France, in The Palgrave Handbook of Social Democracy in the European Union

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7.1 History

‘Certainly, it is not easy to re-imagine a socialism adequate to western industrial societies of the second half of the 20th century. ( ... ) Those who, as in France, have tried to do so have only been able to imagine it outside the Socialist Party. However, the Party is becoming a collector of presidencies of the dépar-temental governments’ (Lavau, 1966, p. 12) . Fifty years ago, Lavau (1966) iron-ically emphasized the capacity of the French Socialist Party (PS) to ensure the prosperity of its apparatus on the basis of local electoral successes, even while neglecting the social transformation project, which is supposed to be motiv-ating it. Even if several commentators after Lavau have confirmed this obser-vation, it is more for its rigidity than for its doctrinal thinness that the PS has often been reproached. In fact, the PS shares a majority of the characteristics of the ‘socialist democratic’ component of European social democracy: radical left positions and doctrinal splits, heterogeneity of its social base, weak ties with unions, and the absence of hegemony in the left part of the political spectrum.

In the French case, there are two major reasons for these identitarian features. The first is the important and early role of the republican struggles and regime in the shaping of the labor movement. Since 1789, democratic demands have been carried out and in part implemented by non-socialist left parties. At the end of the 19th century, the political field was thus already strongly shaped by partisans of the Republic and its adversaries. Moreover, the socialists had dif-ficulty in bringing out the class cleavage due to France’s relatively late indus-trialization (Sawicki, 2005). The second reason is that the unions refused to subordinate their domain of activity to a party. The Charter of Amiens, adopted by the CGT in 1906, symbolizes this demand for the autonomy of trade-union activity, conceived as a self-sufficient struggle to liberate workers from capit-alist domination. Before the communist split of 1920, the labor movement was

7 France Fabien Escalona and Mathieu Vieira

128 Fabien Escalona and Mathieu Vieira

thus already divided into ‘two socialisms’ due to the strength of the syndical-ist-evolutionary current (Winock, 1992, pp. 74–82).

This strength illustrates the doctrinal pluralism which prevailed on the left and which for a long time impeded the unification of French socialism. From the advent of the Third Republic up to 1905, French socialism was con-stantly divided into tendencies representing competing versions of a socialist ideology. The election of some 50 socialist deputies in 1893 was a step towards unity by collecting the leaders of the principal tendencies into one parlia-mentary group. A favorable political conjuncture, as well as pressure exerted by the Second International, made unification possible in 1905 under the name SFIO (Rebérioux, 1997, pp. 191–9). The ‘genetic model’ of the Socialist Party arose between unification and the adoption of Jaurès’ synthesis at the Toulouse Congress in 1908. It was marked by a mistrust of any doctrinal revision and by an antagonistic relation to power (Bergounioux and Grunberg, 2005).

Even if the French Socialists participated in the Union Sacrée during WWI, their strategy consisted of avoiding all governmental participation in what followed. However, their underlying republicanism led them to support Parliament’s ‘left cartel’ formed in 1924. The Party very soon conquered many municipalities, giving them the rooting in society which the absence of trade-union moorings denied them (Bergounioux and Grunberg, 2005, pp. 45–6). It was only in 1936 that Léon Blum assumed the leadership of a Popular Front gov-ernment by invoking the imperative to safeguard democracy. The SFIO leader distinguished the conquest of power from the occupation of power. While the former was described as the social transformation for which Socialists had to stand ready, the second was made necessary by the fascist menace. In occupying power, republican legality and the property regime were not to be destroyed. The social movement that followed the elections, however, led the government to grant workers more social rights and material advantages than it had ori-ginally envisaged. The experience of the Popular Front came to an end after two years due to the difficult economic conjuncture, internal divisions, and the hostility of the business sector.

After 1945, the SFIO took part in the significant work being accomplished by the governments of the Fourth Republic, notably in the social area (Rioux, 2005; Lafon, 2011), but attempts at doctrinal renewal failed. The Party weak-ened considerably during this time, in terms of both activist membership and voters. By contrast, the PCF (French Communist Party) established itself as the principal representative of the popular classes and the leading party of the left. Two major crises brought about the irremediable decline of the SFIO. First, the Algerian policy of the government led by Guy Mollet, starting in 1956, trig-gered the indignation of many activists and citizens attached to ideas of demo-cratic socialism. Second, the ensuing political crisis provoked the birth of the Fifth Republic. The SFIO was unable to adjust to this institutional disruption

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from which it drew no strategic lesson concerning the presidentialist evo-lution of the regime and the tendency to bipolarization of the party system. At the end of the 1960s, it was thus a battered party that allied with other non-communist groups on the left in order to form a new Socialist Party. In 1971, François Mitterrand was able to establish himself as its leader in the famous Epinay Congress (Moreau, 2000).

Throughout the 1970s, Mitterrand worked to get the PS to accept the logic of the Fifth Republic, both in order to make it the first party of the left, as well as to become the candidate most able to win against the right. The tactical choices that he made in order to remain party leader and to collect as many voters as possible at the expense of the PCF proved to be a double-edged sword. Certainly, they helped in gaining power 1 , but the socialists were inadequately prepared to immediately confront the international economic crisis, the non-cooperative strategy of the other European governments, and the resistance of capital owners (Ross, 1995). After having implemented a radical Keynesian strategy, they eventually gave up due to the impossibility of further devaluing the Franc without exiting from the European monetary system. The Laurent Fabius government fully embraced this ‘austerity turn’ and adopted a rhetoric exalting ‘modernization’ and private initiative. Social progress was henceforth subordinated to a strategy of competitive disinflation (Lordon, 1998).

Mitterrand was unable to avoid a first ‘ohabitation government between 1986 and 1988, the year in which he again won the presidential election. During his second mandate, he confirmed France’s commitment to European integration. The end of his term occurred in a twilight atmosphere marked by one of the PS’s worst defeats in legislative elections, in addition to media coverage of PS financial scandals and revelations on Mitterrand’s past and health. At the same time, his heirs tore themselves apart over control of the party, increasingly transforming the party ‘currents’ into ‘personalist factions’ (Bell and Criddle, 1994; Sartori, 2005). In 1995, Lionel Jospin became the PS candidate for the presidential election. His expected defeat was offset by his good performance in the first round against Jacques Chirac. This half success gave him the legit-imacy to become First Secretary of the ailing party and above all leader of the ‘plural left’ 2 , which won the early elections of 1997. In 2002 his elimin-ation in the first round was a trauma that marked the beginning of an entire decade spent in the opposition. François Hollande is therefore only the second Socialist to have won a major election in France’s political life during the Fifth Republic.

After the ‘Epinay cycle’ came to a close during Mitterrand’s second seven-year term, the Common Program and the Left Union have vanished without being replaced by a similarly coherent project and strategy. This did not prevent the Party from continuing to develop its program, expand its influence in local communities and finally win back political power at the national level.


7.2 Organization

7.2.1 Statutes and party structure 3

The PS, which one cannot join other than on an individual basis, is a member of the PES and of the Socialist International. It adopted a new declaration of principles in 2008, replacing the declaration published after the fall of the Berlin wall. The Party statutes have also been the object of substantial modifi-cation throughout the 2000s, particularly following the ‘renewal’ process initi-ated by Martine Aubry.

The party organs are related to different organizational levels of which the most important have always been the section, the federation and the national committee. There are also ‘municipal or metropolitan-area committees’ and ‘regional unions,’ which coordinate the activity of sections at territorial levels below or above the département level. In addition, the Party relies on ‘associated organs’ whose members are not necessarily PS members 4 . The composition of bodies at all levels is determined by proportional lists established before each congress, which regulate the competition between congress motions, called ‘general orientation’ motions. According to the new statutes, other rules now weigh on the composition of these bodies, with the aim of improving their representativeness. They must respect gender parity, be composed of one third new members in each election, and must accurately reflect the ‘geographical and sociological diversity of French society.’

The sections are the basic units of activist life, which can either be created on a geographical area, or can correspond to a university or an enterprise. They are driven by an administrative commission and a secretary who is dir-ectly elected by the section’s members. The establishment of sections depends on the federations, which are organized at the level of the départements . The federations are directed by a Federal Council, which internally elects a Bureau and a Secretariat. These bodies are led by a First Secretary, who is also elected directly by the members of the département . His role is to watch over the correct functioning of the federal organs, which have to transmit the Party decisions, and to ensure that they are well implemented.

