Seuil), pp.145–150.

See also D. Borne (1990) Histoire de la société française depuis 1945 (Paris:
Armand Colin).
18 R. Rémond (1983) 1958: Le retour de de Gaulle (Brussels: Complexe), p.77;
and S. Berstein and P. Milza (1991) Histoire de la France au XXe siècle,
1945–1958 (Brussels: Complexe), p.302.
19 In January 1958, opinion polls suggested that he would never return to
power. S. Berstein and P. Milza (1991) Histoire de la France au XXe siècle,
1945–1958 (Brussels: Complexe), p.298. We should add that his not being
expected to return meant that his return was all the more dramatic.
20 The international media became less indulgent towards de Gaulle once he
took office.
21 P.M. Williams (1970) French Politicians and Elections, 1951–1969 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), p.69.
22 C. de Gaulle (1999) Le Fil de l’epée (Paris: Plon), pp.180–185.
23 For a persuasive explanation for and justification of de Gaulle’s haughti-
ness, see R. Gary (2000) Ode à l’homme qui fut la France (Paris: Gallimard),
pp.18–44 (first published in Life Magazine, December 1958).
24 See inter alia J. Charlot (ed.) (1971) Les Français et de Gaulle (Paris: Plon).
25 For two extremely interesting discussions of de Gaulle’s relationship to
France’s political culture see B. Gaïti (1998) De Gaulle, prophète de la cinquième
république (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po), and N. Tenzer (1998) La face cachée
du gaullisme (Paris: Hachette).
26 For an interesting discussion of this see W.G. Andrews (1982) Presidential
Government in Gaullist France (Albany: Suny Press). For a succinct account of
the constitution’s elaboration see R. Rémond (1983) 1958: Le retour de de
Gaulle (Brussels: Complexe), pp.119–126. See also, G. Mollet (1962) 13 mai
1958–13 mai 1962 (Paris: Plon), pp.17–31, and G. Mollet (1973) 15 ans
après. La constitution de 1958 (Paris: Albin Michel).
27 See J.-J. Becker (1988) Histoire politique de la France depuis 1945 (Paris: Armand
Colin), p.81.
28 Association française de science politique (1960) Le référendum de septembre
et les élections de novembre 1958 (Paris: Presses de le fondation nationale des
sciences politiques), p.128.
29 R. Rémond (1983) 1958: Le retour de de Gaulle (Brussels: Complexe),
pp.131–133.
30 For two definitive discussions of the notion of the rally (rassemblement) in
politics see B.D. Graham (1993) Representation and Party Politics (Oxford:
Blackwell), pp.69–111; and C. Fieschi (2004) Fascism, Populism and the
French Fifth Republic. In the Shadow of Democracy (Manchester: Manchester
University Press), pp.75–97. For us, the essential quality of the rally in prac-
tice is that it holds itself in opposition to the ‘ordinary’ political party. It is
more than anything else a way of imagining politics and political organ-
ization as a dynamic, emotional, and transcendent political movement that
comes into being (often as the result of a ‘call’ or ‘appel’) in order to trans-
form or renovate politics or conquer power or give voice to the people. It
sees itself as a kind of pure, unmediated movement. It often sees itself
as organized around ideas (un rassemblement d’idées); in practice, it is usu-
ally organized around an individual. It is imbued with a kind of myth of
218 Notes
original essence or migration. Given its often personalist nature, it sees

itself as responding to an exceptional person, and as necessary to lifting
that person to power. In this it is almost Homeric (charisma and glory)
rather than Aristotelian (harmony and process), and is arguably both a form
of ‘pure’ democracy – free individuals engaged in an unmediated political
relationship, and an anti-democratic political form of unquestioning hero-
worship.
31 Although it was not just the ‘forward looking’ who suffered. Not only
Mendésisme but Poujadisme too was wiped out by the tide of Gaullist support.
32 J. Chapsal and A. Lancelot (1975) La vie politique en France depuis 1940 (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France), p.348. For a thorough analysis of both the
September referendum and the November elections, see, Association française
de science politique (1960) Le référendum de septembre et les élections de novembre
1958 (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques).
33 See S. Berstein (1989) La France de l’expansion (Paris: Seuil), p.41.
Chapter 2 1958–68: The Consolidation and Evolution

of the Fifth Republic
1 Georges Vedel and Maurice Duverger were academics but made significant
contributions to the climate of opinion not only in their teaching and
books but particularly through highly influential newspaper articles, partic-
ularly in Le Monde.
2 It is not fair to say that Jacques Soustelle represented within Gaullism the
far right. In fact, the opposite is arguably true. The complexity of his char-
acter and ideas reflect the complexity of post-war French politics. See
J. Soustelle (1962) L’Espérance trahie (Paris: Alma). See also L. Hamon, preface
by R. Capitant (1958) De Gaulle dans la république (Paris: Plon); also R. Capitant
(1971) Ecrits politiques 1960–1970 (Paris: Flammarion); J. Debû-Bridel (1970)
De Gaulle contestataire (Paris: Plon).
3 Between 1958 and 1962 as de Gaulle moved towards acceding to Algerian
independence, his 1958 support (pieds noirs and army) began to turn against
him. In April 1961, elements within the army attempted a putsch. It failed
partly because of de Gaulle’s masterful television and radio broadcast
(23 April 1961) calling upon the bulk of the army and the people’s support;
C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon), pp.306–308. We should
also stress that de Gaulle’s good fortune was partly dependent upon the stra-
tegically problematic relationship between the Algiers population and the
Army, each ill adapted to knowing how to work with the other particularly in
crisis moments. Algerian independence became official in July 1962.
4 Press conference in the Elysée Palace, 15 May 1962. See C. de Gaulle (1970)
Discours et messages Tome 3, Avec le renouveau (Paris: Plon), pp.401–417.
5 J. Lacouture (1986) De Gaulle, Le souverain (Paris: Seuil), pp.274–279. Jean-
Marie Bastien-Thiry, a disenchanted Gaullist, had made several assassination
attempts. On the evening of 22 August 1962 12 men, including Bastien-Thiry,
in four vehicles and armed with machine guns and machine pistols, opened
fire on de Gaulle’s car. Approximately 200 bullets were fired. At least 14 hit the
car but no-one in de Gaulle’s car was hurt.
Notes 219
6 It was the Senate, with Gaston Monnerville as its very popular President,
that articulated the hostility to de Gaulle’s intentions. The Senate’s critical
view of de Gaulle through the 1960s doubtless influenced his 1969 referen-
dum proposal.
7 See S. Berstein (1989) La France de l’expansion (Paris: Seuil), p.113.
8 For a thorough analysis of the referendum and the elections see F. Goguel
(ed.) (1965) Le référendum d’octobre et les élections de novembre 1962 (Paris:
Armand Colin).
9 An indication of the situation regarding Gaullist implantation are the
results of the partial (one-third new) 1962 Senate elections. The Gaullists
has 32 seats, the Independent Republicans (in fact former CNIP for the
most part) 65, and the SFIO 52, out of 274 seats up for election.
10 See J. Charlot (1970) Le phénomène gaulliste (Paris: Fayard). Charlot’s view,
developed from Otto Kircheimer, has become the received view of political
scholarship; see O. Kircheimer (1966) ‘The Transformation of West Euro-
pean Party Systems’ in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds) Political Parties
and Political Development (New Jersey: Princeton), pp.177–200.
11 ‘L’Etat-UDR’ was a term coined by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in 1971.
12 See inter alia, R. Faligot and J. Guisnel (2007) Histoire secrète de la Ve république
(Paris: La Découverte).
13 Larkin argues that de Gaulle took over all policy between 1962–66, only
gradually letting domestic politics slip towards Pompidou’s control. See
M. Larkin (1997) France since the Popular Front (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), p.283.
14 P.G. Cerny (1980) The Politics of Grandeur (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
15 S. Berstein (1989) La France de l’expansion (Paris: Seuil), pp.220–263.
16 For an overview of de Gaulle’s foreign policy see O. Bange (1999) The
EEC Crisis of 1963: Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in Conflict
(Basingstoke: Palgrave); P.G. Cerny (1980) The Politics of Grandeur: Ideological
Aspects of de Gaulle’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press);
C. Cogan (1994) Oldest Allies, Guarded Friends: The United States and France since
1940 (Westport: Praeger); C. Cogan (1997) Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic
Alliance and NATO (London: Praeger); S. Hoffmann (1994) The Foreign Policy of
Charles de Gaulle (Princeton: Princeton University Press); D.S. White (1979)
Black Africa and de Gaulle, from the French Empire to Independence (University
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press); A. Grosser (1965) La politique
extérieure de la Ve république (Paris: Seuil); G. Gozard (1976) De Gaulle face à
l’Europe (Paris: Plon); R. Paxton and N. Wahl (eds) (1994) De Gaulle and the
United States: A Centennial Reappraisal (Providence: Berg).
17 In May 1960 a US spy plane, the U2, was shot down by the Soviets. The
incident caused enormous diplomatic embarrassment to the Americans and
overshadowed the East-West summit being held in Paris. The embarrass-
ment was even greater for the Americans as the Soviets captured Gary
Powers alive, and the U2 spy plane almost intact.
18 See N. Beloff (1963) The General Says No (Harmondsworth: Penguin), esp.
pp.113–172.
19 See C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon), pp.221–234.
20 C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon), pp.206–207.
220 Notes
21 See P. Viansson-Ponté (1970–71) Histoire de la république gaullienne (Paris:

