Political Parties In France
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 Political Parties In France: Major Regionalist Parties, Political Parties in French Overseas Possessions
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“The merely political aspect of the land is never very cheering; men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organization.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“In France a woman will not go to sleep until she has talked over affairs of state with her lover or her husband.”
—Jules Mazarin (1602–1661)