Between each congress 5 , the Party is led at the national level by entities similar to those which exist at the federal level. The National Council consists of the federal First Secretaries, the national First Secretary, and the 204 members elected by the local delegates who are sent to the congress. It elects the members that make up the National Bureau, which meets on a more regular basis. 18 of the National Bureau’s 70 members must be federal First Secretaries. These provisions show that in addition to the political factions, the territories are also represented. We see, moreover, this concern in the rules determining which federal delegates come to the congress. In fact, for each federation, the number depends on the ‘number of members having taken part

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in the vote for the national orientation motions.’ Incidentally, this provision explains the influence which the large federations have traditionally enjoyed, notably those of the Nord and Bouches-du-Rhône départements . Their support has often turned out to be crucial for leaders, especially since the voting dis-cipline is strong there. They are weaker today because of legal cases that have damaged a certain number of local leaders.

National Council

National Bureau

National Secretariat

First Secretary

Elects by majority vote

Elects by proportional vote

NominatesSits

Section Secretary

Federal Council

Federal Bureau

Federal Secretariat

First Federal Secretary

Party members

Figure 7.1 PS multi-level organization


The national First Secretary has been directly elected by members since 1995. An important change has nevertheless been introduced into the new statutes, with a view to tying the choice of the leader more closely to the choice of the Party’s ideological orientation. From then on only the first signatories of the two leading motions can enter this competition, as happened in October 2012 between Harlem Désir and Emmanuel Maurel. Once elected, the First Secretary leads the party according to the line that won in the congress. He is seconded by the national secretaries he appoints, whose nomination must be validated by the National Council.

As a whole, the Party structure has remained pyramidal, in keeping with a party democracy that is historically based on a delegate mechanism and a plethora of indirect elections (Olivier, 2003, p. 766). This kind of organization reflects the formal legality assumed by all members, as well as the conception of the Party as an indivisible body whose leaders embody a collective will. Even if the degree of power concentrated in the hands of Socialist leaders is dis-proportionate to that of rank-and-file activists, these statutes are not a fiction without reality. The collegiality which they establish does act as a constraint on the decision-making of leaders as well as on what they judge to be say-able and feasible within the Party. Although they are unequally endowed with resources, this collegiality makes them interdependent, and thus leads them to exercise power among ‘peers and rivals’ (Bachelot, 2012).

Some innovations, however, have affected the initial scheme on which the organization of the PS is based. In particular, forms of direct democracy have been introduced; however, several examples show this tendency also has its limits. One is the direct election of the leader, which has only been truly com-petitive in exceptional cases, and which often makes members passive in the face of what the party elites want or can offer them. The possibility of member polling on issues – which can be initiated either by the leadership bodies or by the members themselves – has also been broached. However, the conditions that need to be met in the latter case are very severe. On the other hand, the traditional territorial and party-structure-based activism has been amended by introducing a deliberative type of internal democracy centered on specific issues (Olivier, 2003, p. 781). The creation of conventions, forums and even of sections based on specific topics is part of this logic. These two types of changes have complicated the party structure – inherited from the 1970s – but they have not upturned the PS’ organization. The latter has certainly been more affected by the professionalization and sociological evolution of its members (see below).

The most important novelty is the selection of the candidate for Presidency of the Republic. He or she is now chosen in a process called ‘citizens’ primaries’, which the PS experimented with for the first time in 2011. In 1995 and 2006, the primaries remained limited to Party members. It is true that in 2006 the

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campaign had a lot of media coverage and that the establishment of a 20-Euro membership helped to create an unprecedented swelling of the activist corps (Dolez and Laurent, 2007). The new procedure, however, indicates a qualitative leap: on the one hand, from the point of view of the Party, this involves a break from the general principle of candidate election being performed only by members; on the other hand, from the point of view of the nature of balloting, the vote is opened to all citizens. This means that candidates have to conduct their campaigns before the public rather than only internally. Additionally, the electorate is potentially very large, and its degree of mobilization is highly unpredictable. The point of this procedure is to create a large popular base for the legitimacy of the chosen candidate, as well as to create an electoral dynamic before the first round of ballots is cast. Several criticisms have also been made of the primaries as legitimizing a cultural accommodation to the Fifth Republic and of promoting the dissolution of activist culture (Lefebvre, 2011). This being said, the Italian example shows that the effects of this process are not unambiguous (see Chapter 11).

7.2.2 Party type

Is it possible to characterize the PS according to the available party typologies? If we use the one put forward by Gunther and Diamond (2003), the PS is neither an elite-based nor a mass-based party, but clearly an electoralist party . Even if the ‘bad conscience’ of Socialist leaders causes them to regularly promise to increase the importance of activism, the activities of the Party’s inner life remain focused on the electoral campaigns and issues. The domination of the Party by elected representatives, and those dependent on them, is indisputable. Not only does the increase in activists at the local level heavily depend on the prior winning of a municipality by a Socialist, but the voting discipline is also greater in places where elected representatives exert their influence (Juhem, 2006).

Staying with Gunther and Diamond’s framework, we also have to decide whether to characterize the PS as catch-all or programmatic . Since the PS does not have a clear doctrine, and seeing that majority-vote elections encourage the Party to absorb a very diverse electoral support, the first category might seem closer to reality. In fact, however, the Party’s ideological malleability is by no means total: certain rituals remain obligatory both in the programmatic platforms and in internal voting. Sawicki (2005, p. 40) also points out that the Party’s capacity to overcome its setbacks has partly depended on its informal ties with ‘numerous networks (of civil society), whose members share and convey a certain number of common values: secularism, humanism, attach-ment to the Rights of Man and the principles of social justice, ( ... ) cultural liberalism.’

The same prudence is required in using the label cartel party . Certainly, the PS exhibits several features which speak for this ideal-type established by Katz


and Mair (1995). Since its success in the 1977 municipal elections and its elec-tion to government in 1981, its relation to the state has been transformed, and it has become ‘a constitutive element of public institutions’ (Juhem, 2006). France’s political system protects it quite well from new entrants to political competition, and its internal dissidence has been brought under control. Other characteristics can be observed, such as the importance given to public financing, the blurring of the distinction between members and non-members introduced by the primaries, or the spread of voting based on an atomistic conception of participation. However, precisely because it is an ideal-type, the concept of a cartel party seems too narrow to describe the PS. To speak of its ‘cartelization’ – as do Bachelot (2008) and Barboni (2011) – makes more sense to us. In this context, what is involved is a process that flows from the new rela-tionship of the PS to the institutions; this relationship, however, has neither been made into an object consciously constructed by the leaders, nor, above all, into one which has erased the party culture as a whole.

7.2.3 Members

Low membership is one of the structural characteristics of French socialism. With an average of 124,500 members since its creation in 1905, the PS pales in comparison to other European social democratic parties. It had five high points during which it surpassed 200,000 members: 1936–38; 1945–8; 1982–3; 1988–9; and 2006–9. In terms of activists, the Popular Front and Liberation periods were unquestionably the golden age of Socialist activism. With the exception of the last high in membership recorded from 2006 to 2009 – due to the Party’s membership drive – these activist interludes coincided with the PS’s coming to power.

After the membership campaign of 1988–89, the PS lost somewhat more than half of its members by 1995 (93,603). A slight increase in members was seen after the legislative victory of 1997 (+ 30,000), and following the shock of the extreme right’s strength in the second round of the 2002 presidential election (+ 20,000). Nevertheless, activists stabilized at a low level – between 110,000 and 120,000 – until 2006. As Lefebvre and Sawicki emphasize, ‘the elected representatives put up with the low membership levels since they do not necessarily hurt their electoral base or weigh on the financial resources of the organization’ (2006, p. 157). In fact, membership dues represent a little less than ten percent of the Party’s revenue now, and are far below the share represented by the state endowment. Low membership likewise influ-ences the control of elected representatives over local sections, as it secures their positions and guarantees the results of internal referendums. Generally, the more that the number of PS activists reduces to a smaller core number (120,000 members), the more the influence of the public figures can be effect-ively exerted. Nevertheless, they themselves can be the cause of an increase in

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activist density (see above). The tripling of the Paris federation’s membership after Bertrand Delanöe’s 2001 victory is a striking example.

The 20-Euro membership campaign, launched March 9, 2006 via the Internet in response to the campaign promoted by Sarkozy’s UMP, was a clear success. In the space of a few months, more than 90,000 people joined the PS. The de-territoriali-zation of membership, which makes joining simpler, was not the only explanation for this exceptional influx. The membership drive was based on the possibility of a not-too-demanding activism and on giving people a say in two attractive issues: the adoption of the socialist project and the designation of the candidate for the presidential election. The principal motivation for the new ‘e-members’ was essen-tially to designate the candidate (in this case Ségolène Royal) best able to win the presidential election. After the 2007 defeat and the leadership crisis that followed the 2008 Reims Congress, the PS saw a reduction in its membership by almost 37,000. Despite the open primaries in 2011, this downward dynamic was not checked from 2009 to 2012, as the PS registered a loss of about 28,000 members. Since the 2013 figures are not yet available, we cannot now verify the observed connection between coming to power and membership growth.