Fayard), pp.376–379. The irony is that he may actually have meant it as a
compliment.
22 With the 1968 crisis, this attempt on France’s part to challenge American
dominance fizzled out.
23 One might, however, say the same of French policy in Africa. See inter alia,
F.-X. Vershave (2005) De la Françafrique à la Mafiafrique (Paris: Broché); see
also J. Foccart and P. Gaillard (1995 and 1997) Foccart parle, vols 1 and 2
(Paris: Broché).
24 Leftist ideas were developing outside the two main left political parties, but
again with no real idea of the left’s adapting to presidentialism itself. In
1960, the PSU was formed, and throughout the decade it churned out ideas
(it also enjoyed a real forum in the pages of the Nouvel Observateur maga-
zine), helping to create, in contradistinction to the established left, la deux-
ième gauche – made up of young intellectuals, the new CFDT trade union,
the students union, UNEF, a range of political clubs and think tanks, in par-
ticular the (somewhat elitist) Club Jean Moulin, and Citoyens 60 (leftist
Catholic), of which the young Jacques Delors was a founding member. We
said above no real doctrinal renewal took place within the parties. Gener-
ally speaking that was true although we can say here that a small doctrinal
group, CERES, was set up in the SFIO in 1964, and Pierre Mauroy of the Nord
federation set up a Research group involving socialist students concerned
with researching ideas around the theme of making the SFIO a modern social
democratic party. And in the Stalinist PCF, with the death of Thorez in 1964,
there was a more liberal mood emerging.
25 When we say ‘inside a party’ we need to stress that the SFIO leadership did
not approve and would undermine the initiative.
26 G. Defferre (1965) Un nouvel horizon (Paris: Gallimard).
27 See CEVIPOF (1970) L’élection présidentielle des 5 et 19 décembre 1965 (Paris:
Armand Colin).
28 Towards the end of his political career, Le Pen expressed the view – his one
political regret – that if he had stood first in 1965 instead of 1974, the
history of the far right, and himself, and therefore the republic, would have
been different. One can only wonder. See Libération.fr., 19 March 2007.
29 This was also the case for Giscard in 1981, Mitterrand in 1988, and Chirac
in 2002.
30 It was also known that in spite of his lofty public comportment, de Gaulle
also had a highly developed sense of humour. See M. Jullian (ed.) (2000) De
Gaulle, traits d’esprit (Paris: Le Cherche Midi); Éditions Michel Lafon (2005)
Le meilleur du général de Gaulle (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Éditions Michel Lafon).
31 The Gaullists in the 1967 legislative elections used the same publicity
agency, Services et méthodes, that Jean Lecanuet had used in 1965.
32 The first woman presidential candidate was the Trotskyst, Arlette Laguiller,
in 1974. There have been women candidates in all the presidential elections
since, with the first woman going through to the run off in 2007. In the
2002 elections, Christiane Taubira, from French Guiana, was the first black
presidential candidate.
33 See (1968) L’année politique 1967 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France),
pp.2–3. Essentially ‘Oui, mais…’ meant yes I support the government but
Notes 221
not totally. Giscard also criticized the ‘solitary exercise of power’ after de
Gaulle’s ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ speech, see (1968) L’année politique 1967
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France), p.58.
34 The miners’ strike of March–April 1963 was the most prominent of develop-
ing social conflicts at this time. This long – 39 days – strike was a conflict
that aroused a great deal of national, and international, sympathy for the
miners, and saw a significant drop in de Gaulle’s popularity.
Chapter 3 1968 and its Aftermath

1 (1969) L’année politique 1968 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France),
pp.13–14. One of the reasons school students were involved was because
the government had introduced legislation on selective university entry.
The involvement of schools meant the police were fighting extremely
young people on many occasions.
2 (1969) L’année politique 1968 (Paris: PUF), p.37.
3 For the full text see C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon),
pp.292–293. For a lively description of the events around this time and
the attitudes of de Gaulle and Pompidou, particularly towards each other,
see J. Lacouture (1986) De Gaulle, Volume 3, Le souverain (Paris: Seuil),
pp.714–731.
4 The Marxian (Trotskyist) notion of ‘permanent revolution’ was a forlorn
hope among leftist activists; but this was in part a revolution in ideas
and attitudes; and this discursive, cultural revolution should not be under-
estimated in terms of its longer term influence.
pp.46–47. For the full text of the programme see C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours
et messages (Paris: Plon), pp.321–338 (Livre de Poche edition, 1974).
6 See P. Bénéton and J. Touchard ‘Les interprétations de la crise de mai–juin
1968’ in Revue française de science politique, 20, 3, June 1970, pp.503–544.
7 From 200,000 to 500,000 since 1960.
8 Asked by one journalist in a lull in the fighting what a revolutionary should
do, Cohn-Bendit’s reply was that he should go home and make love to his
girlfriend. The women’s movement was clearly imperative given that your
own leaders assumed that only men were revolutionaries. Young women
were, in fact, very active in the demonstrations and the rioting; see P. Seale
and M. McConville (1968) French Revolution 1968 (Harmondsworth:
Penguin), p.73.
9 And as such was utterly despised as insignificant by the PCF and CGT.
10 He had German nationality; his family being wartime Jewish refugees. He
had been partly brought up in France. The irony of ‘Dany’ as the ‘face’ of
the ’68 Revolution was that in reality, after the first week or so in May, he
played quite a minor role in the events.
11 P. Mendès France (1962) La république moderne (Paris: Gallimard).
12 The text of declarations by Mitterrand and by Mèndes France on, respectively,
28 and 29 May are published in L’année politique (Paris: Presses universitaires
de France), pp.380–381. A comparative analysis of the ‘performance’ of de
Gaulle in 1958 and those of Mèndes and Mitterrand in 1968 would be an
222 Notes
extremely interesting exercise in terms of the relation between performance

and image on the one hand and institutions and culture on the other.
13 See inter alia J. Besançon (1997) Les murs ont la parole (Paris: Tchou); B. Lambert
(1997) Défense d’interdire (Paris: Méréal).
14 One graffiti: ‘Il a mis trois semaines pour annoncer en cinq minutes ce qu’il
allait entreprendre dans un mois ce qu’il n’avait pas réussi à faire en
dix ans.’ And cartoons of him – usually in profile – képi, large nose, were
everywhere.
15 See inter alia J. Baynac et al. (2008) Mai 68, Le Débat (Paris: Gallimard).
16 We should also note here that ’68 was a seminal moment for the far-right
too, both in activist and intellectual terms. Subsequently significant Giscardian
figures such as Alain Madelin had been founding members of far right
organizations, such as Occident.
17 The French State Channel, the ORTF, also went on strike. When reporting
did take place many of the broadcasters, camera crew etc, were very sympa-
thetic to the students and striking workers.
18 See M. Larkin (1997) France since the Popular Front (Oxford: Oxford University
Press), pp.317–330. For an interesting, more strident view than mine, arguing
for example that the violence of ’68 was subsequently downplayed, see
K. Ross (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
19 See (1969) L’année politique, 1968 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France),
pp.64–65, 71–74.
20 There were many injuries in 1968 on both sides but startlingly few deaths,
perhaps five or six throughout the country, several of these tragic accidents
rather than the result of deliberate attacks. Four of these took place towards
the end of the events in mid-June and added to the climate of opinion that
the authorities now needed to put a stop to the riots. If the Army had been
brought in there would doubtless have been many more casualties.
21 One of ‘68’s most famous slogans ‘Elections, piège à cons’ was transformed
in 2002 into ‘abstentionnisme, piège à cons’.
Chapter 4 1969–74: Gaullism Without de Gaulle

1 Strictly speaking the first part of de Gaulle’s proposal would amend article
72 of the constitution and therefore technically was a referendum issue, but
had nothing of the drama of all his other referendums.
2 For example, in his ineffective 24 May 1968 broadcast and in his televised
discussion with Michel Droit on 7 June.
3 To date, the only other defeat had been that of 5 May 1946, the referendum
on the first constitutional proposal for what became the Fourth Republic;
and in fact the ’46 referendum had had no champion. De Gaulle’s referen-
dums characterized the dramatic 1958–62 period. In the aftermath of the
1968 drama, both the topic and the timing of de Gaulle’s initiative were
misguided.
4 The 1969 reform envisaged a reform of the regions: three-fifths of the mem-
bership nominated by elected officials and two-fifths by professional orga-
nizations, chambers of commerce, trade unions and so on (and with the
local prefects as their executive). More contentiously, the second chamber,
Notes 223
the Senate, would see similar reform. Just over half its members would be
elected indirectly (by MPs, local councillors etc) and the rest nominated by
economic, social and cultural organizations. Most contentiously, the Senate
would become a consultative body, no longer really part of Parliament.
Clearly, such reform met with enormous hostility from the Senate espe-
cially, and from many at local level, and perhaps more damningly, general
indifference on the part of the national population.
5 This was – more or less – Malraux’s view. See A. Malraux (1971) Les chênes
qu’on abat… (Paris: Gallimard).
6 See S. Rials (1977) Les idées politiques du Président Georges Pompidou (Paris:
Presses universitaires de France). See also, S. Berstein and J.-P. Rioux (1995)
La France de l’expansion 2 (Paris: Seuil), pp.26–30.
7 For a good brief discussion, see J. Chapsal and A. Lancelot (1975) La vie
politique en France depuis 1940 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France),
pp.600–605. For a more thorough analysis, see F. Bon ‘Le référendum d’avril
et l’élection présidentielle de juin 1969’, Revue française de science politique,
20, 2, April 1970, pp.205–328.
8 ‘Je cesse d’exercer mes fonctions de Président de la République. Cette
décision prend effet aujourd’hui à midi.’
9 Others have: Pompidou (on Europe), Rocard (on Nouvelle-Calédonie),
Mitterrand (on Europe), Chirac (on Europe), and Harold Wilson (…on
Europe). All used referendums to distance themselves from decisions rather
than to embrace them, as de Gaulle did.
10 Hence the significance of ‘la légitimité nationale que j’incarne depuis vingt
ans’. Declaration of 29 January 1960.
11 Revue française de science politique, 20, 2, April, 1970, pp.205–282.
12 At various times in May and June 1968 many of the actors, including
Pompidou and de Gaulle, thought the regime was about to collapse.
See, inter alia, A. Frerejean (2007) C’était Georges Pompidou (Paris: Fayard),
pp.230–231.
13 See, inter alia, S. Berstein and J.-P. Rioux (1995) La France de l’expansion 2
(Paris: Seuil), pp.127–130.
14 G. Pompidou (1974) Le noeud gordien (Paris: Plon). (It was published post-
humously but knowledge of its ideas was widespread). See in particular
pp.57–71. The essential point about Le noeud gordien is that it is the personal
restatement of de Gaulle’s view on the institutions and comportment of the
President by his main lieutenant and imminent successor.
15 Cf. M. Crozier (1970) La société bloquée (Paris: Seuil).
16 G. Pompidou (1974) Le noeud gordien (Paris: Plon), pp.61–64.
17 Servan-Schreiber was an already sitting MP (Nancy) when he decided to
run against Chaban. J.-J. Servan-Schreiber was an extremely high profile
politician, so that the clash became a major media event.
18 J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances 1974–1995 (Paris: Seuil), p.12.
19 This two-day visit (where Pompidou was clearly very unwell) once
again underscored both France’s hostility to the US at one level (the
US should not mix military and commercial negotiations) and dependency
at another (the US military presence in Europe remained as important
as ever).
20 N. Beloff (1963) The General Says No (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
224 Notes
21 J. Chapsal and A. Lancelot (1975) La vie politique en France depuis 1940

