Regroupment and Retrenchment on the Radical Left in France

Abstract

This article will focus on three extraordinary episodes which took place in the 12 months between spring 2005 and spring 2006. These events, the referendum on the proposed European Union constitution, the urban riots of November 2005 and the movement against the De Villepin government's Contrat Première Embauche, bear witness to an upheaval in French politics and society, underpinned by a revolt against neo-liberalism which has been unfolding in an uneven and sometimes haphazard fashion for over a decade. This revolt has coincided with and exacerbated the decline of the two dominant political traditions in France of the past 20 years, Gaullism and social democracy, and has produced its own form of political expression, in the shape of a convergence of various grass roots networks with a number of parties and organizations of the radical political left. The potential of this convergence to pose a significant threat to the established mainstream parties is the central preoccupation of this essay.1