Geographic distribution and activist density reveal a great disparity between the federations. The 20 largest federations contain more than half of PS activ-ists (54 percent). The five largest federations in 2012 (Paris, Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Bouches-du-Rhône and Haute-Garonne) alone account for 25 percent of PS members.

Table 7.1 PS membership, 2000–12

Year Number of members % of electorate

2000 116,805 0.0162001 109,464 0.0152002 129,445 0.0282003 129,537 0.0282004 120,038 0.0262005 127,414 0.0282006 220,269 0.0482007 238,520 0.0252008 232,912 0.0242009 201,600 0.0212010 – –2011 174,022 0.0182012 173,486 0.017

Source: 2000–2003: Bergougnioux and Grunberg, (2005, p. 501); 2003: membership at the time of the Dijon Congress; 2004: membership at the time of the internal referendum on the TCE (Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe); 2005: members registered at the time of the Le Mans Congress; 2006: membership at the time of the internal primary; 2007: data provided by the PS; 2008: membership at the time of the Reims Congress; 2009: Le Figaro , January 12, 2010; 2011: Le Figaro , January 10, 2012; 2012: membership at the time of the Toulouse Congress.


7.2.4 Sociology of membership

According to the survey conducted by Rey in 2011, which followed those done in 1985 (Rey and Subileau, 1991) and 1998 (Subileau, Ysmal and Rey, 1999), the typical profile of a Socialist member was a 53-year-old man with a university diploma, who was a middle manager in the public sector with a permanent contract. Although the process of the feminization of the PS has been promoted, men remain very much in the majority (70 percent). A more visible generational renewal has occurred from 1998 to 2011: even if 38 percent of the members are older than 60, a quarter of the members were under 40 in 2011, as opposed to 14 percent in 1998. This dynamic, largely due to the rejuvenation of activists following the wave of new memberships in 2006 6 , still has not readjusted the PS’s age pyramid, since the median age has stayed above 50.

One of the major lessons of the 2011 study is the clear rise in the diploma level of PS members. While only 21 percent do not have a high school degree,

Table 7.2 Sociology of PS membership, 1998–2011 (%)

1998 2011

Gender Men 72 70Women 26 30

Age Under 30 5 1030–39 9 1340–49 19 1650–59 27 2360–69 23 2870 and over 17 10

Educational level No degree 10 4Vocational diploma 21 17High school diploma 19 15University diploma 33 54Top-ranking higher-education institution

7 10

Socio-professional categories Manager, professional 20 38Teacher 14 11Primary school teacher 9 7Other intermediate occupations 25 18Employee 11 14Worker 5 3Other 14 9

Source: Rey (2011, p. 126).

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64 percent hold degrees from a university or a top-ranking higher-education institution, which is 24 more points than in 1998. This strong growth in educa-tional level is largely due to the rejuvenation of members after 2006, inasmuch as 81 percent of those below 40 have higher degrees. At the same time, we also see a clear rise in the party ranks in the proportion of those from the middle-management stratum (up 18 points since 1998). They thus are largely ahead of the intermediate occupations (18 percent), which have dropped by seven points. In analyzing these results, Rey insists on the fact that the share of teachers – from primary school to the higher levels – has continually declined since the 1980s (by 8 points from 1985 to 2011). While the share of the popular classes – employees and workers – in Party membership has remained stable (17 percent), the marginalization of workers in the PS ranks continues. The discrepancy in the percentage of workers (21.5 percent) in France’s active popu-lation is indisputable, seeing as this group by now only represents three percent of Socialist activists.

Finally, the survey shows that the PS remains the party of public function-aries: 56 percent of members come from this sector. At the same time, the share of members working in the private sector has increased, with 50 percent of members having joined since 2008.

7.3 Electoral results

In a political landscape historically dominated by the right, the PS struggled to gain power and preserve it. From the immediate post-war up to the 1970s, the PS’ electoral history was one of decline. During the 1970s, it became one of renovation and re-conquest, thanks to a strategy of unity with the left. It was not until the 1978 legislative elections that the PS dethroned the PCF as the first electoral force on the left. From then on – with allowances being made for the French bipolar party system – the PS became the dominant party on the left and the first party of the opposition. This point is important in under-standing the paradoxical situation in which the Socialists found themselves from 2002 to 2012. While they held power for fifteen years from 1981 to 2002, the subsequent period can be summed up as ‘setbacks in national elections, success in local elections’ (Bréchon, 2009, pp. 210–21). In fact, the PS lost three consecutive presidential elections while reinforcing its establishment on the local level. The PS’s hegemony in local governments has been without pre-cedent: it governs 21 out of 22 regions and 60 of 101 départements . The 2008 municipal elections confirmed this territorial rootedness: The Party recorded a gain of 80 towns with more than 9,000 inhabitants each, of which eight towns had more than 100,000. The PS therefore now governs in 23 of the 30 largest French cities. The parallel is striking when compared to the SFIO, which was forced to withdraw on its local baronies after 1958.


The 2002 presidential election was a veritable earthquake for the PS. Jospin was eliminated in the first round – with 16.18 percent of the votes – to the benefit of the FN candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen (16.86 percent). Several causes have been cited to explain this disaster (Jaffré, 2003). First, from the start Jospin had adopted a second-round strategy, which proved ineffective in mobilizing his electorate in the first round: only 52 percent of Socialist sympathizers voted for the Socialist candidate 7 . Second, the Socialist candidate thought he could profit from a balance-sheet of the leftist government received positively by the population, but he did not address three issues which the campaign presented, namely unemployment, social insecurity, and inequality. Third, the plethora of left candidacies was more of a handicap than a reserve of votes for the second ballot. This dispersion materialized at the polls, with the parties of the plural left scoring honorable results (5.33 percent for Chevènement, 5.25 percent for the Greens, 3.37 percent for the PCF and 2.32 percent for the PRG), just as did the LO and LCR, which mobilized 10.44 percent of votes. On the evening of the first ballot, Jospin, to everyone’s surprise, announced his retirement from political life. At the time of the subsequent legislative elec-tions, and despite less dispersion of votes (23.78 percent), the PS only retained 141 deputies, compared to 248 in the previous legislature. The inversion of the electoral calendar adopted in April 2001 thus did not work in favor of the Socialists; rather it turned the legislative elections into confirmations of the presidential election.

In line with the 2004 cantonal and regional elections, the June 2004 European elections proved to be typical mid-term elections, in that those holding power were censured. For the first time in this kind of election, the PS achieved an excellent score (28.90 percent), benefitting from the vote that was penalizing the majority list (16.64 percent). With 31 seats, the PS became the most important contingent of the socialist group in the European Parliament.

Despite Royal’s good score in the first round of the 2007 presidential election (25.87 percent), she clearly lost to Sarkozy (53.06 percent) in the second round. While her vote after the first round increased by more than 5 percent, the dis-creet post-first-round appeals to the centrist François Bayrou were not enough to compensate the left’s weak score as a whole (36 percent). In the end, ‘the PS candidate profited less from the electoral campaign than did her adversary in

Table 7.3 PS government participation, 1997–2012

Years Power/Opposition

1997–2002 Power in cohabitation (in coalition with PCF, Greens, PRG and MDC)

2002–2012 Opposition2012– Power (with support of Greens and PRG)

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developing a vote loyal to her personally or, still more, a vote of support for her program’ (Dupoirier, 2008, p. 154). The legislative elections that followed were in essence nothing other than third and fourth rounds of the presidential election, even if, after a surge for the PS in the second round, considering a sig-nificant voter migration from the left and the center, the PS nonetheless won 204 seats; that is, 63 more than in 2002.

With internal divisions after the 2008 Reims Congress and record absten-tions, the 2009 European elections bore no resemblance to those of 2004. As in the 1994 European elections, the PS lists did very poorly (16.48 percent), and were even closely followed by the EELV (Europe-Ecology – the Greens) lists (16.28 percent). The PS lost more than half of its seats and could count no more than 14 European deputies.

With 28.63 percent of the votes, Hollande has improved Royal’s score by about 2.7 points with a narrow lead over Sarkozy (27.18 percent). The per-formance was all the more striking since Sarkozy was an outgoing president. Against a background of economic crisis and the unpopularity of the outgoing executive, Hollande brought the left back together in the presidential election by the end of a second round that was closer than predicted (51.64 percent). He was thus able to profit from the discontent with the powers-that-be, and to cause change by bringing employment and youth into the main focus of his campaign. The June legislative elections brought to a close the 2012 series of victorious elections. The PS won 29.35 percent of votes in the first round, which is 2 points more than the UMP received. With 295 seats, the PS alone holds an absolute majority in the Assembly. The PS’ 2012 electoral successes,

Table 7.4 PS electoral results, 2002–12

Year

Presidential elections,

first round (% and

number of votes)

Legislative elections,

first round (% and

number of votes)

Seats (number and %)

European elections (% and number

of votes)

Seats (number and %)

2002 16.18 4,610,267

23.78 6,142,656

141 24.4

2004 28.90 4,960,756

31 39.74

2007 25.87 9,500,112

24.73 6,436,520

204 35.4

2009 16.48 2,838,160

14 19.44

2012 28.63 10,272,705

29.35 7,618,326

295 51.1

Source: French Ministry of the Interior.


however, remain fragile because they are ‘against the prevailing ideological current’ (Le Gall, 2012). In other words, it was clearly a ‘right-wing France that voted left’ in 2012.