22 See J. Gaffney (1989) The French Left and the Fifth Republic (Basingstoke:
Macmillan), Ch. 6.
23 D.S. Bell and B. Criddle (1988) The French Socialist Party (Oxford: Clarendon
Press), pp.62–70.
24 F. Mitterrand (1977) Politique 1 (Paris: Fayard), p.532.
25 S. Berstein and J.-P. Rioux (2000) The Pompidou Years (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press), pp.73–74.
Chapter 5 1974–81: The Giscard Years

1 J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances 1974–1995 (Paris: Seuil), p.12.
pp.24–25.
3 J. Chapsal and A. Lancelot (1975) La vie politique en France depuis 1940
4 The TV debate was not held in 2002 between Chirac and Le Pen because of
Chirac’s refusal.
pp.36–55.
6 By the same token, Mitterrand became, momentarily, and potentially in the
longer term, the sole leader of the left, again because of the presidential
competition (although he – like Chirac after 1988 – thought his time and
chance had come and gone).
7 It was first slowed down for the 11 November commemorations in
1974. For Giscard’s own comment on this event see V. Giscard d’Estaing
(1988) Le pouvoir et la vie (Paris: Compagnie 12), pp.318–323. See also
D. Francfort (2007) ‘La Marseillaise de Serge Gainsbourg’, Vingtième siècle, 1,
93, pp.27–35.
8 See, inter alia, R. Rémond (1982) Les droites en France (Paris: Aubier Montaigne),
pp.294–304.
9 Giscard was often mocked for his aristocratic pretentions as well as his
manner. It is widely believed that his father and uncle convinced the
authorities in 1922 that a Jean-Baptiste d’Estaing, an admiral who had
fought with Lafayette in the American War of Independence, was a distant
relative. The derision is greater in that in all the republics such attempts
have been the common effort of many social climbers and pretentious
parvenus.
10 For an exhaustive list see J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances 1974–1995
(Paris: Seuil), p.35. For a complete list of his reforms see S. Berstein and
J.-F. Sirinelli (eds) (2007) Les années Giscard. Les réformes de société (Paris:
Armand Colin), pp.285–289.
11 The other famous name was Françoise Giroud who became junior Minister
for women. From this period, women becoming ministers was – if not com-
monplace – then perceived as perfectly normal, although for some years
they were mainly restricted to policy areas such as Health, Education, Social
Affairs, and the Environment.
Notes 225
12 Much of the political elite including Giscard were ready to abolish the
death penalty, but the conservatism that still informed the polity meant
that abolition would not occur until Mitterrand came to power.
13 In the summer of 1975 it was around one million – nearly double the figure
of summer 1974. It is also worth remembering that because of the structure
of the pre-war French economy and society, since the 1930s, unlike the UK
and Germany, France had never known mass unemployment.
14 (1977) L’année politique 1976 (Paris: Presses universitaires de France), p.113.
15 ‘J.-J. S.-S.’ was appointed on 28 May 1974 as Minister for reforms and sacked
on 9 June for opposing VGE’s nuclear policy. It was the case, however, that
Giscard was not himself as hostile to Servan-Schreiber as Chirac and the
Gaullists were, but this was not perceived at the time.
16 V. Giscard d’Estaing (1976) Démocratie française (Paris: Fayard). It was repub-
lished in January 1978 in Livre de poche, with over one million copies
printed, and was translated into 15 languages. In a subsequent book (1984)
Deux Français sur trois (Paris: Flammarion), he underlined this view, that
there was a kind of Giscardian majority in the nation itself.
17 Giscard had transformed a very small coalition of CNIP and independent
MPs into the Républicains Indépendants in the early Fifth Republic. In May
1977, the RI became the Parti républicain. In February 1978, it, the Clubs
Perspectives et réalités (founded in 1965), the CDS, the Radical Party, and the
tiny Mouvement démocrate socialiste de France (and there was also individual
membership) entered into a would-be party, that was really a federation of
groups, the Union pour la démocratie française (UDF). There was also the
group, Jeunes Giscardiens, set up in the hope that a new generation of the
young, middle class, and intelligent would become the cheerleaders of a
trendy new Giscardian era.
18 Chirac’s speeches were always published in pamphlet form by the party. For
an analysis of a Chirac speech see J. Gaffney (1991) ‘Language and Politics:
The Case of Neo-Gaullism’ in J. Gaffney and E. Kolinsky (eds) (1991)
Political Culture in France and Germany (London: Routledge), pp.91–129. See
also J. Chirac (1978) La lueur de l’espérance (Paris: Table Ronde); (1978)
Discours pour la France à l’heure du choix (Paris: Stock). Both were published
at this crucial moment of the development of Chirac as a Gaullist rally
leader. For a critical appraisal of Chirac’s thought through an analysis of his
discourse, see Y. Michaud (2004) Chirac dans le texte (Paris: Stock).
19 Most presidential contenders have tried to convey the idea that they, like
the republic’s founder, have undergone their own ‘desert crossing’.
20 The notion of a ‘first’ and ‘second’ left is an attempt to capture the myriad
strains within the left. The ‘first’ is usually seen as the traditional SFIO and
the socialists in Parliament and the local councils. The ‘second’ left is younger,
the 1960s generation by and large, and comprises the smaller leftist parties
(e.g. the PSU), some trade unions, think tanks and those trying to ‘rethink’
modern socialism, beyond both Marxism on the one hand, and Gas and
Water socialism on the other. This characterization has some grounding in
reality, but it is much more helpful to see these two lefts as rhetorical
resources.
21 Composers such as Mikis Theodorakis who wrote music for the PS, e.g.
‘Changer la vie’: L’Hymne du PS (Congrès de Nantes, 1977), and singer-
226 Notes
songwriters like Georges Moustaki became associated with the French left at
this moment of its evolution. This association of celebrities with political
parties and candidates is a feature of French politics, particularly at presi-
dential elections.
22 See, inter alia, F. Mitterrand (1975) La paille et le grain (Paris: Flammarion)
and (1978) L’abeille et l’architecte (Paris: Flammarion).
23 The Popular Front of 1936, arguably a political failure, had become quite
quickly on the left a ‘mythical’ moment akin to the heroic and tragic Com-
mune of 1871. The PS behaved as if its conquest of power would be akin to
a new Popular Front. It was as if the socialist-led governments of the 1940s
and 1950s had never existed.
24 The British Communists had abandoned the term in 1948.
25 The reality, particularly as regards the PCF and its long intellectual tradition
and thorough-going auto-didacticism, was more nuanced than this.
26 See D.S. Bell and B. Criddle (1994) The French Communist Party in the Fifth
Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp.211–214.
27 See D.S. Bell and B. Criddle (1988) The French Socialist Party (Oxford:
Clarendon Press), pp.89–90.
28 Parti Communiste Français and Parti Socialiste (1972) Programme commun de
gouvernement (Paris: Éditions sociales); Parti Communiste Français (1978)
Programme commun de gouvernement actualisé (Paris: Éditions sociales). For a
good account of this period and the PS/PCF clash over the Common
Programme, see R.W. Johnson (1981) The Long March of the French Left
(London: Macmillan), pp.167–189. It was difficult for the electorate to be
certain, therefore, whether, as the left went into the 1978 elections, there
was or was not a Common Programme that was going to be applied.
29 For the full text of the speech (published also in full in many daily news-
papers), see V. Giscard d’Estaing (1988) Le pouvoir et la vie (Paris: Compagnie
12), pp.391–401.
pp.29–56. All electoral results pp.485–560. See also Le Monde (1978) Les
élections législatives de mars 1978 (Paris: Dossiers et documents).
31 See Chirac’s Appel de Cochin in V. Giscard d’Estaing (2006) Le pouvoir et la
vie, 3 (Paris: Compagnie 12), pp.593–596 (Livre de poche edition).
32 Giscard’s RPR ministers were more ‘Giscardien’ than ‘Chiraquien’.
33 See J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances 1974–1995 (Paris: Seuil), p.163. See
also (1980) L’année politique 1979 (Paris: Éditions du grand siècle), pp.65–66.
34 For an account by Giscard himself of Boulin’s suicide, and of the murder of
his friend Jean de Broglie, see V. Giscard d’Estaing (1991) Le pouvoir et la vie,
2 (Paris: Compagnie 12), pp.247–274.
Chapter 6 1981–88: From the République Sociale to the

République Française
1 There were also hearsay rumours concerning Giscard’s sexual conduct; but
also rumours of thoughtless excess, such as sending a French Mirage fighter
plane back across the world to collect a hunting rifle he had forgotten on a
trip. We shall discuss the role of hearsay in our conclusion.
Notes 227
2 See M. Duverger (1974) La monarchie républicaine ou comment les démocraties

se donnent des rois (Paris: Robert Laffont). Duverger’s ideas were developed
further, by himself and others, and probe notions of une monarchie républi-
caine (a term used first by Michel Debré in 1944), and la monarchie élue. See
M. Duverger (1978) Echec au roi (Paris: Albin Michel). For a critique/appraisal
of this, see H. Bahro, B.H. Bayerlein and E. Veser ‘Semi-Presidential Govern-
ment Revisited’, European Journal of Political Research, 34, 2, October 1998,
pp.201–224. See also R. Elgie (ed.) (1999) Semi-Presidentialism in Europe
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
3 Such mythology has a contagious quality and can spread to others, the
classic case being the (unjustified and misogynistic) opprobrium directed at
Marie-Antoinette during the Revolution – an opprobrium that only began
to be properly addressed two centuries later. See, inter alia, Carolly Erickson
(2000) To the Scaffold. The Life of Marie-Antoinette (London: Robson). For us,
the mythologies informing misogyny are as valuable to analysis as those
informing monarchism.
4 The Fondation nationale des sciences politiques has always put out exhaustive
analyses after each presidential and legislative election. There have been
countless books, articles, and journal special issues devoted to the 1981
elections. See in particular A. Lancelot (ed.) (1986) 1981, les élections de
l’alternance (Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques).
See also, Revue française de science politique, 31, 5–6, October–December
1981, pp.951–1037.
5 If the left had won – with the PCF – in 1978, and Mitterrand had been the
first socialist Prime Minister rather than the first President in 1981, French
political history would have been very different.
6 See P.-A. Muet (1985) ‘Economic Management and the International
Environment’ in H. Machin and V. Wright (eds) Economic Policy and Policy-
Making Under the Mitterrand Presidency, 1981–1984 (London: Frances Pinter),
pp.70–95. See also A.G. Delion and M. Durupty (1983) Les nationalisations
de 1982 (Paris: Economica).
7 See H. Machin and V. Wright (eds) (1985) Economic Policy and Policy-Making
Under the Mitterrand Presidency, 1981–1984 (London: Frances Pinter); E. Cohen
(1986) ‘Les socialistes et l’économie: de l’âge des mythes au déminage’ in
E. Dupoirier and G. Grunberg (eds) Mars 1986: La drôle de défaite de la gauche
(Paris: Presses universitaires de France).
8 The Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland to protest against
French nuclear testing. One member of the crew was killed by the second of
two blasts – probably because he returned to the damaged ship to retrieve
his cameras, unaware a second blast was about to take place. It emerged
soon after that this terrorist outrage had been perpetrated by the French
secret service.
9 There had also been a spectacular winning of control of the city council in
Dreux (in north west France) at the 1983 municipal elections.
10 For all the results see (1987) L’année politique 1986 (Paris: Presses univer-
sitaires de France), pp.187–210.
11 For analyses of the state of French socialism at this time see J. Gaffney
(1988) ‘French Socialism and the Fifth Republic’, West European Politics, 11,
3, pp.42–56; J. Gaffney (1994) ‘From the République sociale to the République
228 Notes
Française’ in G. Raymond (ed.), France During the Socialist Years (Aldershot:

