By: Ibis Almada
France has a total of thirteen different political parties, of which only four are the most dominant in the country. The parties are the Rally for the Republic (RPR), the Union for A Popular Movement (UMP), the French Communist Party (PCF), and the Socialist Party (PS). France’s political parties are divided into left, extreme left, right, extreme right and sectorial.
The Socialist Party (PS) was funded by François Mitterrand in 1971, and it is the principal opposition party in France (About-France.com), believing in nationalization, a strong welfare state, and participative democracy; which lead François Mitterrand to be elected. They started by nationalizing sectors of the economy, then doing a U-turn and creating policies of privatizations (About-France.com). The second, and still main, left party has been the French Communist Party, (PCF) which was founded by Georges Marchais. This party stayed the same after the fall of the soviet communism in 1990, which cause the party to split into different pieces, now only attracting less than 5% of the people. (About-France.com). The Union for A Popular Movement, (UMP) is one of the largest political parties, because it has achieved so much, do to the party’s involvement in a broad range of political opinion like conservatives and social liberals (About-France.com). Lastly, the Rally for the Republic (RPR) which was founded by Chirac in 1976. The party is considered Gaullist, because of its ideologies in conservatism, conservative Liberalism and Gaullism.
The reason why these parties have lasted is because of their right and left different and the amount of time they have been around. Another big influence is the fifth republic, which drastically decreased the amount of political parties, because the small ones were joining with the stronger and financially stable ones. Many of them united to the socialist program because it promoted closer economic and political cooperation with the Soviet Union.
The parties advance the cause of democracy because it gives the voters the options to choose which party they like best. They are not putting them between the spear and the wall but actually giving them options to decide which one thy really want. This also helps the government of a country to be constantly changing which is what people prefer. I would judge the level of democracy of France as more than competent but not quite outstanding. They have a big variety of parties, but having so many parties may trouble the people and could also cause no one party to hold office for more than once, every election and that is not enough time to accomplish everything any party wants.
Work Cited:
-“The Main French Political Parties.” France Diplomatie. http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france/institutions-and-politics/the-french-political-system/article/the-main-french-political-parties (accessed October 23, 2012)
-“Political Parties in France.” About-France.com. http://about-france.com/political-parties.htm
(accessed October 23, 2012)
-“Government, Political Parties” Countries Quest. http://www.countriesquest.com/europe/france/government/political_parties.htm (accessed October 23, 2012)
U.S. Government Honors. 