7.3.1 Sociology of the electorate

The decade of the 2000s confirmed the change in the nature of the PS’s electoral base, which mutated from a party of wageworkers to a party of the middle and upper classes. This mutation has to be seen in the context of the transforma-tions of the PS vote in the Mitterrand era. First, there was a geographic re-com-position with a true ‘nationalization’ of the Socialist vote (Grunberg, 1993), which was seen to make notable progress in the traditional areas of weakness for the SFIO, in particular the départements in western France. Second, there was a sociological re-composition with the broadening of the PS’ electoral base, following the marked penetration of the expanding middle-salaried classes. The latter, and especially the intermediate occupations, have thus been seduced by the values of cultural liberalism carried by the PS (Grunberg and Schweisguth, 1983). In the Mitterrand era, the PS can therefore be seen as a ‘party of salaried workers’ (Rey, 2007), with an electoral core formed by the popular classes and the middle-salaried classes.

However, beginning in the 1990s, the sociological base on which Socialist victories rested was cracked with the ongoing misalignment of the popular classes. The electoral instability created by this disaffection found its severest expression in Jospin’s 2002 failure, when only 13 percent of workers and employees lent him their support. While the popular classes were one of the major segments allowing the Socialists to come into power in the 1980s, the 2000s were characterized by a desperate discourse on the re-conquest of this electorate, which by now was abstentionist and had moved to either the right or extreme right. Three series of complementary explanations were offered on the divorce between the popular classes and the PS: disappointment with the left in power (Rey, 2004), the professionalization and increasing sociological narrowing of its elected representatives (Lefebvre and Sawicki, 2006), and finally, the new cultural issues influencing political competition (Gougou, 2012; Tiberj, 2012).

In any case, the decline of the PS’s worker vote was compensated by the growth of a popular vote coming from French citizens with an immigrant background (Gougou and Tiberj, forthcoming). Furthermore, analogous to the misalignment of the vote of traditional worker milieus, a process of realignment is occurring alongside the increase in middle-management votes for the PS. Following Judis and Teixeira (2004) , we have also shown that this sociological dynamic intersected a geographic displacement of the Socialist vote toward large cities of the ‘ ideopolis ’ type (Escalona and Vieira, 2012). These metropolises, which concentrate the activities of social groups typical

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of the globalized and post-industrial economy, thus appear as new zones of PS strength. In 2007, more than 32 percent of the ideopolises on average voted for Royal in the first round of the presidential election, which represented a margin of about 6 percent above the national average. The extra PS vote in the ideopolises was confirmed by Hollande’s average score of 33 percent in the first round of the 2012 presidential election (nearly 5 points above his national numbers). Still more interestingly, the geography of the PS vote during the 2000s shows a genuine divide between the ‘social democracy of the ideopolises ’ (Escalona and Vieira, 2012) and ‘peri-urban and rural France’. This is attested by discrepancies of 14 and 9 points in 2007 and 2012 respectively, which rep-resent the PS’s score in the rural municipalities (which have fewer than 2,000 inhabitants) and the ideopolises .

The sociology of Hollande’s first-round vote in the 2012 presidential election differs little from that of his ex-comrade in 2007. Young active members of the population (32 percent of 25–34 year-olds), middle management (30 percent) and intermediate occupations (34 percent), public-sector wage workers (34 percent), people with higher-education degrees (32 percent) and atheists all confirmed their support for a Socialist candidate. The structure of the PS elect-orate in 2012 confirms the dynamic of adjustment initiated by Royal, espe-cially as regards the popular classes. Despite the demographic increase of the middle and upper classes, the lower classes still constituted half of the active population. Their support thus proves to be invaluable, especially in elections with the highest degrees of voter participation. This is the whole dilemma of the PS, which remains torn between its wish to get the electoral support of the salaried working classes on the one hand, and on the other hand to achieve

Table 7.5 The PS vote according to the size of municipalities, 2002–12 (%)

2002 2007 2012

Overall 16 25 29Municipalities of:– less than 2,000

inhabitants14 18 24

– 2,000 to 20,000 inhabitants

17 22 28

– 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants

15 25 33

– more than 100,000 inhabitants

16 30 31

Ideopolises 19 32 33Difference between the

extremes–5 –14 –9

Source: Dupoirier (2008, p. 157); IPSOS poll (2012); ideopolises: Escalona and Vieira (2012) and cal-culation of the authors for 2012.


a sociological and programmatic profile more adapted to the seduction of the middle and upper classes, a goal which the Terra Nova think tank encouraged the Party to pursue (Jeanbart, Ferrand and Prudent, 2011).

7.4 Relationships with left parties and trade unions

7.4.1 Relationships with left parties

Since the 1971 Epinay Congress, the PS has experimented with three types of alliances with its left partners at the national level: the Left Union ( Union de la gauche ), the Plural Left ( Gauche plurielle ) and a government contract.

Table 7.6 Sociology of the PS electorate, 2002–12 (%)

2002 2007 2012

Overall 16 25 29Gender Men 16 25 29

Women 16 26 30Age 18–24 13 31 29

25–34 14 24 3235–49 15 26 2950–64 16 26 3065 and over 20 23 25

Profession Farmers 10 10 –Craft workers, shop-keepers, small business owners

6 18 21

Managerial occupations and higher intellectual professions

19 28 30

Intermediate occupations 17 31 34Employees 13 25 28Workers 12 24 27Inactive, retirees 18 25 29

Professional status Self-employed 9 15 28Private-sector 14 25 27Public-sector 21 29 34Unemployed 14 26 28

Education Primary 18 25 39Technical 14 22 26Secondary 14 28 26Higher 17 28 32

Religion Regular churchgoers 9 13 14Occasional churchgoers 12 17 17Non-practicing believers 17 24 27No religion 20 34 34

Source: French Electoral Panel (2002, 2007) and IPSOS poll (2012).

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These alliances are more like arrangements of convenience whose unique aim is to find allies in order to come to power. As a result, the form and content of these three formulas developed depending on the electoral results achieved by the PS and its relative weight within the left. These alliances were limited to the government left (PCF, PRG, MDC, Greens) and systematically excluded radical left parties. At the level of local elections, the system of alliances varied, depending largely on local strategies, which remained relatively autonomous.

We cannot understand the specificities of the two more recent alliance expe-riences without briefly reviewing the Left Union episode of the early 1970s. After two decades of electoral agony, the new PS had no choice but to ally with the PCF – the main force on the left – if it hoped to win the presidential elec-tion. This strategy consisted of accords on candidacy withdrawal in the second round of the 1973 legislative elections, and above all in the signing in 1972 of a common program of government, approved shortly afterwards by the MRG. The Left Union took the form of the sole candidacy of Mitterrand in the 1974 presidential election. Recognizing that this unique candidacy would princi-pally benefit the PS and that the PS was in a position to dethrone it as the leading party of the left, the PCF broke the union in 1977, thus disrupting the renegotiation of the common program for the 1978 legislative elections. From this point until the 1997 legislative elections, the PS simply applied ‘republican discipline,’ which means that the left candidate with the fewest votes must withdraw in the second round.

It was not to be until its 1992–94 electoral repudiation and defeat in the 1995 presidential election that the PS once again envisaged a real strategy of alliances. The rise of the Greens’ power starting with the 1989 European elec-tions shook the internal relations of force in the left and led the PS to expand its list of allies. In January 1997 – before the dissolution of the National Assembly in April – electoral agreements were made with the Greens. The PS conceded 34 electoral districts to the PRG and 30 to the Greens. An agree-ment was also struck with the MDC on five districts (Bréchon, 2009). The contours of the Plural Left were defined on April 29 with a common declar-ation with the PCF. However, in contrast to the Left Union, the Plural Left did not rest on a government contract but on more modest guidelines. This strategy of bilateral accords led to five years of a Plural Left government, with the participation of two Communist ministers and a Communist Secretary of State, a Green minister, an MDC minister, two PRG Secretaries of State, and a PRG minister. If cooperation between all the government components proceeded without major difficulties – with the exception of the resignation of Minister of the Interior Chevènement (MDC) in 2000 – ‘the absence of an agreement on substance doubtless weakened the Plural Left, obliging the PS’s partners to go along with a program that was not truly their own’ (Bachelot, 2008, p. 406).


