The Right‐Wing Leagues and Electoral Politics in Interwar France

Abstract

AbstractThe rise of the right‐wing leagues was the most striking symptom of the deep political crisis of the French Third Republic in the 1930s. The Croix de Feu was the most successful of these movements, and when it became a political party following the Popular Front government's ban on the leagues in 1936, it achieved a spectacular mass membership of around one million. French historians have, however, been reluctant to see these developments as analogous to events in Italy or Germany, arguing that the leagues were part of a long bonapartist tradition of episodic anti‐parliamentary protest, and that France was historically insulated against fascism. This article argues, on the contrary, that what made the leagues different from their Italian and German counterparts was not ideology, but their failure to gain access to the mainstream political arena. Without parliamentary representation they lacked political leverage at moments of crisis. The obstacles posed by the regime's electoral processes thus deserve much greater attention than they have been afforded hitherto.