Dartmouth), pp.3–31.
12 This mythological ‘use’ of individuals protecting in their persona either
France or the Republic has a long tradition in French political culture, de
Gaulle in 1940 being the classic example, but one thinks too of the valiant
and quixotic Sébastien de Cassalta, deputy Mayor of Bastia, carried protesting
from the town hall by ‘paras’ with the tricolor round his shoulders shouting
‘Vive la république’, arguably the only – but memorable – resister to the
1958 coup in Corsica.
13 For a discussion of how Mitterrand’s highly public opposition (in parti-
cular, using his 14 July interviews) – but which observed all constitutional
propriety – to oppose Chirac’s use of ‘ordonnances’, his putting Chirac in his
place in terms of diplomatic hierarchy, his opposition to privatization, to
devaluation, and to reducing the ‘acquis sociaux’, receiving and sympathiz-
ing with striking train drivers, and so on, see F.-O. Giesbert (1990) Le prési-
dent (Paris: Seuil), pp.332–349 (Points actuels edition); see also F.-O. Giesbert
(1996) François Mitterrand: une vie (Paris: Seuil), pp.503–508.
14 F. Mitterrand (1964) Le coup d’état permanent (Paris: Plon).
15 For the results, see J. Gaffney (ed.) (1989) The French Presidential Elections of
1988 (Aldershot: Dartmouth), p.3.
16 Chirac’s use of the media in round two of the elections was an unprece-
dented use of headline grabbing. See J. Gaffney (ed.) (1989) The French
Presidential Elections of 1988 (Aldershot: Dartmouth), pp.20–27.
17 See (1989) L’année politique 1988 (Paris: Éditions du moniteur), pp.63–66.
18 See J. Gaffney (1989) ‘Presidentialism and the Fifth Republic’ in J. Gaffney
(ed.), The French Presidential Elections of 1988 (Aldershot: Dartmouth),
pp.28–31.
Chapter 7 1988–2002: The Long Decade of Vindictiveness,

Miscalculations, Defeat, Farce, Good Luck, Good
Government, and Catastrophe. The Presidency Right
or Wrong
1 Mitterrand and Rocard had a highly publicized ‘private’ meeting in between
the two rounds of the presidential elections on 19 April near Montpellier,
photographed happily out walking together as if reconciliation and forward
planning were already taking place in anticipation of the return of the left
to power and office.
2 Journal Officiel, 26 May, 1988.
3 Professor Léon Schwarzenberg was sacked after one week for perceived inap-
propriate remarks on AIDS and on drug addicts.
4 See M. Rocard (1979) Parler vrai (Paris: Seuil) for a good example of Rocardian
ideas and the way they and his view of politics were expressed. For an ana-
lysis of Rocardian discourse itself see J. Gaffney (1989) The French Left
and the Fifth Republic: The Discourses of Communism and Socialism in Con-
temporary France (Basingstoke: Macmillan), pp.154–175. The consensual
deliberative Rocard method was elaborated in his 1987 Le coeur à l’ouvrage
(Paris: Odile Jacob). See also ‘Faire’ (1979) Qu’est-ce que la social-démocratie?
Notes 229
(Paris: Seuil). After Rocard, virtually all Prime Ministers had a ‘method’
ascribed to them.
5 For a discussion of political de-alignment and re-alignment in the 1980s
and 1990s see C. Fieschi (1997) ‘The Other Candidates: Voynet, Le Pen, de
Villiers and Cheminade’ in J. Gaffney and L. Milne (eds) French Presidentialism
and the Election of 1995 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.135–164.
6 It lies outside the scope of this study, which concentrates upon the main
leaders, to analyse in any detail the political significance of Jean-Marie Le
Pen and the Front national. The crucial fact concerning Le Pen, however,
from our perspective, is that – irrespective of European populism or fascism
generally – he is a product of the Fifth Republic, its institutions, culture,
and discourse. For two excellent analyses of Le Pen, the first from a more
theoretical, the second a more historical perspective, see C. Fieschi (2004)
Fascism, Populism and the French Fifth Republic: In the Shadow of Democracy
(Manchester: Manchester University Press), and J.G. Shields (2007) The
Extreme Right in France (London: Routledge).
7 See J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances 1974–1995 (Paris: Seuil),
pp.510–512. For a theoretical analysis of the ‘headscarf affair’/s and its rela-
tion to republicanism, see C. Laborde (2008) Critical Republicanism. The
Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
8 3 December 1989, 7 SUR 7, TF1: La France ‘ne pouvait pas héberger toute la
misère du monde’.
9 See J. Lacouture (1998) Mitterrand, une histoire de Français, 2 (Paris: Seuil),
pp.351–358, 365–370. See also, D. Robert (1997) Pendant les ‘affaires’ les
affaires continùent… (Paris: Stock). See also Y. Mény (1992) La corruption de la
République (Paris: Fayard).
10 See Le Monde (1992) La France dans ses régions. Les élections régionales du
22 Mars, 1992 (Paris: Dossiers et documents).
11 J.-J. Becker (1998) Crises et alternances (Paris: Seuil), p.575.
12 The Elephants are the party grandees, usually courant leaders. Over the years
Defferre, Mauroy, Fabius, Rocard, Jospin, Lang, Chevènement, Dumas,
Strauss-Kahn, Delanoë, and Aubry have constituted the bulk of them.
13 See L. Wilcox (1996) ‘Edith Cresson: Victim of Her Own Image’ in H. Drake
and J. Gaffney (eds) The Language of Political Leadership in Contemporary
France (Aldershot: Dartmouth), pp.79–106. See also E. Schemla (1993) Edith
Cresson: La femme piégée (Paris: Flammarion).
14 She had worked for Mitterrand from as early as the 1965 presidential elec-
tion. She had also held ministerial office throughout the left’s holding
office after 1981 (Agriculture, Overseas Trade, Industrial Redeployment, and
European Affairs).
15 The nearest type to this was the formidable Marie-France Garaud, a hard-
line Chirac advisor in the 1970s and a presidential candidate in 1981. The
highest profile, and very popular, female politician in France had been
Giscard’s Health minister, Simone Veil, who was the opposite of this.
16 See P. Péan (1994) Une jeunesse française: François Mitterrand 1934–1937 (Paris:
Fayard).
17 P. Perrineau and C. Ysmal (eds) (1993) Le vote sanction: Les élections légis-
latives des 21 et 28 mars 1993 (Paris: Département d’études politiques du
Figaro and Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques).
230 Notes
18 C. Villeneuve (1993) Les liaisons dangereuses de Pierre Bérégovoy (Paris: Plon).

19 See J. Gaffney (1996) ‘Socialism and Presidentialism: The Socialist Party
Conference at Liévin, November 1994’, Keele European Research Centre, Research
Paper 1.
20 See J. Gaffney (1997) ‘The Mainstream Right: Chirac and Balladur’ in
J. Gaffney and L. Milne (eds), French Presidentialism and the Election of 1995
(Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.99–116. See also, inter alia, N. Domenach and
M. Szafran (1994) De si bons amis (Paris: Plon); C. Nay (1994) Le dauphin
et le régent (Paris: Grasset).
21 See D.B. Goldey (1997) ‘Analysis of the Election Results’ in J. Gaffney and
L. Milne (eds), French Presidentialism and the Election of 1995 (Aldershot:
Ashgate), pp.55–84. For another interesting appraisal of the 1995 election
see R. Elgie (ed.) (1996) Electing the French President (London: Macmillan).
22 For an analysis of the 1997 elections see, P. Perrineau and C. Ysmal (eds)
(1998) Le vote surprise: Les élections législatives des 25 mai et 1er juin 1997
(Paris: Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques).
23 See D.S. Bell (2004) ‘Presidential Competition: Prime Minister Against
President in “Cohabitation”’ in J. Gaffney (ed.) The French Presidential and
Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.16–33.
24 It transpired in June 2001 that Jospin had been an active Trotskyist before
joining the PS. In terms of his ‘character’ and image however, his biggest
mistake was initially denying it (he said it was his brother!).
25 Another (unforeseen) price, of course, was that every party to the coalition
would field a candidate in 2002.
26 New, more transparent, and more generous state funding of political parties
from 1988, then from the early 1990s onwards (1990, 1993, 1995) also
meant that the nature of leadership patronage – particularly now of ‘satel-
lite’ parties like the MDC, Greens and Left Radicals and their own sense of
greater independence – was changing significantly, altering the status of the
rally leader. This new state funding of political parties reduced the powers
of patronage of the large parties, made the smaller ones more confident and
more likely; and in so doing reduced the percentage score necessary to, for
example, go through to round two in an election. This had strange effects.
It helped Le Pen go through to round two of the 2002 presidential elec-
tions. If, however, he had had the votes of his rival Bruno Mégret and a
fraction of the votes of Jean Saint-Josse, he would have come first in round
one of the presidential election. See B. Dolez (1995) ‘Financement de la vie
politique: les lois anti-corruption de 1995’, Regards sur l’actualité, 211,
pp.31–41; J.-L. Parodi (1997) ‘Proportionalisation périodique, cohabitation,
atomization partisane: un triple défi pour le régime semi-présidentiel
de la Cinquième République’, Revue française de science politique, 47, 3–4,
pp.292–312.
27 It had always been generally assumed that Chirac had run the Mayorship
of Paris (1977–95) as a personal fiefdom. On 21 September 2000 a huge
scandal broke, and grew and grew, when Le Monde published (posthumous)
details of a video made by a former fundraiser for the RPR. It became clear
that unaccounted, and unaccounted for, millions of francs flowed through
the Paris Town Hall, a lot of it seemingly literally stuffed into Jacques
Chirac’s pockets. Two years later he was democratically re-elected President
Notes 231
with a score that would have made Stalin blush. See J.-P. Thiollet (2002) Les
dessous d’une présidence (Paris: Anagramme). For a clear analysis and account
of Chirac and the vexed question of his complicity in financial irregularities
of Paris Town Hall see R. Bacqué (2002) Chirac ou le démon du pouvoir (Paris:
Albin Michel).
28 A. Knapp (2004) Parties and the Party System in France (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan), p.339.
29 See B. Clift (2004) ‘Lionel Jospin’s Campaign and the Socialist Left: The
“Earthquake” and its Aftershocks’ in J. Gaffney (ed.) The French Presidential
and Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.149–168.
30 See C. Ysmal (2004) ‘The Presidential and Legislative Elections of 2002:
An Analysis of the Results’ in J. Gaffney (ed.) The French Presidential and
Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.57–82.
31 See B. Clift (2004) ‘Lionel Jospin’s Campaign and the Socialist Left: The
“Earthquake” and its Aftershocks’ in J. Gaffney (ed.) The French Presidential
and Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp.149–168.
32 ‘Elections: Piège à cons’, had been replaced with ‘Abstensionnisme: Piège
à cons’. One has no doubt they grasped the irony.
33 See D. Pingaud (2002) L’impossible défaite (Paris: Seuil).
34 Several of the post-2002 critiques were personal, e.g. M.-N. Lienemann
(2002) Ma part d’inventaire (Paris: Ramsay).
35 The one event that counters this view, and which enhanced Chirac’s per-
sonal status dramatically for a while, was his bold opposition and standing
up to the US over the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Chapter 8 The Presidential Election of 2007