The nature of the alliance configuration changed at the next elections. From then on, electoral agreements have depended on programmatic nego-tiations with the aim of reaching a government contract. This does not, however, involve a truly common program like that of 1972, to the extent that the negotiations bear only on certain proposals, as can be seen in the ‘legislative-term agreement’ concluded between the PS and the EELV on November 15, 2011.

This more modest strategy of alliances is largely explained by the intensifi-cation of the PS’s domination of the left bloc during the decade of the 2000s. Since the 2007 presidential election, the PS’s share in the total votes obtained by the left in the first round of national elections has oscillated between 60 and 70 percent. The sharing of electoral districts between the PS and its allies at the time of the 2012 legislative elections (60 districts ceded to the EELV, 35 to the PRG and 9 to the MRC) is in three respects instructive for under-standing the reconfiguration of the alliance system. First, the PRG and MRC are no longer anything but satellite parties of the PS, whose presence in the Assembly depends almost exclusively on the PS. This subordination to the PS is equally expressed in the support of the apparatuses for the Socialist can-didacy during presidential elections. Second, the EELV now occupies the pos-ition of the PS’s principal partner, which had for a long time been occupied by the PCF . Third, after emerging weakened from the Left Union and the Plural Left, the PCF (and more broadly today the Left Front) has distanced itself from the PS. Hoping eventually to embody an alternative to the govern-ment’s ‘social-liberal’ line, the Left Front has taken a position against the Competitiveness Pact, the ratification of the European Budgetary Treaty, and the public finance programming bill for 2012–17, which reflects a growing political divorce from the PS. It remains to be seen if this distancing at the national level will withstand the dilemma which the PCF must face in the next municipal elections, since a number of important elected representa-tives are also on the PS’s lists.

7.4.2 Relationships with trade unions

Although there is no vertical and formal integration between the trade unionism of wage earners and party-based socialism, episodic rapprochements took place with the FEN (Federation of National Education) of the 1970s to the 1990s and with reformist trade unionism – the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor) of the 1970s. However, the proximity to these two union organizations stopped short of activist interpenetration and did not entail organic relationships at the top. After tense relations with the Jospin government and support in 2003 for the François Fillon plan on pensions, which sealed the CFDT’s strategy of independence, the signing of the accord on flexible employment with the employers, the CFTC (French Confederation

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of Christian Workers) and the CGC (General Confederation of Executives) in the beginning of 2013 signals the rapprochement of the CFDT with the government. Beyond its isolation from the other wage-earner unions (CGT – General Confederation of Labor and FO – Worker’s Force) which did not sign the agreement, this agreement makes the CFDT into the privileged interlocutor of the Jean-Marc Ayrault government.

The relations between the PS and the unions do not cover all the networks created by the Party within society. If it has not been able to rely on a true coun-ter-society of the social democratic type, French socialism is still anchored in a collection of movements, associations, journals, clubs, think tanks, and so on, which form a ‘socialist milieu’ (Sawicki, 1997). Even if the socialist networks have shrunk by now (Lefebvre and Sawicki, 2006), they – in particular the lay associa-tions for the defense of human rights and for popular education or the cooperative movement – have played no small part in propagating socialist ideas.

7.5 Relation to power and institutions

Although he claimed that the institutions bequeathed by Charles de Gaulle granted too much power to the President, Mitterrand nevertheless kept the balance between the institutions intact. The Socialists in power during the Jospin era distanced themselves still more from the parliamentary regime that the French left had historically defended. On the one hand, the PS supported the ‘yes’ vote in the referendum on the establishment of the five-year term, which shortened the presidential mandate by two years, making it correspond to the term of the legislative mandate, thus protecting the President from a change of majority during his term. On the other hand, Jospin was responsible for a measure with even more serious effects: the inversion of the electoral calendar. In 2002, the legislative elections had to be held before the presidential election. The fact that in the end they were organized after the legislative elections reinforced the greater importance of the vote determining the principal holder of executive power. Taken together, the two measures strengthened the presidential character of the regime by maximizing the probability of congruence between the political identity of the President and that of the parliamentary majority (Poguntke and Webb, 2005, pp. 2–4). The Socialists thus took part in the legitimization and strengthening of the ‘presidential primacy’ that had been threatened by successive coalition governments and a parliamentary reading of the Constitution (Portelli, 2008).

This rallying to the presidential logic of the institutions was neither theo-rized nor assumed by the Party, which continued to proclaim its commit-ment to Parliament and even to the emergence of a new Republic (Grunberg, 2007). Royal’s program in 2007 indeed included this demand, while the


Socialist project for 2012 contained proposals such as the revalorization of the role of Parliament, the introduction of a measure of proportionality for the election of deputies, and a cap on the number of cumulative terms served (PS, 2007, 2012a). In fact, none of this represented a substantial modification of the system. Hollande’s declaration, according to which ‘he would not decide anything but would be accountable for everything,’ shows that for him, too, the presidency remains the central institution of French political life, for this affirmation disregards the fact that the president is precisely not politically accountable, because he cannot be overthrown by parliamentarians while he has the power to dissolve the National Assembly.

With the acceptance of Presidentialism, the conquest of all the powers of the Republic constitutes the other major tendency of the 2000s. Taking control of an increasing part of the territorial collective structures has mechanically favored the advance of Socialist senatorial seats – elected by indirect universal suffrage – which are gradually coming up for the vote. This dynamic has been combined with the increasing discontent of the rural elected representatives (who are over-represented in the Senate), whose power comes before the pres-sure exerted on local budgets and the decline of public services; consequently the Upper House was captured by the left for the first time since 1958. After the 2012 elections, the PS holds all the power for the first time in its history, even if it does not hold a sufficiently large majority for the parliamentarians alone to modify the Constitution.

It is all the more striking that despite this new advantage, the only sig-nificant institutional reform will be the revival of the process of decentral-ization. This was begun by the left at the beginning of the 1980s and has contributed to the professionalization of the Party and to the increasing weight of local elected officials within it. Among the expected measures is a clearer redistribution of authority among local entities, the expansion of their right to experimentation, and a specific statute granted to metropolises. In return, no broad reform of the political system is expected. The reason for this is that its preservation objectively serves the interests of the PS as a party organization. It has, in effect, become one of the principal forces of govern-mental alternance . The rules which frame French political life tend to protect every party having attained this status. Goldhammer and Ross (2011) are thus right to grant an importance to the Constitution and to the electoral laws of the Fifth Republic. They are a key asset of the PS in dominating the left and for the ‘modernizers’ within the Party. The rules of the political system have strengthened the cartelization and professionalization of the PS, which have increasingly characterized the Party in the last 30 years (Barboni, 2011). The more these processes advance, the more the interest of the Party requires the preservation of the political system.

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7.6 Programmatic positioning

7.6.1 Socioeconomic issues

During the 2002 presidential campaign, Jospin created a furor when he declared that his program was not socialist. Beyond the error of communication this involved, the phrase was indicative of the tendency of his government’s eco-nomic policy. During the first years of his mandate as Prime Minister, Jospin seemed to have broken with the strategy of ‘competitive disinflation’ France had been pursuing. The new majority wanted to show that price and budget stability were compatible with an interventionist policy oriented toward the reduction of unemployment and more social justice (Clift, 2009). These objec-tives were in part achieved thanks to heterodox methods such as the reduction of working time, the extension of social protection for the poorest households, and employment generation on the part of the state.

Other aspects of the ‘plural left’ government lead us to qualify this picture. First, the degradation of working conditions and the advance of precariousness remained the blind spots of governmental policy. Second, several measures revealed the pervasiveness of neoliberal economic conceptions, such as the introduction of an earned income tax credit (employment allowance), 8 or the redistribution of the unexpected tax revenues from growth by means of reductions on profit taxes. The dominant protagonists of the private sector were favored by numerous privatizations and by the adoption of governance norms for enterprises favoring market finance (Tiberghien, 2007). Third, the attempts to make the EU into something other than a space of competition between social models failed. Finally, and more fundamentally, the economic downturn starting in the 2000s makes it possible to verify the fact that the realization of social democratic goals depended crucially on the dynamism of the capitalist economy.

The years in opposition were not accompanied by a discussion of the Party’s economic doctrine, but rather by a defense of the French social model. The PS supported protests against the right-wing reforms and regularly denounced the reduction of social protection and ‘giveaways to the rich.’ In 2007, Royal’s presi-dential program seemed moderate on the whole, to the extent that it tied the capacities for redistribution to the control of public debt and strong growth. State intervention remained restricted to encouraging productive investment, particularly for the small and medium-sized companies constantly extolled by the PS. As a candidate, she presented Scandinavian social democracy as a model, without actually envisaging a real transformation of the French welfare state. This reference in fact symbolized her faith in the social compromise and the equilibrium that was possible between the prosperity of the private sector and state-guaranteed solidarity.


