French Political Parties

French Political Parties

France has a multi-party political system, that is to say one in which the number of competing political parties is sufficiently large as to make it almost inevitable that in order to participate in the exercise of power any single party must be prepared to negotiate with one or more others with a view to forming electoral alliances and/or coalition agreements.

The dominant French political parties are also characterized by a noticeable degree of intra-party factionalism, making each of them effectively a coalition in itself.

Since the 1980s, the government of France has alternated between two rather stable coalitions:

  • on the centre-left, one led by the Socialist Party and with minor partners such as Europe Ecology – The Greens, the Left Party, and the Radical Party of the Left.
  • on the centre-right, one led by the Union for a Popular Movement and previously its predecessors Rally for the Republic and the Union for French Democracy, with support from the New Centre.

It is difficult for parties outside these two major coalitions to make significant inroads, although the National Front has had sizable successes.

Read more about French Political Parties:  Major Regionalist Parties, Political Parties in French Overseas Possessions

Famous quotes containing the words french, political and/or parties:

    “He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned.”
    —14th-century French proverb, first recorded in English in A. Barclay, Gringore’s Castle of Labour (1506)

    “For aesthetics is the mother of ethics.... Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe—not empirically, alas, but only theoretically—that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.”
    —Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)

    “The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don’t acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead.”
    —Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)