The Growth, Persistence, and Fall of the French National Front

Abstract

To develop its theoretical framework, this book carefully analyzed the two “most similar” cases of Germany and Austria and compared them with the “most different” case of Greece. It showed that despite marked differences between the Greek and the other country cases, a similar process shaped the electoral trajectory of the Far Right. To probe the generalizability of this framework, the last empirical chapter of this book examines the case of the French Far Right. There are important empirical and theoretical reasons for choosing France as a test case for the theory developed in the earlier chapters. Empirically, this is one of the most important cases in Europe because in the past few decades, the National Front (FN) has become a potent and permanent force in French politics. Despite the strong majoritarian qualities of the French electoral system, the party has averaged more than 9% in all but the most recent national legislative elections since 1986. Jean-Marie Le Pen, who failed to collect the 500 signatures necessary to run for the 1981 presidential elections, staged the biggest upset in modern French politics by making it to the second round of the 2002 presidential elections. Apart from its empirical significance, the French case is also important for theoretical reasons: It offers a great opportunity to go beyond the particularities of the Austrian case and further examine the effect of party-specific variables on the electoral performance of the Far Right.