At the time of the election, the left’s weak performance encouraged many Socialist officials to advocate a genuine updating of the Party’s economic doc-trine in a less interventionist direction. The declaration of principles adopted in 2008 got rid of references to ‘revolution,’ stressed the PS’s reformist identity and demanded its acceptance of market economy. The world economic crisis caught the Socialist elite by surprise and pushed it into adopting a more radical rhetoric. In its plan for 2012, the Party recommended more severe regulation of the financial sector, a ‘fiscal revolution,’ the creation of 300,000 jobs for young people, the creation of public services, and a war on all forms of social inequity. The viability of the program, however, was conditioned on a hardly credible growth rate of 2.5 percent. Moreover, despite a timid questioning of free trade and a wish to reorient European structures, the odes to productive investment and innovation testified to an implicit rallying to the idea of ‘pro-gressive competitiveness’ (Zuege, 2000).

Since the beginning of his campaign, Hollande has established respect for the European norms of public deficit reduction as a priority. At the risk of a deterioration of growth and employment levels, the economic policy of the new Socialist government is thus limited by a framework that very much keeps with neoliberalism (OFCE, 2012). Tax increases aimed at reducing defi-cits were nevertheless carried out in a much more socially fair way than under the conservatives. The bank reform will probably end with a mild separation of deposit and investment functions, which will not affect the too-big-to-fail French groups. However, it is especially the ‘competitiveness pact’ which has made an impact and is creating trouble on the left. This combination of meas-ures derives from a supply-side policy which has been called a Copernican revolution by the Minister of the Economy (Moscovici, 2012). The most controversial measure is a tax credit for enterprises worth 20 billion Euros, financed by a reduction of public expenditures and by withholdings including an increase in the value-added tax (the principle of which was opposed in the electoral campaign). On this occasion, the Socialists have accepted the idea that ‘labor costs’ would have to be reduced in order to improve French com-mercial performance. Is this a turning point? In reality, the priority given to balancing the public budget and restoring/enhancing business margins is quite consistent with the PS’s economic policy since the mid-1980s. The real break would rather be the significant deregulation of the labor market. The reform promised for the beginning of 2013 will therefore need to be closely analyzed.

7.6.2 Cultural liberalism

Since the 1970s, the PS has opened itself to so-called ‘post-materialist’ issues. As Hatzfeld (2007) has emphasized, electoral considerations have been the main cause for this. However, its engagement on behalf of individual emancipation,

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conceived as expanding the rights that fall within the scope of the ‘recog-nition’ paradigm (Fraser and Honneth, 2003), has remained constant.

In particular, as far as lifestyles are concerned, the PS has clearly embraced the positions deriving from cultural liberalism, which are in sync with its new electoral core as well as with the general evolution of society (Schweisguth, 2006). During the 2000s, the promotion of equality between men and women has been a goal around which there is relative consensus. The Jospin gov-ernment and its majority thus adopted legislation on parity, which was to reduce unequal access to elected posts. These measures contributed to the ‘accelerated feminization of the municipal and regional councils’ (Sineau, 2006, p. 852). The PS also has steadily defended the right of women to control their own bodies. It seeks to facilitate access to abortion clinics – an act which has by now fully paid off – and to contraception, which has become free for minors. Finally, the Socialists seek to struggle against wage discrimination and the widespread precariousness which women experience in the labor market.

The rights of homosexuals have also progressed under Socialist governments, even if these reforms were implemented with less enthusiasm. In 1998, the proposed law establishing PACS (a civil-union contract open to homosexual couples), for example, underwent a chaotic parliamentary process. Moreover, PS spokespeople at the time did not all envisage homosexuals’ access to marriage and adoption. It was not until 2005 that a demand for these rights was offi-cially integrated into the Socialist program. While Royal only pointed to a vague ‘equality of couples’ in 2007, these two measures were then the object of increased mobilization by Socialists. They were explicitly integrated into Party and candidate projects in 2012 (PS, 2012a, 2012b). There is little doubt that they will be adopted, which was not the case for feminine couples’ access to medically assisted procreation, which is defended in the Party project but missing in its presidential commitments.

Questions of morals are not the only aspects of cultural liberalism, which also includes the question of relationships to authority and to otherness. On the question of the relationship to authority, the PS has often been castigated as naively optimistic. In reality, the Party’s position has long called for a balance between prevention and repression. In the face of the right wing’s accusations and the rise in physical assault against individuals, we have seen, however, a tougher tone in the last decade. The objective of the new Socialist government is to avoid any charge of permissiveness.

On questions of nationality and foreigners, anti-racism and the struggle against discrimination have been parts of the rallying cries of the Party since the 1980s. The Party has also long defended the right of foreigners to vote in local elections, without ever implementing it. This promise – repeated in 2012 – seems to have been postponed once again. More recently, opposition to the stigmatizing of Muslims has been explicitly integrated into the Party


program in reaction to the right-wing campaign against Islam as a threat to French identity. The PS situates these positions within its commitment to secu-larism and a universal conception of the nation (PS, 2012a).

7.6.3 Ecological issues

The decade of the 2000s was marked by the increasing integration of ecological issues in the Party’s theory, although numerous decisions were made by the plural left government to the detriment of the positions the Greens defended (Duverger, 2011). The integration of these issues is explained by an internal development in the Party (the emergence of ecological currents) but also by the Greens’ electoral successes and the new alliance strategy. In the course of the congress, the PS confirmed its adhesion to sustainable development and admitted that quantitative growth alone does not de facto lead to human progress. Since then, the Party has proclaimed its devotion to a ‘social and ecological market economy’ and is even set on building a ‘green economy’ (PS, 2008; 2012a). However, the indispensability of growth has never been questioned. To reconcile all their goals, Socialists reckon with a decoupling of a rise in GDP, resource consumption, and the emission of greenhouse gases.

The PS’s evolution on the nuclear question is symptomatic of these contra-dictory tendencies (Escalona, 2011). In 2011, several candidates in the primary came out against nuclear power. Hollande wished only for a 75 to 50 percent reduction of its share in the production of electricity by 2025, but this was still a significant change in comparison to the very pro-nuclear positions exhibited up until very recently by the PS. The change is due to an alliance with the ecologists, the mobilization of several anti-nuclear Socialist figures, and the sociological change in the Party’s activists and electorate. At the same time, the slowness and caution that at present seem to characterize the ‘energy tran-sition’ demonstrate the weight of France’s nuclear lobby and above all the fun-damentally productivist vision of the world held by French Socialists.

7.6.4 Europe and foreign policy

Like other European social democratic parties, the issue of Europe remained marginal in the Socialist debates and programs during the 1970s. Mitterrand’s 1978 formula, ‘Europe will be socialist or it will not be’ (quoted in Franck, 2004, p. 465) sums up the PS’s distrust of European integration. In great part this is due to positions hostile to those of the European Community, which are held – internally – by the CERES faction and by the Communists. It was at the moment of the ‘austerity turn’ that a change of course – which resembled a Europeanization of reason – occurred. The Europeanization of the PS occurred both through an internalization of European questions within the Party and through their externalization via the increasing engagement of the Party within the European parliamentary group and the CSPEC (Confederation of

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Socialist Parties of the European Community), which became the PES (Olivier, 2005). Since the Maastricht Treaty, this process was continually borne out by the support of the majority of the PS for the different European treaties.

The new declaration of principles adopted in 2008 confirms the PS’s affili-ation with what Bartolini (2000) called/named the ‘social market Europeanists’ [quotation from the PS document]: ‘The Socialist Party is a European party committed to the historic decision in favor of this construction and situates it in the perspective of a political, democratic, social and ecological Europe. ( ... ) Committed within the Party of European Socialists, the Socialist Party intends to implement all measures that may strengthen these structures’ (PS, 2008, art. 20). Since the Jospin government, this message has been expressed through three priorities: the promotion of a social Europe, the establishment of an eco-nomic governing of the Eurozone, and the reduction of the democratic defi-ciencies of the institutions and of the European decision-making process. This triptych, however, is not unique to the French PS and testifies to a rapproche-ment between European social democratic parties on European questions. The 2012 presidential program was in particular inspired by the common resolu-tions of the PES on the issue of the financial crisis (PES, 2010; 2011). The PS thus endorsed the proposals to establish a tax on financial transactions and Eurobonds. Furthermore, it has been a driving force in the Europeanization of social democratic anti-crisis strategies by forming a working relationship with the SPD. This rapprochement was concretized on June 21, 2011 by a common declaration presented by Aubry and Sigmar Gabriel (PS-SPD, 2011).