1 There is a growing literature in this area, see, inter alia, A. Phillips (1991)
Engendering Democracy (Cambridge: Polity); R.L. Ramsay (2003) French
Women in Politics (Oxford: Berghahn Books); J. Butler and J.W. Scott (eds)
(1992) Feminists Theorize the Political (London: Routledge). A characteristic
of this literature is its persuasive blend of perspectives in order to ‘capture’
its subject: cultural, anthropological, rhetorical-discursive, mythological,
and political. For a recent and thoroughgoing analysis of this new feminist
approach, see L.J. Shepherd (2008) Gender, Violence and Security (London:
Zed Books). For an interesting analysis with reference to both Cresson and
Royal, see S. Perry (2005) ‘Gender Difference in French Political Commun-
ication: From Handicap to Asset?’, Modern and Contemporary France, 13, 3,
pp.337–352.
2 See C. Amar and D. Hassoux (2005) Ségolène et François: Biographie d’un
couple (Paris: Privé), pp.41–82 ; M.-E. Malouines and C. Meeus (2006) La
Madone et le Culbuto (Paris: Fayard), pp.91–130.
3 C. Amar and D. Hassoux (2005) Ségolène et François: Biographie d’un couple
(Paris: Privé), p.104. For other good studies of Royal, see, inter alia, C. Courcol
and T. Masure (2007) Ségolène Royal, les coulisses d’une défaite (Paris: L’Archipel);
M.-E. Malouines and C. Meeus (2006) La Madone et le culbuto (Paris: Fayard);
C. Lévy (2006) L’une enchante, l’autre pas (Paris: Calmann-Lévy); A. Mascret
and A.-L. Jeanvoine (2007) Ce qu’on ne vous a pas dit sur Ségolène Royal, Nicolas
232 Notes
Sarkozy… (Paris: Litté), pp.27–54; V. Noir (2007) Putsch au PS (Paris:

Denoël); G. Ottenheimer (2007) Le sacre de Nicolas (Paris: Seuil). Two inter-
esting though idiosyncratic studies are, R. Bacqué and A. Chemin (2007)
La femme fatale (Paris: Albin Michel); M. Lambron (2006) Mignonne, allons
voir (Paris: Grasset).
4 R. Bacqué and A. Chemin (2007) La femme fatale (Paris: Albin Michel),
p.46.
5 C. Amar and D. Hassoux (2005) Ségolène et François: Biographie d’un couple
(Paris: Privé), p.137. We should note the date of this publication. The huge
popularity of 2006 makes us tend to forget that Royal as a possible con-
tender for the presidency, and a popular figure in the opinion polls, goes
back to 2004–05.
6 Occasionally, at local events, her triumphalist, rather inappropriate com-
portment, essentially behaving like a ‘national’ politician within local politics
presaged her subsequent style.
7 According to Malouines and Meeus, she showed ‘la même quiétude inébran-
lable que les madones de Raphaël’, M.-E. Malouines and C. Meeus (2006)
La Madone et le culbuto (Paris: Fayard), p.9.
8 The ‘lad mag’ FHM had included her in its list of the world’s sexiest women
in the autumn of 2006 (Guardian 12 January 2007).
9 A quite astonishing – and compelling – ‘mythological’ and psychosexual
treatment of her and her place in French political culture is M. Lambron
(2006) Mignonne, allons voir (Paris: Grasset).
10 M. Lambron (2006) Mignonne, allons voir (Paris: Grasset), p.21.
11 R. Bacqué and A. Chemin (2007) La femme fatale (Paris: Albin Michel), p.89.
pp.77–78.
13 This lyrical and emotional dimension to Royal’s rhetoric would increase
even further after she gained the party’s presidential nomination. Some of
Royal’s language and style is very surprising. The emphasis in all her
speeches upon herself – what she (‘je’) sees, wants, desires – is overwhelm-
ing, as is the religious, mystical, and rhetorical interrelationship between ‘je’
and ‘vous’. It is also clear that at her, by PS standards, vast meetings, the
audiences adored her. She also characterized herself as needing ‘your’ help,
and as an individual – often as a female victim – who had calumny heaped
on her but did not care, who was attacked but would go on, etc (e.g. her
New Year’s Wishes on her website, January 2007). The sentimentality of
some of her more lyrical utterances were on the borderline between emo-
tional and comic, e.g. Villepente 12 February 2007: ‘J’ai entendu vos appels,
vos craintes, vos détresses, vos révoltes, mais aussi vos attentes, vos désirs et
vos espérances’; ‘Avec moi, plus jamais la politique ne se fera sans vous’
(said twice in a row); ‘Et moi, je ne peux pas, je ne peux pas ne pas
m’associer à ce cri, le relayer, lui prêter ma voix et ma volonté’. For those
who liked this kind of thing – and many of the Désirs d’avenir followers
were ‘her’ people, rather than the party’s, and often new to politics, and
desiring of political change – her style was enormously appreciated. For
some even more lyrical examples (although we have to point out, no
sources are given), see R. Bacqué and A. Chemin (2007) La femme fatale
(Paris: Albin Michel), pp.57–60.
Notes 233
14 A. Duhamel (2006) Les prétendants 2007 (Paris: Plon).

17 It is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s contention that Hollande and Royal had plotted
her candidacy for years; see J.-L. Mélenchon (2007) En quête de gauche (Paris:
Balland), pp.109–178. This author is not convinced.
18 E.g. on Radio 15 April 2007, see R. Bacqué and A. Chemin (2007) La femme
fatale (Paris: Albin Michel), p.49.
p.39.
pp.146–148.
21 In the last week of February there was a rallying to her of her main party
rivals, Jospin, Fabius and Strauss-Kahn. This was a very ‘cool’ rallying, by
them and by her, and was without any follow through.
p.9.
23 C. Courcol and T. Masure (2007) Ségolène Royal, les coulisses d’une défaite
(Paris: L’Archipel), p.249.
24 See P. Ariès (2005) Misère du sarkozysme (Mesnil-sur-l’Estrée: Paragon/Vs);
F. Charpier (2006) Nicolas Sarkozy (Paris: Presses de la cité); J.-P. Friedman
(2005) Dans la peau de Sarko (Paris: Éditions Michalon); C. Gambotti (2007)
Sarkozy: La métamorphose 1999–2007 (Toulouse: Éditions Privat); J.L. Hees
(2007) Sarkozy Président! (Paris: Éditions du Rocher); B. Jeudy and L. Vigogne
(2007) Nicolas Sarkozy: De Neuilly à l’Élysée (Paris: L’Archipel); C. Nay (2007)
Un pouvoir nommé désir (Paris: Grasset); G. Ottenheimer (1994) Les deux
Nicolas (Paris: Plon); G. Ottenheimer (2007) Le sacre de Nicolas (Paris: Seuil);
A. Mantoux (2003) Nicolas Sarkozy: L’instinct du pouvoir (Paris: Éditions
Générales First); P. Reinhard (2005) Chirac, Sarkozy: Mortelle randonnée
(Paris: Éditions Générales First); V. Noir (2005) Nicolas Sarkozy ou le destin
de Brutus (Paris: Denoël). For a study of Sarkozy’s campaign from a per-
sonal psychological perspective, see Y. Reza (2007) L’aube le soir ou la nuit
(Paris: Flammarion). As with Royal, most studies of Sarkozy are either pro
or anti.
25 In 1995, his vote went down to 60 per cent given the hostility of Chirac
supporters. In 2001 he was re-elected Mayor with 77 per cent. He was an
MP from 1988, and from 1986–88 Vice President of the Hauts-de-Seine
Regional Council, and in 2004 its President.
26 Malik Oussekine, a student, was beaten savagely by police at 1 a.m. at the
end of a demonstration in the Latin Quarter (6 December 1986), and died
of his injuries.
27 See, inter alia, V. Noir (2005) Nicolas Sarkozy ou le destin de Brutus (Paris:
Denoël), p.153.
28 C. Nay (2007) Un pouvoir nommé désir (Paris: Grasset), pp.262–263.
29 For one of his books, on Georges Mandel, he was accused of plagiarism,
see V. Noir (2005) Nicolas Sarkozy ou le destin de Brutus (Paris: Denoël),
pp.194–204.
30 Carla Bruni was like an arguably even more ‘successful sequel’ to
Cécilia. His relationship with Bruni, a singer and socialite, began after
234 Notes
his relationship with Cécilia finally ended, at the beginning of his

