French Political Parties: Les Verts & Front National Analysis
Les Verts (Greens) and Front National (National Front) in France
Les Verts (Greens) – Ecology Generation. The environmental movement was born with the anti-nuclear protests of the 1960s and 1970s, which spread environmental awareness and increased concern over the deterioration of the fauna and flora. Local partnerships that emerged then joined in the Federation of Societies for the Protection of Nature (1969), or Friends of the Earth (1970). The articulation of the environmental movement as a political party occurred in 1982, with the rise of the Greens (LV). Two years later, they were joined by Friends of the Earth. After 1986, election results began to be significant, but in 1990 came a competitor, Ecological Generation, led by the Environment Minister of the Rocard government. In the 1993 legislative elections, both parties fielded candidates but did not get great results, perhaps because of the proliferation of fake green candidates to benefit from the law of party funding.
Due to different ideological backgrounds among militant environmentalists, several trends can be seen:
- Focus on the denunciation of the exploitation of nonrenewable natural resources.
- Criticizing the structures of industrial societies and the perversion of the current economic system.
- Focus on the denunciation of the democratic deficit in contemporary Western States.
The Greens’ Eco-Generation program has incorporated ideas and proposals from all three trends.
Front National (FN). The National Front was founded in 1972 from the merger of two far-right groups under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen, in order to integrate into the political system. Until the 1985 municipal elections, significant results failed to enter political institutions, although the 1984 European elections obtained 11% of the vote. In the legislative elections of 1986, held under a proportional formula, they got 9.9% and entered the National Assembly with its own parliamentary group, but in 1988, they turned out to be an extra strength for the return of the double-majority electoral formula.
Its constituents belong to all social categories and are located in all departments, mainly in industrial areas with high immigration rates, being more sensitive to nationalistic and xenophobic approaches and issues of safety of citizens and public order. Their leaders, compared with those of a conservative party, have special characteristics: they are over-represented by the self-employed and appreciate some inferiority of their economic and cultural standing. The party’s internal structure is hierarchical and centralized. The public perceives this as a racist party and does not want it to come to rule, so it is more a means through which part of the population expresses their discontent and their fears. In the recent presidential election, the FN leader was in the first round with more votes than Jospin and contested the presidency of the Republic against Chirac. Besides the problem of insecurity and unemployment, his constituents are also afraid of five million Muslims, two million immigrants, and globalization, felt as a commercial struggle without limits.
The results of the second round of legislative elections have shown that political life continues to revolve around the presidential election, and the outcome of the first round is a contextual moment.
The Party System of the Fifth Republic
France has a multiparty system, supported by historical tradition. The voting behavior has changed significantly over the third and fourth republics and has provided stable majorities that have given the Council of Ministers the chance to rule. Two alliances, one right and one left, join the four major parties in the parliamentary and presidential elections. This polarization, resulting among other causes of the institutional arrangements of the semi-presidential regime, has structured the usual multi-party system. Before 1958, not a single party had a sufficient majority to govern alone and maintained the relative equality of five parties. In the Assembly of the Fifth Republic, there are 4 parliamentary groups, and all practice voting discipline. The polarization functions because the parties deem the most important thing that unites them is more important than what separates them, allowing alternation and cohabitation.