As regards foreign policy, there is some consensus between the two principal parties of government. The PS and the UMP have in common the defense of the three pillars of French foreign policy, namely regulating globalization, defending the international multipolar order, and cooperation with the coun-tries of the South. The two parties also support maintaining a nuclear deterrent. Under Sarkozy’s presidency, the Socialists expressed disagreement with stationing troops in Afghanistan and the reintegration of France into NATO’s integrated military command. We note that if withdrawal from Afghanistan was strongly supported by President Hollande, France’s place in NATO will nevertheless not be altered.

7.7 Intra-party life

7.7.1 The presidentialized factionalism

Panebianco defined the SFIO as a decentralized party working in a factional way (1988, p. 65). Indeed, since its creation, the PS has been built on two pillars: its federations and factions, or ‘currents’ to use PS terminology. The factional nature of the Party goes back to its beginnings. The SFIO resulted from the fusion of five large currents. History was repeated in 1971 when the


PS was created with the integration of the old SFIO, Savary’s Union of Clubs for the Renewal of the Left, Poperen’s Union of Socialist Groups and Clubs, and Mitterrand’s Convention of Republican Institutions.

According to the statutes, ‘only general orientation motions made at congresses have the right to be represented’ (art. 1.3.1). Consequently, the internal division of power occurs at all levels on the basis of the relative weight of the currents according to proportional representation.

Far from having eclipsed the PS’s factional mode of organization, the process of presidentialization initiated in the 1970s deeply transformed the role and functioning of the currents. Ideological battles have gradually given way to ‘presidentialized factionalism’ (Cole, 1989; Bell and Criddle, 1994). From that time on, the system of currents rested on the selection of candidates for the presidential election rather than on generating ideology. As a direct conse-quence of presidentialization, the currents led by potential presidential candi-dates (Mitterrand and Rocard) have overshadowed the currents (Mauroy, CERES) that refused to define themselves as presidential stables (Cole, 1989).

7.7.2 Up to 2005

After a period of appeasement during Mitterrand’s first term, the Rennes Congress (1990) opened a phase of confrontations between Mitterrand’s potential successors. This leadership crisis, during which five first secretaries succeeded each other as party leader, came to a close in 1995 with the good score achieved by Jospin in the presidential election. According to Cépéde and Almeida, ‘Jospin’s reconstruction was characterized by the disappearance of the currents, then the eclipsing of tendencies’ (quoted in Bachelot, 2008, p. 402). Although the currents did not really disappear, Jospin’s term was a period of unity. Ten years after the Rennes Congress, the configuration of the Grenoble Congress had become quite changed, with a majority current (72.94 percent) represented by Hollande, which is where the main leaders were located, and a minority left wing (13.78 percent) represented by Emmanuelli, along with the ‘Socialist Left’ (13.28 percent). This configuration of majority coalition/minority left wing is typical of the Hollande era and was to last until the 2008 Reims Congress. Similar to what occurred in the Mitterrand period, the paci-fication of the Party between 1997 and 2002 was due, on the one hand, to Jospin’s double legitimacy – within the Party and electorally – which made him a strong leader, and, on the other hand, to the integration of all the currents of his successive governments.

The 2002 defeat and Jospin’s decision to retire from political life updated the factional rivalries. Three new currents thus appeared in the Party’s left spectrum on the occasion of the 2003 Dijon Congress: the NPS (led by Montebourg, Peillon and Hamon), ‘Nouveau Monde’ (co-founded by Mélenchon and Emmanuelli) and ‘Forces Militantes’ (led by Dolez). The internal campaign around the ECT in 2004,

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which witnessed the majority of activists coming out for the ‘yes’ (58.80 percent), destabilized the dividing lines within the PS. Above all, by joining the supporters of the ‘no’ – who largely coincided with the Party’s three left currents – and in particular those who, with Mélenchon, decided to campaign against the Treaty at the time of the referendum campaign, Fabius offered ‘a chance to alter the power equilibrium in his favor and establish a new dominant coalition against F. Hollande’ (Crespy, 2008, p. 28). The ‘no’ campaign was unquestionably a laboratory for the supporters of the unity of the alter-European and anti-capi-talist left. It was a genuine moment of rupture for Mélenchon’s current, which decided in favor of dissidence in 2008 (Escalona and Vieira, forthcoming). After this episode, the Le Mans Congress (2005) saw the left wing of the Party once again divided. As two years earlier, the NPS , with Emmanuelli now joining it, at 23.54 percent narrowly outstripped the motion led by Fabius (21.17 percent), which Mélenchon supported. This configuration of the PS’s left wing represents a continuation of the forces campaigning for the ‘no’ to the ECT.

Table 7.7 PS congresses results, 2000–5

Majority Minority

Year and city Participation Motions

% and votes Motions

% and votes

First Secretary

2000 Grenoble November 24–26

Members – Voters –

Hollande (Jospin, Mauroy, Rocard, Fabius)

72.94 56,374

Emmanuelli 13.78 10,647

Hollande

Gauche socialiste (Mélenchon, Dray)

13.28 10,266

2003 Dijon May 15–17

Members 129,537 Voters 76,95

Hollande 61.37 60,405

NPS (Montebourg, Peillon, Hamon)

16.88 16,620

Hollande

Utopia 1.05 1,029

Nouveau Monde (Emmanuelli, Mélenchon)

16.37 16,070

Dolez 4.38 4,309

2005 Le Mans Nov 18–20

Members 127,414 Voters 83,39

Hollande 53.63 56,339

NPS (Montebourg, Hamon, Emmanuelli, Dolez, Filoche)

23.54 24,731

Hollande

Fabius (Mélenchon, Lienemann)

21.17 22,238

Utopia 1.02 1,067Bockel 0.64 669

Source: Authors and www.france-politique.fr


7.7.3 From 2006 to 2012

‘Presidentialized factionalism’ was intensified by the institutionalization of direct membership voting and the individual consultation of members on the Party’s electoral projects and the selection of candidates for the presidential election. The change in the method of nominating the Party’s candidate created a new ‘dialectic between leaders, activists and voters’ (Grunberg, 1995 , p. 79), by obliging candidates for the nomination to undertake a ‘triple campaign’: ‘convince the cadres,’ ‘address the members directly’ and ‘debate before the French public’ (Dolez and Laurent, 2007). The democracy of opinion and polls play a de facto fundamental role to the extent that popu-larity has to be the principal asset of potential nominees, as is shown by Royal’s broad success (60.65 percent) against Strauss-Kahn (20.69 percent) and Fabius (18.66 percent) in the 2006 internal primary. Royal deviated sharply from the model of a Socialist candidate, since she had not held a top ministerial post, was not part of the national leadership, and above all because she did not head one of the constituent currents. Personalization was further reinforced by the disconnect between votes on programs and votes for candidates.

The 2006 internal primary signaled a break with the inner-party order of the Hollande era. While after his defeat in the 1995 presidential election Jospin got back leadership of the Party from Emmanuelli, the situation was different in Royal’s case. The distinction put forward by Cole (1989) between ‘organ-izational factions,’ ‘parallel factions’ and ‘external factions’ is illuminating in understanding the deficit of leadership after her defeat in the 2007 presidential election. While her ‘external faction’ position enabled her to compensate for her lack of internal resources and to build her popularity by freeing herself of the Party – both from the point of view of its line and of its top leaders – it proved insufficient for conquering the Party. Royal thus paid for her lack of internal rootedness in the Party and had to face two ‘organizational factions’ (Delanöe and Aubry) at the 2008 Reims Congress. Faced with an ‘anything but Royal’ alliance, which was not based on genuine ideological differences, she lost to Aubry by around 102 votes. Tarnished by the suspicion of irregularities, Aubry’s victory was contested by Royal’s followers, and the two camps emerged weakened from this episode.

On the initiative of the National Secretary for Renewal, Montebourg, the 2011 ‘citizens primaries’ were opened to all left sympathizers. Inspired by the US and Italian primaries, this method of nomination answered three needs: the democratization of candidate nominations to lend them a legitimacy based on millions of votes, the imposition of the candidate’s political and media agenda and, finally, the neutralization of public differences among the candidates, which had severely handicapped Royal in the 2007 campaign. Theoretically, the citizens’ primaries were opened to all of the left parties. However, this was not the reality since among the six candidates (Aubry, Baylet, Hollande,

France 155

Montebourg, Royal and Valls), only Baylet (PRG) did not come from the ranks of the PS. Organized in more than 9,000 polling stations with the aim of gathering the greatest number for the presidential election, the conditions for participation in the vote were reduced to registration in the electoral lists, a one-Euro minimum membership fee, and the signing of a membership form declaring agreement with ‘the values of the left and of the Republic.’ The October 2011 primaries were a success, with 2,860,157 voters in the second round (which was over 200,000 votes more than in the first round). Favored by the polls after the arrest of the IMF’s Managing Director, Strauss-Kahn, Hollande (supported by Valls, Baylet and Montebourg after the first round) clearly outstretched (56.57 percent) First Secretary Aubry.