presidency in 2007.
31 V. Noir (2005) Nicolas Sarkozy ou le destin de Brutus (Paris: Denoël), p.184.
32 C. Nay (2007) Un pouvoir nommé désir (Paris: Grasset), p.304. It is worth
stressing, moreover, that unlike so many practising politicians’ writings,
Sarkozy’s are very readable pieces; (2001) Libre (Paris: Laffont) and (2006)
Témoignage (Paris: XO).
33 In the 2005 riots in the run-down suburbs of Paris (Clichy, Aulnay, Argenteuil)
and elsewhere, Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior, referred to the rioters
as racaille (scum) and said those areas should be cleaned out with high-
pressure hoses (Kärcher). It is without a doubt that the strategic reason
for this and other opinions on immigration, identity and so on, was that
Sarkozy’s longer term – and successful – aim was to steal a significant
swathe of Le Pen’s electorate.
34 Nb: Noir’s remark: ‘L’ancien maire de Neuilly a placé les journalistes au centre
de sa stratégie de conquête du pouvoir’, V. Noir (2005) Nicolas Sarkozy ou le
destin de Brutus (Paris: Denoël), p.81.
35 Sarkozy’s first opponent within his own camp was Chirac, but by 2005
Chirac was seen as being unable to stop him. Alain Juppé made a comeback
in 2002 but a legal entanglement ruled him out as a possible presidential
candidate. The Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin was ruled out as a presi-
dential hopeful in May 2005 after the defeat of the referendum on the
European constitution (the PS also backed it which put an end to François
Hollande’s chances of gaining the PS candidacy). The referendum defeat
also ruled out the possibility of Chirac standing again to block Sarkozy.
The last person put in Sarkozy’s path was Chirac’s protégé, Dominique
de Villepin. He was made Prime Minister in May 2005 in an effort to raise
his profile to that of a présidentiable. However, first the catastrophic CPE,
to help employers hire and fire more easily, triggered unremitting demon-
strations and riots through the spring of 2006, and then de Villepin’s most
probable involvement in the smear campaign against Sarkozy, the ‘Clear-
stream Affair’ which accused Sarkozy of money laundering, and was rapidly
seen to be without foundation, ruined de Villepin’s hopes of blocking
Sarkozy’s road to the presidency.
36 There was even a thinly disguised novel published by Valérie Domain
(2006) Entre le coeur et la raison (Paris: Fayard). There had also been a TV
drama depicting a female French President.
37 See J.-P. Friedman (2005) Dans la peau de Sarko (Paris: Éditions Michalon),
p.48.
38 One of the features of Sarkozy’s speeches is that in spite of a universal
awareness today of speechwriters (Guaino had also been involved in
Chirac’s 1995 campaign), he sounds – unlike his predecessor Chirac – as if
he is the speech’s author.
39 For some over the top references to Royal as a near-magical female see
G. Ottenheimer (2007) Le sacre de Nicolas (Paris: Seuil), pp.31–35, and the
whole of M. Lambron (2006) Mignonne, allons voir… (Paris: Grasset), a
strange but very interesting book on Ségolène’s possible function in the collec-
tive and particularly male psyche. Lambron subsequently published a similar
book on Sarkozy.
Notes 235
40 G. Ottenheimer (2007) Le sacre de Nicolas (Paris: Seuil), p.81.

41 Taubira stood for the Radicals in 2002 but supported Royal in 2007.
43 In terms of how this view was established, newspaper reporting of these two
broadcasts made heavier weather of her errors than of his, and yet their
errors were roughly equal. I am indebted to Rainbow Murray for this
insight. We shall come back to this crucial issue in our conclusion.
44 See C. Courcol and T. Masure (2007) Ségolène Royal, les coulisses d’une défaite
(Paris: L’Archipel), pp.187–188.
46 There was a website Tout sauf Sarkozy.com, which tried to act as a critical
forum, but the real effect was simply the creation of the phrase ‘Tout sauf
Sarkozy’ that discursively brought together opponents from right across the
spectrum. It is doubtful this rhetorical phenomenon had any political effect
apart from valorizing him further.
47 Sarkozy for example made a very long, emotional, very personal, and
highly rhetorical speech at Bercy (29 April 2007) one week before the vote.
In it, he depicted himself as the representative of the opponents of the chil-
dren of 1968, quite a strong rightist emphasis given that ‘1968’ had
acquired by 2007 a popular mythical status.
48 See articles by G. Grunberg, P. Perrineau, F. Matonti and W. Miles on the
2007 presidential elections, French Politics, Culture and Society, 25, 3, Winter
2007, pp.62–122.
49 We should stress that Sarkozy’s macho image was countered by the fact that
he was short and quite small framed, was a teetotaler, and had shown
himself to be a highly emotional lover (cf. Cécilia). One needs to nuance
his image with the idea of a certain popular indulgence for the image. We
shall return to this interesting phenomenon in the conclusion.
Conclusion
1 C. de Gaulle (1970) Discours et messages (Paris: Plon), 23 April 1961,
pp.306–308.
2 See, inter alia, C. Deloire and C. Dubois (2006) Sexus politicus (Paris: Albin
Michel); C. Clerc (2006) Tigres et tigresses: Histoire intime des couples présiden-
tiels sous la Ve République (Paris: Plon); P. Girard (1999) Ces Don Juan qui nous
gouvernent (Paris: Éditions 1).
3 For a discussion of this see, H. Footitt, ‘In Search of Lost Women: Alternative
Political Maps in the Presidential Election of 2002’ in J. Gaffney (ed.) The
French Presidential and Legislative Elections of 2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate),
pp.222–237.
4 ‘Loft Story’, the French ‘Big Brother’, began in April 2001 on M6. It was an
immediate success with viewing figures of over five million.
5 An illustrative contrast of attempts to manage a drama is de Gaulle’s use of
silence in 1958 and 1968. Out of power, his three-day silence before his press
conference of 19 May 1958 offered him great advantage. In 1968, in power,
his six-day silence almost caused his regime to fall. Drama and fortuna con-
stitute a compelling yet dangerous context for performance.
236 Notes
6 The irony is that most Fifth Republic politicians are invariably civil servants
or lawyers with careers that are as if held open for them. This idea of a roller-
coaster career barely exists in UK politics, for example. Peter Mandelson is
perhaps a rare contemporary example.
7 ‘Ils ne savent pas tirer’. Front page Paris Match, 1 September 1962.
8 This also coincided (2007) with the ending of the seven-year term and the
installation of the presidential (and legislative) five-year term, a development
that brings the presidency even closer to daily public policy elaboration. A
further point to make is that more characters than ever are also joining this
‘club’ of présidentiables, given that scores in the high teens are now all it
takes in certain circumstances, cf. 2002, to go through to round two of the
presidential election.
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Index
Adenauer, Konrad, German Centre national des indépendants

Chancellor, 51 et paysans (CNIP), 35, 36, 39,
Africa, 49; ‘Diamonds Affair’, 136–7, 41, 44, 64
138 CERES group, 111, 134, 140
Algeria (May 1958 Algiers putsch), CGT see Confédération générale
1–2, 10, 11–21, 22–6, 27, 28, 29; du travail
and May 1968 Paris riots, Chaban-Delmas, Jacques (Prime
comparison, 76, 77, 78–80; Minister): Bordeaux elections
referendum (1962) and elections, (1970), 102; and media, 99–100,
37, 39–40, 40, 41, 46–7; release 102, 114; ‘New Society’, 99–100,
and pardoning of prisoners, 70 102–3, 106; persona, 102, 103;
Algérie Française, 13, 22, 34, 35, 37, President of the National
39, 46, 58 Assembly (1958–69), 98;
ambiguity and ambivalence, 26, presidential candidacy (1974),
212–13 113–14, 115, 117, 124–5; sacked
Arab–Israeli conflict, 53, 103, 104, by Pompidou, 103, 106
172 character see persona
aviation industry; Ariane rocket Charléty rally (1968), 70, 77, 78, 88
launch, 123; UK–French Chevènement, Jean-Pierre, 111, 188–9
Concorde project, 53 China, 51, 104, 189, 201
Chirac, Jacques: and career of
Balladur, Edouard (Prime Minister): Sarkozy, 193, 194, 200; early
early career of Sarkozy, 164, 168, career, 70, 114; election (1981),
192, 193–4, 196; financial 140, 141; election and campaign
scandals, 166; persona, 165, 166; (1986–88), 147, 148, 149, 150,
presidential candidacy, 163–8; 151, 152; Maastricht Treaty
previous roles, 70, 148 referendum, 162; Mayorship of
Barre, Raymond (Prime Minister): Paris candidacy (1977), 127;
appointment, 122; ‘Barre Plan’, persona, 150, 152, 175;
123; elections (1981), 140, 144; presidency, 170–1, 172, 175, 176,
presidential candidacy 177, 178; President of RPR,
(1986–88), 147, 150, 151, 152; 126–7, 128–9, 133, 135, 136;
re-appointment, 135 presidential candidacy (1993–95),
Bayrou, François, 178, 190, 201, 203, 164, 165, 166, 167–8; as Prime
204 Minister, 117, 122, 123, 124–5,
Bérégovoy, Pierre, 162–3, 163, 181–2 126; rally strategy, 128–9;
Bidault, Georges, 13, 18 re-election (1983), 145; security
Bokassa, Jean, 137 and law and order, 150
Boulin, Robert, 136 CNIP see Centre national des
Brezhnev, Leonid, 104 indépendants et paysans
‘co-gestion’ model of socio-political
Canada, de Gaulle’s visit to, 53 relations, 156–7
Le Canard Enchainé, 102, 136–7, 203–4 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 68, 69, 73–5, 84
252
Index 253
communists see Parti communiste by Pompidou, 101; rally strategy,

