Andrew Knapp

The cumul des mandats, local power and political parties in France

French politicians show an unusual appetite for combining local and national elective offices, the practice known as the cumul des mandats. This feature of the French political system has arisen from the specific characteristics of central‐local relations in France and from the weakness of French political parties, which it has in turn reinforced. The cumul has survived both the ‘nationalisation’ of French politics under the Fifth Republic and the decentralisation legislation of the early 1980s, which removed some of its functions for local government. While multiple office‐holding is now limited by law, the incentives to combine the posts of Deputy and mayor for the same town are undiminished.

What's left of the French right? The RPR and the UDF from conquest to humiliation, 1993–1998

The years 1997–98 were among the most difficult in the history of Frances moderate Right‐wing parties. This article analyses their difficulties in three contexts: that of long‐term electoral decline since the 1960s; that of a continuing ‘gravitational pull’ of French parties towards Duvergers cadre model, despite the apparent ‘presidentialisation’ of parties under the Fifth Republic; and that of the weaknesses underlying Jacques Chiracs presidential victory in 1995. A concluding section assesses the mainstream Rights prospects in the light both of its structural disabilities and of the opportunities offered, in late 1998, by the break‐up of the extreme right‐wing Front National.

The Destruction and Liberation of Le Havre in Modern Memory

The Allied capture of Le Havre from its German garrison on 12 September 1944 was preceded by a week of air raids which, though militarily quite ineffective, destroyed most of the city and killed between 1500 and 2000 French civilians. This article assesses a range of explanations for the citys destruction, contrasts British and French perspectives on the raids, and shows that the trauma of September 1944 has continued to define local memory over six decades. The impact of British and American bombing on Allied civilians, it suggests, remains a relatively under-researched area in the study of the Second World War.

Top‐down to bottom‐up? Centre‐periphery relations and power structures in France's Gaullist party

Changes in centre‐periphery relations, both institutional (most notably decentralisation) and socio‐economic (the growing importance of cities) have radically altered the environment in which French political parties operate. The unprecedentedly close links between parties and the local political system that have resulted have profoundly affected power structures within the parties. Just as the Fifth Republic ‘presidentialised’ parties, so decentralisation has ‘localised’ them. The case of the Rassemblement pour la Republique, the inheritor to the top‐down, presidentialist tradition of Gaullism, is a remarkable illustration of this transformation.

Les Français sous les bombes alliées

Plus de 517 000 tonnes de bombes sont deversees sur l’Hexagone par les allies entre 1940 et 1945, soit pres de sept fois plus que le total largue sur le Royaume-Uni par la Luftwaffe. Plus de 57 000 Francais en sont morts, dont plus de 38 000 au cours de la seule annee 1944. Cet aspect fondamental de l’histoire des annees noires, que les survivants et les familles des victimes ne connaissent que trop bien, et qui a fait l’objet de nombreuses etudes locales, est encore relativement marginalise de la « grande histoire » de l’Occupation et de la Liberation. Pourquoi et comment les armees aeriennes alliees ont-ils attaque la France ? Quelles mesures ont ete prises par le gouvernement de Vichy pour proteger les populations ? Comment les Allies ont-ils justifie les attaques aupres des Francais, et comment la propagande vichyssoise a-t-elle essaye de les mettre a profit ? Comment les populations civiles ont-ils vecu les bombardements, et comment se sont-elles mobilisees pour se defendre ? Comment la Resistance a-t-elle reagi a des attaques qui ne pouvaient que nuire a son audience au sein des Francais, ainsi qu’a celle des « Anglo-saxons » ? Autant de questions auxquelles l’ouvrage comme le documentaire repondent, avec l’appui de documents d’archives britanniques et francaises, mais aussi de temoignages nombreux et emouvants.

Review: Tim Brooks, British Propaganda to France, 1940—1944: Machinery, Method and Message, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2007; xviii + 233 pp., 13 figures, 1 table, 16 maps; 9780748625192, £60.00 (hbk)

nom de plume (and, as far as I am aware, he never published under his real name). The name ‘Alberto Pincherle’ is on the list, but as Moravia shared that name with a distinguished Jewish orientalist, and as other Jewish academics were also on the list, the ambiguity remains. If this ambiguity is characteristic of Fascist censorship in Italy, what is quite clear is the complicity of many publishing houses. Bonsaver produces a mass of evidence to sustain his criticism of the ‘shameful record’ of the successful players in the Italian publishing industry, most especially Mondadori. This is a well-researched book, which deserves a wide readership.

The End of Gaullism and the Birth of the President’s Party

‘Fifth Republic keeps wafer-thin majority in the Assembly’, announced Le Monde on 14 March 1967, referring to the Gaullists’ narrow parliamentary election victory. For many observers, over a decade and more, the Gaullist UNR was not just a party; it was cosubstantial with the regime itself. This perception had been shaped in part by the sharp opposition between Gaullists and the cartel des non at the October 1962 referendum on the direct election of the president. But it was also underpinned by the coincidence between a still-new regime embodying a degree of personal leadership unknown under the two previous Republics, and a party, similarly imbued with the leader principle, exercising a degree of dominance equally unprecedented in earlier Republics. The party enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the President, self-evidently France’s most powerful politician, who could count on its unstinting support in parliament and in the country. And de Gaulle’s deliberately personal exercise of power led many anti-Gaullists of the 1960s to assume that the Gaullist ascendancy was based on the charismatic leadership of one man, whose departure or death would precipitate the collapse of the regime, or failing that of the party.

The Course of Electoral Politics

This chapter traces the course of electoral politics under the Fifth Republic. It is therefore chronological, empirical, and at times descriptive. But a grasp of the chronology is particularly important for the French case because change goes beyond the mere vicissitudes of electoral results; indeed, it often appears that each presidential election is the signal for a general rearrangement of the party system. Three tables underpin the narrative: Table 2.1 supplies a chronological overview of presidents, governments, parliamentary majorities, elections, and referendums, while Tables 2.2 and 2.3 give results of elections to the National Assembly and the presidency, and are the reference point for accounts of individual elections.

Conclusion: a Disconnected Democracy?

The dominant event of early twenty-first century French party politics was the ‘thunderclap’ (in the words of Jospin’s concession speech of 21 April) of the 2002 elections. The four ballots of 2002 — two each to elect the president and the parliament — established a remarkable collection of political records and ‘firsts’, most of which suggested that France was undergoing a crisis of political representation. The most striking of these, of course, was the unprecedented success of a far-right candidate in reaching the second ballot of a presidential election. But 2002 also saw the highest levels of first-ballot abstention, for both presidential and parliamentary elections, in 150 years of universal suffrage.1 This was not, on the face of it, for lack of voter choice; there were record numbers of candidates both for the presidency (sixteen, against just six in 1965 and a previous record of twelve in 1974) and for parliament (14.6 per seat, against 11.2 in 1997, 9.3 in 1993, and just 5.0 in 1988).

Perspectives on Parties in France

Political parties in democratic systems can be viewed in five different ways. First, a party is a player in a competitive game with at least one other party (single-party regimes are not democracies). Parties set out to influence the exercise of state power, usually (though not invariably) by presenting candidates for election with a view to winning and holding government office. This competitive game is played within institutional rules, such as the electoral system and the distribution of power between parliament and the executive. However, because the number of players may be more than two, an individual party may need not only to fight against opponents but also to negotiate with and compete alongside allies: electoral competitors may become necessary parliamentary partners. The configuration of parties within a particular state — the number of parties, and their relationships with one another, with the voters, and with the state — is called a party system.