The configuration of the Toulouse Congress (2012) logically reflected the ‘Jospinian era’ in terms of neutralizing the ranks of the majority current’s leaders, who were all lined up behind President Hollande. The similarity in relations of force between the majority current and the minority left wing is in this respect instructive. The left wing was still divided at the time of the Congress, with the ‘parallel faction’ led by Maurel (strongly recalling the old ‘Socialist Left’) and the ‘external faction’ centered on the duo of Hessel and

Table 7.8 PS Primaries results, 2006–11

1st round 2nd round

Year and type Participation Candidates% and votes

Candidates (% and votes)

PS Candidate

2006 Internal primary November 16

Members 220,269 Voters 81.97

Royal 60.65 108,807

RoyalStrauss-Kahn 20.69

37,118 Fabius 18.66

33,487

2011 Citizens’ primaries Oct 9–16

Voters first round 2,658,667 Voters second round 2,860,157

Hollande 39.16 1,036,767

Hollande (Valls, Baylet, Montebourg)

56.57 1,607,268

Aubry 43.43

1,233,899 Hollande

Aubry 30.44 805,936

Montebourg 17.21

455,536 Royal 6.92

183,343 Valls 5.63

149,077 Baylet (PRG) 0.64

17,030



Larrouturou. At the head of the majority current, Désir became the new First Secretary, with 72.52 percent compared to Maurel’s 27.48 percent.

An unavoidable conclusion of the general picture laid out here is that the presidentialization of the PS’s internal structure has indeed occurred, and its

Table 7.9 PS congresses results, 2008–12

First round

Year and city Participation Motions

% and votes

Second round

First Secretary

2008 Reims November 14–16

Members 232,912 Voters first round 55,38 Voters second round

58,87

Royal (Collomb, Peillon, Valls, Dray)

29.08 37,941

Royal 42.45 57,424 Aubry

(Delanoë) 34.73 46,979 Hamon 22.83 30,880

Aubry Aubry 50.04 67,451 Royal 49.96

67,349

Delanoë (Hollande, Ayrault, Moscovici)

25.24 32,942

Aubry (Fabius, Montebourg)

24.32 31,734

Hamon (Mélenchon, Lienemann, Dolez, Emmanuelli)

18.52 24,162

Pôle écologique 1.59 2,075

Utopia 1.25 1,631

2012 Toulouse Oct 26–28

Members 173,486 Voters first round 50,67 Voters second round

46,5

Désir (Government, Aubry, Delanoë, Royal, Emmanuelli)

68.44 58,135

Désir 72.52

– Maurel 27.48

–

Désir

Maurel (Filoche, Lienemann, Dray, Utopia)

13.28 11,208

Hessel/Larrouturou

11.78 10,005

Maedel/Görce 5.13 4,361

Blanchard 1.36 1,154


France 157

outcome is the citizens’ primaries of 2011. The model of structured currents seems to have been transformed into artificial presidential stables, which are increasingly ephemeral and which lack true ideological cores.

7.8 Conclusion

The PS’s fate in the years to come will be strongly determined by how power is exercised under Hollande’s mandate. The first electoral test for the new gov-ernment will come at the local and European elections taking place in 2014. The situation will by then probably be conditioned by the crisis of the Eurozone and its social consequences. The task of recovery, which the Socialists have given themselves, is looking difficult as the PS has few allies left in Europe. It is also true that it is hard to make out any PS project that speaks to all the dimen-sions of the capitalist economy’s structural crisis. The PS is caught in a contra-diction between the alternative to neoliberal policies, which it is supposed to embody, and its respect for the institutional framework which requires aus-terity and the partial dispossession of popular sovereignty. It is also hardly prepared to manage the new divides generated by globalization: for example, the divide between mobile and skilled citizens, on the one hand, and those who experience this process as an economic threat – even as one endangering their identity – on the other.

In this delicate configuration, the PS’s first task is to define its new role after ten years in opposition. The dilemma is classic: the impossibility of going too far in criticizing government action combined with the danger of having to defend it all the time and cut oneself off from the most mobilized sections of civil society. The balance that is struck will have consequences for the more general challenge that faces the PS – the broadening of its social base, which is particularly narrow in relation to its institutional power – at least if it still wants to be ‘a popular party anchored in the world of labor’ (PS, 2008).

Chronology

1905: Founding of the SFIO in the Salle du Globe, Paris. 1914: Jaurès is assassinated; France’s socialists take part in the Union Sacrée. 1920: Tours Congress; Blum and a minority of the SFIO reject joining the

Second International. 1933: Split of the revisionist neo-socialists. 1936–38: Victory of the Popular Front coalition and formation of a government

led by Blum; he falls in 1937, and the coalition is defeated in 1938. 1939–45: The SFIO is torn apart over the war and full powers are granted to

Pétain; the Party is reconstituted underground.


1946: Mollet beats Blum and his adherents and becomes First Secretary; he remains in this position until 1969.

1946–51: The SFIO participates in the Three-Parties Alliance governments consisting of the MRP and the PCF; beginning in 1947 it participates in Third Force governments, with moderate parties opposed at once to the Communists and to the Gaullists.

1956–7: Mollet leads a government that falls due to the political and financial crisis created by the Algerian War.

1958: Founding of the Fifth Republic whose institutions are accepted in the Issy-les-Moulineaux Congress. Split of the PSA.

1965: The SFIO supports Mitterrand who succeeds in forcing De Gaulle to a second round in the presidential election.

1969: Founding of the Socialist Party at the d’Alfortville Congress (in May); Deferre receives only 5% in the presidential election (June); Savary becomes First Secretary at the Issy-les-Moulineaux Congress (July).

1971: Epinay Congress; Mitterrand becomes First Secretary. 1972: Signing of the Common Program of the left with the PCF and the MRG.

In 1977, negotiations on the implementation of the program were broken off.

1974: Mitterrand is the Socialist candidate running against Valéry Giscard d’Estaing; he loses in the second round by a less than two-point margin.

1981: Election of Mitterrand to the Presidency of the Republic. The PS receives an absolute majority in the National Assembly; Jospin becomes First Secretary.

1986: Defeat of the PS in the legislative elections, which leads to the first coalition government.

1988: Re-election of Mitterrand; the PS does not have an absolute majority in the Assembly. Mauroy becomes the First Secretary, then Fabius in 1992.

1993: Defeat of the PS in the legislative elections, which leads to a second coalition government; Rocard becomes First Secretary; he is replaced by Emmanuelli in 1994 following a heavy defeat in the European elections.

1995: Defeat of Jospin by Chirac; he becomes First Secretary again. 1997: Victory of the plural left in the legislative elections: Jospin becomes Prime

Minister; Hollande becomes First Secretary of the PS for 11 years. 2002: Jospin is eliminated in the first ballot of the presidential election. 2005: The PS supports the ‘yes’ vote to the European Constitutional Treaty, but

the ‘no’ wins. At the Special Congress in Le Mans, Hollande is able to forge a ‘synthesis’ and remain head of the Party.

2007: Defeat of Royal by Sarkozy. 2008: New declaration of principles. Aubry becomes First Secretary after the

Reims Congress. 2008–10: Success in local elections but failure in the European elections;

launching of the Party’s renewal process.

France 159

2011: Hollande wins the ‘citizen primaries’ organized by the PS. 2012: Election of Hollande; the PS receives an absolute majority in the National

Assembly. Désir becomes First Secretary at the Toulouse Congress.

Notes

1 . The 1981 victory cannot be attributed solely to Mitterrand’s talents. The structural progression of more permissive cultural norms and the decline of religious practice, the continuous rise in unemployment during Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s term and the consequences of the Communist Party’s losses were crucial (Martin, 2000, pp. 217–37).

2 . The term indicates the legislative and governmental agreement between the PS, the PCF, the Greens, the PRG and the MDC of the former Socialist leader Chevènement.

3 . The document that served as the primary source for this sub-section is entitled ‘Statuts et règlement intérieur du PS’ (Statutes and Internal Regulations of the PS) (PS, 2012c).

4 . The Young Socialist Movement and the National Federation of Elected Socialists and Republicans are the two principal organizations of this type.

5 . The revision of the statutes in 2008 and 2012 required two congresses within five years – once in the six months that follow the presidential election, a second halfway through the term.

6 . Survey undertaken by the National Committee for the new information and commu-nication technologies, May 2006.

7 . French Electoral Panel (2002). 8 . This measure resembled a sort of negative tax encouraging the return to work, even

if poorly remunerated.

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