français (PCF) 128; referendum and elections
Concorde project, 53 (1962), 40–5, 62; resignation
Confédération générale du travail (1969), 93; return to power, 11,
(CGT), 15, 78 14–15; social stability, economic
constitution (1958), 29–33, 49; expansion and opinion, 27–8;
reform proposal (1962), 41–2 unity and legitimacy, 22–3; as
constitution (1986), 149 war hero/liberator/reformer, 17;
Constitutional Council, 120 see also Fifth Republic; Gaullism;
corruption see financial scandals Union pour la nouvelle
Corsica, military invasion and république (UNR)
occupation (1958), 19, 22 de Villepin, Dominique, 178, 200
Coty, René, President of the Fourth Debré, Michel, 30, 40, 45, 65, 101;
Republic, 21, 24, 35 appointed Prime Minister, 36
Couve de Murville, Maurice (Prime Defferre, Gaston, 32–3, 35, 57, 61;
Minister), 90, 93, 108 Express magazine ‘Monsieur X’
Cresson, Edith (Prime Minister): campaign (1963), 56; left
appointment, 159, 161–2; gender opposition (1969–74), 109, 111;
issue, 161; party issue, 160–1; presidential election (1969), 95
persona/image, 159–60, 161; Delors, Jacques, 163, 167–8, 182
protocol, 161 ‘Diamonds Affair’, 136–7, 138
Cuban missile crisis, 50 discourse/rhetoric: Algiers events and
culture, 7, 27; youth (1960s), 67 new republic, 19–20, 22, 23,
24–5, 27; element of Fifth
de Gaulle, Charles, 1–5; Algiers Republic, 7–8; left, 110, 131,
government, 13, 15–16, 26; 143–4; May 68 events, 73, 74, 77,
appointed Prime Minister (June 78, 79; Sarkozy, 202
1958), 21; assassination attempts, drama/persona: elements of Fifth
41, 42; constitution, 29–33, 41–2, Republic, 9–10, 205–6, 209–10;
49; Corsica, military invasion and May 68 events, 73, 74, 77
occupation (1958), 19, 22; death Droit, Michel, 60, 71, 93
(1970), 93, 101, 113; elected Duclos, Jacques, 95, 96, 107
President (1958), 35; election Dumont, René, 116
(1965), 57–9, 60–3; election
(1965), responses to, 63–6; and economic expansion and social
Europe (EEC/EU), 40–1, 52, 54, stability, 27–8
55; foreign policy/international economy: (1960s), 48, 66, 114;
relations, 47–55; left opposition, (1970s), 107, 113, 122, 136; 1976
55–8, 61–3; May 68 events, ‘Barre Plan’, 123; (1980s), 144–5,
69–71, 75–6, 81–2, 83–4, 85; 146, 157; (1990s), 160, 164–5
persona, 2, 3–4, 26–7, 32, 53–4, education system: as explanation of
58–9, 60–1, 62, 76–7, 79; May 68 events, 71–2; reforms, 86,
personalized leadership, 6, 24–6, 121, 145
95; Presidents of Assembly and elections see legislative elections;
Senate (1958), 21; press specific leaders and parties
conferences/releases (May 1958), Emmanuelli, Henri, 163, 167–8
15, 16–18, 19–20, 24–5; proposed emotional relationship,
‘participation’ reforms, 89–90; President–public, 89, 113
publication of Memoirs delayed Empire, 49, 54
254 Index
‘Epinay line’, 111, 134, 139–40 gender issue, 161, 179, 187, 210–11
Europe (EEC/EU), 40–1, 52, 54, 55; generational revolt (May 68 events),
elections, 135–6, 148, 163, 197–8; 72, 73, 74, 83–4, 86
Maastricht Treaty referendum, Germany/West Germany, 70, 76,
162; UK entry/enlargement 104, 105; Franco–German Treaty
referendum, 52, 102, 105–6 (1963), 51; West Berlin student
Express magazine ‘Monsieur X’ unrest (1967), 67
campaign (1963), 56 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry: early
career, 41, 44, 63–4, 86, 91;
Fabius, Laurent, 145–6, 147–8, 163, foreign policy/international
187, 188 relations, 135; and Gaullism,
Faure, Edgar, 86, 114 116–17, 123–30; and left, 130–4;
Fédération de la gauche démocrate et Maastricht Treaty referendum,
socialiste (FGDS), 57, 64, 65–6, 162; ‘Marseillaise’ national
71, 88 anthem, 117–18; and media, 64,
‘feminized’ government, 121 115, 136–7; modernization,
‘feminized’ society, 141–2 120–2; persona/style, 117,
Fifth Republic: birth, 11–21; 118–19, 122–3, 125–6; presidency
characteristics, 29–36; (1974–81), 116–37; presidential
consolidation and evolution elections (1974), 113–20;
(1958–68), 37–66; elements, 4–5, presidential elections (1981), 138,
6–10, 205–7, 209–10, 211–12; 140, 141, 153; presidential
Pompidou presidency, 97–112 elections (1988), 147; and UDF,
passim; understanding, 21–9, 164, 170; Verdun-sur-le-Doubs
206–14; vs Fourth Republic, 7, speech, 133
10, 28–9, 31, 35–6, 47–8, 213; Green politics/party, 116, 121, 172–3
see also May–June 1968 events Grenelle Agreements, 70, 75
financial scandals, 158–9, 162, 166, Guaino, Henri, 199–200, 202
170, 203; ‘Diamonds Affair’, Gulf War (1991), 159
136–7, 138
FN see Front national (FN) hearsay, role of, 207–8
foreign policy/international relations, Heath, Edward, 105
103–6, 135, 162, 172, 189, 201; Hollande, François, 177, 180, 181,
de Gaulle, 47–55; Fourth Republic 182, 188, 189
vs Fifth Republic, 10; see also
Europe (EEC/EU) image see persona
Franco–German Treaty (1963), 51 immigration, 158, 160, 167
Frey, Roger, 34, 43 Independent Republicans, 43, 63–4,
Front national (FN), 148, 153, 158; 86–7, 127–8; Parti républicain
see also Le Pen, Jean-Marie (PR), 127–8
industrial relations, strikes and
Gaddafi, Colonel, 103 demonstrations, 156–7, 160,
Garaud, Marie-France, 114, 126, 136, 166
141 institutions: element of Fifth
Gaullism, 45–7, 59; and Republic, 8; Mitterrand
Giscardianism, 116–17, 123–30; presidency, 143–4, 145;
weakness of, as explanation of Pompidou presidency, 98–103;
May 68 events, 72–3; see also de reform referendum (1969),
Gaulle, Charles; Fifth Republic 89–95
Index 255
intergenerational conflict see legitimacy: political and mythical,

generational revolt (May 68 10–11, 18–19, 21, 23–4, 28–9,
events) 94–5, 210–11; and unity, 22–3,
international relations see foreign 94
policy/international relations Lycée Condorcet, Paris, 68
internet rally, 186–7
Israel, 53, 103, 104, 172 Malraux, André, 30, 31–2, 34, 43,
72, 90
Jospin, Lionel, 150, 163, 168, 171, Marchais, Georges, 109, 131, 141, 151
172; appointment as Prime ‘Marseillaise’ anthem, 117–18
Minister (1997), 177; persona, Mauroy, Pierre, 111, 134; as Prime
168–9, 175, 176; presidency Minister, 145
and career of Royal, 182–4; May 1958 see Algeria (May 1958
presidential candidacy and Algiers putsch)
campaign (2002), 173–5, 176; May–June 1968 events, 67–71, 97;
PS party leadership rivalry, consequences of, 83–8;
election (1986), 146, 147–8 explanations of, 71–82;
Juillet, Pierre, 114, 126, 136 leadership issues, 83–8, 91–2;
Juppé, Alain, 168–70, 200 opinion, 80, 82–3
media, 6–7, 213–14; Algiers coup
Kennedy, J.F., 51, 54–5; and wife, and new republic, 14, 15,
visit to France (1961), 50 16–18, 19–20, 24–5;
Krushchev, Nikita, visit to Paris Chaban-Delmas, 99–100, 102,
(1960), 50 114; de Gaulle interviews
(1960s), 71, 76, 93; election
Laguiller, Arlette, 116 campaigns (1960s), 57, 59,
Latin America, 54 64–5; Giscard, 64, 115, 136–7;
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 116, 128, 152, May 68 events, 71, 76, 80,
174, 175, 176, 201; see also 90; Pompidou, 100; referendum
Front national (FN) campaign (1962), 92–3;
Lecanuet, Jean, 57–8, 60, 61, 64, reorganization of ORTF, 120;
65, 114 Royal, 180–1, 183, 184, 185–6,
left: 1962 and aftermath, 55–8; 189; Royal/Sarkozy debate, 190,
discourse/rhetoric, 110, 131, 202–3, 204–5; Sarkozy, 197, 198,
143–4; elections (1980s), 141–4, 203–4, 209, 210
146–8, 148; Giscard presidency, Mendès France, Pierre, 18, 35, 39,
130–4; Jospin’s defeat (2002), 64, 65; Charléty rally (1968), 70,
176–7; and May 68 events, 67–9, 77, 88
71, 87; new conditions of the Messmer, Pierre (Prime Minister),
republic, 61–3; Pompidou 113–14
presidency, 107–12; see also Middle East, 53, 103, 104, 172
specific parties Missoffe, François, 68, 73–5
legislative elections: (1950s), 34, 35, Mitterrand, François: Constitution,
43, 71; (1960s), 55, 62, 63, 65, 149; early career, 18, 35, 56–8,
70, 71, 83, 86, 87, 89, 95, 97; 60, 61, 63, 64–5, 77, 79;
(1970s), 132, 138; (1980s), 142, elections (1974), 114, 115;
145–6, 151, 152, 153, 180, Giscard presidency, 129, 130–1,
193; (1990s), 170, 171, 173, 132–3, 134, 135; May 68 events,
193 88–9; persona, 131, 152, 162;
256 Index
Mitterrand, François: Constitution Giscard presidency, 132, 133,

