The Fall of Two Presidents and Extraparliamentary Opposition: France and the United States in 1968

Abstract

EXTRAPARLIAMENTARY OPPOSTION MADE ITS APPEARANCE IN THE midst of the political upheavals of 1968 both as part of a wider phenomenon of social and political life and as the result of a specific combination of factors in certain countries, especially France and the United States. In the wider sense, it resulted from the age-old problem: are established political structures willing (or indeed able) to answer the needs of the larger socio-political communities for whose welfare they have been made responsible? The problems of the technological age—popular participation in governmental processes, the coming of age of the post-war ‘baby boom’ generation, the quality of life in the consumer society, and, perhaps most significantly, the increasing bureaucratization of administration and politics on both sides of the iron curtain—served to stoke the furnaces of scepticism and open rejection of accepted answers. As the year progressed, the collective leadership of the Soviet Union continued to pull back from the de-Stalinization of the Krushchev era, American leaders were assassinated and racial strife continued, hopes for a Middle East settlement faded, and the Vietnam war exploded in the Tet offensive. The atmosphere of hopeful progress which had permeated the early 1960s was shattered for good, and a widespread mood of frustration came to predominate.