– continued 133–4, 136; legislative elections,
Pompidou presidency, 109–12; 153; May 68 events, 71, 77–8, 79,
presidency and career of 81, 87; and PS, 109–10, 112, 114,
Rocard, 152, 155–9, 161–2; 133, 143, 172–3
presidency and career of Royal, Parti républicain (PR), 127–8
180–2; presidency and elections Parti socialiste (PS), 111–12, 133–4,
(1981), 138–46, 180; presidential 136, 142, 143–4, 146, 150, 152,
candidacy and re-election 158, 164, 168, 171, 172–3, 177,
(1986–88), 146–8, 150–1, 152, 181–2; European elections (1994),
153; rally strategy, 128, 130, 134 163; legislative elections, 153;
modernization, 120–2, 145–6 and PCF, 109–10, 112, 114, 133,
Mollet, Guy, 56, 88, 111; and new 143, 172–3; and PSU, 130–1, 132,
republic, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 24, 133
30, 32–3, 39 Parti socialiste unifé (PSU), 39, 70, 79,
Mouvement des radicaux de gauche 81; presidential election (1969),
(MRG), 112, 133 96; and PS, 130–1, 132, 133;
Mouvement républicain populaire referendum, 91
(MRP), 33, 34–5, 36, 39–40, 57; Pasqua, Charles, 148, 149, 160, 170,
resignations, 41, 52 193
patrimony, 149
Nanterre University, Paris, 67–9, 72, PCF see Parti communiste français
73–4 persona: Balladur, 165, 166; Chaban,
National Assembly: dissolutions, 42, 102, 103; Chirac, 150, 152, 175;
70, 76, 142–3; FN, 148, 152; and Cresson, 159–60, 161; de Gaulle,
Senate, 89–91 2, 3–4, 26–7, 32, 53–4, 58–9,
nationalization/privatization, 145, 60–1, 62, 76–7, 79; election
150, 165 (1969), 96; election (1974),
NATO, 50 114–15, 116, 117; element of
‘New Society’, 99–100, 102–3, 106 Fifth Republic, 4–5, 6–8, 211–12;
Nixon, Richard, 104 Giscard, 117, 118–19, 122–3,
Le noeud gordien (Pompidou), 98, 101 125–6; Jospin, 168–9, 175, 176;
nuclear weapons, 50–1, 52, 126; Juppé, 169; Mitterrand, 131, 152,
testing, 155, 169 162; Pompidou, 98, 100, 101,
103, 105, 113; Royal, 180–1, 184,
Odéon, Paris, 71, 77 185–6, 187, 189–90, 208–9;
opinion: Algiers, 13–14; Chirac rally Sarkozy, 191, 195–201; see also
strategy, 128; death of Pompidou, drama/persona
107; element of Fifth Republic, personalized leadership: de Gaulle, 6,
6–8, 9, 207; May 68 events, 80, 24–6, 95; element of Fifth
82–3; social stability and Republic, 8; vs parliamentary
economic expansion, 27–8 ascendancy, 148–9
Pflimlin, Pierre, 11, 12, 15, 21, 30
Parti communiste français (PCF): de Pinay, Antoine, 18, 19, 21, 36, 41,
Gaulle presidency, 34–5, 38–9, 178
40, 43–4, 55, 56, 57; dissidence, Poher, Alain, 90–1, 93, 96, 113
158; elections (1981), 139–40, political parties: constitution, 32–3;
141, 146; ‘Eurocommunism’, 131; element of Fifth Republic, 9
and FGDS, election (1967), 65–6; ‘politics of grandeur’, 48, 53
Index 257
Pompidou, Georges: election Sarkozy debate, 190, 202–3,

campaign (1967), 64–5, 66; illness 204–5
and death, 106, 107, 113; and RPF see Rassemblement du peuple
May 68 events, 69, 70, 75, 76; français
persona, 98, 100, 101, 103, 105, RPR see Rassemblement pour la
113; presidency (1969–74), république
96–112; presidential election
(1969), 95, 96; press conference Salan, Raoul, 12–13, 14, 19–20, 22, 24
(1969), 100; as Prime Minister, Sarkozy, Cécilia (née Albeniz), 196–7,
41–2, 45, 46, 59, 87; referendum 198, 203–4
(1962), 90, 91; referendum on Sarkozy, Nicolas, 178, 189, 190;
EEC/EU enlargement (1972), 102 Balladur government, 164, 168,
presidentialism, 143, 154, 163, 176; 192, 193–4, 196; career trajectory,
Fifth Republic, 31, 39, 55–6, 61–3 191–5; financial scandals, 203;
press conferences/releases: de Gaulle, persona/media image, 191,
15, 16–18, 19–20, 24–5, 90; 195–201, 203–4, 209, 210;
Pompidou, 100 presidential election campaign
proportional representation, 147, 148 (2007), 199–205; Royal debate,
PS see Parti socialiste 190, 202–3, 204–5
PSU see Parti socialiste unifé Section française de l’internationale
ouvrière (SFIO), 16, 32–3, 39, 40,
Radicals, 32, 35, 91, 112, 127 43–4, 55, 56, 57, 64, 87;
Rainbow Warrior scandal (1985), 146 modernization (New Socialist
rally strategy, 128, 130, 134, 142; Party), 108, 109; referendum, 91
internet, 186–7 Séguin, Philippe, 170, 171, 194
Rassemblement du peuple français Senate, 89–91
(RPF), 25, 33, 46, 47, 126, 194 d
Rassemblement pour la république social movement, May 68 events as, 72
(RPR), 128, 129, 133–4, 135, social stability and economic
158, 168; election (1993), 163; expansion, 27–8
and UDF, 147, 153, 177 socialists, 20, 21, 26, 34–5, 39; see also
referendums, 33–4, 41–2; and left; Parti socialiste (PS); Parti
elections (1962), 40–5, 62; socialiste unifé (PSU); Section
institutional reform (1969), française de l’internationale
89–95; see also Europe (EEC/EU) ouvrière (SFIO)
Reynaud, Paul, 30, 45 societal change, 21–2; element of
rhetoric see discourse/rhetoric Fifth Republic, 9
Rocard, Michel, 114, 140, 147–8, 150, Sorbonne, Paris, 68–9, 71, 77
154, 165; early career, 39; Soustelle, Jacques, 18, 34, 38
Giscard presidency, 130–1, 134;
leadership of PS, 163; Pompidou terrorism: 9/11 reaction, 172; ‘Human
presidency, 96, 108; as Prime Bomb’, Neuilly, 195; Paris, 136
Minister, 152, 155–9, 161–2
Royal, Ségolène, 178, 179, 199, U2 spy scandal, 50
200–2; career trajectory, 179–85; Union démocratique du travail
election campaign, 187–91; (UDT), 38, 43
persona/media image, 180–1, Union des démocrates pour la
183, 184, 185–7, 189–90, 208–9; république (UDR), 47, 92, 96,
101, 147
258 Index
Union pour la démocratie française USSR, 141; de Gaulle visits and

(UDF), 133–4, 135, 136, 163–4, relations with, 52–3; Pompidou
170; confederation, 127–8; visit (1973), 104; US relations,
election (1993), 163; and RPR, 50–1, 52–3, 54–5
153, 177
Union pour la nouvelle république Vallon, Louis, 38
(UNR), 33–4, 35, 37–8, 43, 60, 90, Veil, Simone, 121, 125, 136, 164
92, 177; CNIP coalition, 39; Vietnam War, 53–4, 54–5, 67, 80,
election (1967), 65; identity and 104
ideology, 46–7; referendum, 91 vision/envisioning, element of Fifth
United Kingdom (UK): Concorde Republic, 8
project, 53; entry into EU, 52, voting age, 120, 141–2
102, 105–6; Suez crisis (1956), 50;
and US, 55 West Germany see Germany/West
United States (US), 49–50, 55; 9/11 Germany
reaction, 172; and EU, 52; and women’s issues, 121, 180, 181, 183
Franco–German relations, 51; worker–student relationship, 70,
Pompidou visit, 103–4; USSR 77–8
relations, 50–1, 52–3, 54–5
unity, 27, 30, 32; and legitimacy, Yom Kippur War (1973), 103
22–3, 94 youth culture (1960s), 67

(French Politics Society and Culture Series) Frankreich Staatspräsident - Gaffney, John - Political Leadership in France - From Charles de Gaulle To Nicolas Sarkozy-Palgrave Macmillan (2012) 4

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(French Politics Society and Culture Series) Frankreich Staatspräsident - Gaffney, John - Political Leadership in France - From Charles de Gaulle To Nicolas Sarkozy-Palgrave Macmillan (2012) 4

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French Politics, Society and Culture Series

General Editor: Jocelyn Evans, Professor of Politics, University of Salford,

French Politics, Society and Culture

Chapter 1 1958: The Gaullist Settlement and French 6

Chapter 2 1958–68: The Consolidation and Evolution 37

Chapter 3 1968 and its Aftermath 67

Chapter 4 1969–74: Gaullism Without de Gaulle 89

Chapter 5 1974–81: The Giscard Years 113

Chapter 6 1981–88: From the République Sociale to the 138

Chapter 7 1988–2002: The Long Decade of Vindictiveness, 154

Chapter 8 The Presidential Election of 2007 179

Ségolène Royal and ‘Ségolène’ 185

I wish to thank a number of colleagues for reading all or parts of the

PSA Parti socialiste autonome

On 1 June 1958, Charles de Gaulle returned to power in France as the

personality and the ‘imagined’ political persona would inform politics

The elements of the new republic in 1958

De Gaulle’s new Republic had two essential characteristics: the central-

referred to by the media; it is ‘imagined’ and given discursive reality. It

to opinion ‘mobilizes’ opinion, in discourse at least and often in

Fourth, ‘opinion’ in a myriad of real or imagined forms will be a

dramatic series, that they appear to be stunningly choreographed and

to recognize the need for – and/or to allow – a (recognized) personal

The birth of the new republic

de Gaulle’s actions, that Salan’s authority conflated civil and military

‘La dégradation de l’Etat entraîne infailliblement l’éloignement des

‘Paris’’ status. And Paris’ own condemnations of Algiers had been

portrayed the Algiers events as a symptom rather than cause, stressing

in Algiers accelerated, and in Paris did not, pushing him towards

behaviour and obey their superiors, who he named, including Salan.

‘J’ai entamé hier le processus régulier nécessaire à l’établisse-

Understanding the new republic

France in 1958 was a rapidly changing society. Based upon an econ-

in the French political imagination, and this in all ideologies; and if

For de Gaulle to claim supreme legitimacy and provoke reaction in

already in power, like the pronouncement of a President or king giving

limits of that ‘stage’ and performance, but facilitated it too, that is to

position of the parliamentary and the presidential, and on a wider

The characteristics of the new republic

‘army’ of support had to act utterly in accordance with his views

course, the constitution would – in true republican fashion – be sub-

Defferre of the powerful Bouches-du-Rhône federation who supported

ever, de Gaulle forbade his name to be used in the party’s title. We

de Gaulle can only be properly understood with reference to it. Several

The 1962 referendum and elections

On 14 April, de Gaulle replaced Michel Debré as Prime Minister with

Dante, Goëthe, Châteaubriand appartiennent à toute l’Europe dans

avaient été des apatrides et s’ils avaient pensé, écrit en quelque

What is striking about de Gaulle’s remark is how personalized it

280 votes. Instead of replacing Pompidou with a new Prime Minister

strating that the republic was based upon an unmediated relationship

relationship between drama and calm would have formative political

Gaullism and the Gaullists

De Gaulle on the world stage

political action: to use personal (now national) volonté and volontarisme

was dominated by his hostile attitude to the United States. In March

conventional Warsaw Pact forces. So even though under the US nuclear

De Gaulle ‘inherited’ the EEC (EU) as he did so many of the Fourth

to this point, but this brings us to what is arguably de Gaulle’s most

Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War was arguably a correct view.

political media, saw the possibility of using presidential competition

publicity in a France that had been almost exclusively dominated by

The new conditions of the republic