French Political Parties in Campaign (1989–2004): A Configurational Analysis of Political Discourses on Europe

Abstract

This article analyses the nature of French political parties' attitudes towards the EU. Three main dimensions of the EU process and of its impact on the member states are focused upon: identity, representation and scope of governance. We propose for the analysis a complementary insight in to the ideological explanations of party attitudes towards the EU by focusing on two main factors of variation: the institutional position of parties and time effects. We show that French parties divide over EU issues, along the lines opposing (1) major parties to radical and outsider parties, and (2) governmental parties to non-governmental and extra-parliamentary parties. Left and right do not impact the pattern of contestation of the EU issue in the French case. Parties divide upon EU issues producing in the end a peculiar pattern that differs from the more traditional patterns of party competition of France. Finally, there is diversity between the attitudes of the party central office and the party in public office.

Key Words:

• French parties
• EU
• Euromanifestos
• MPs
• attitudes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Marie-Hélène Bruère and Yves Deloye for their participation in the coding of the Euromanifestos, and Yves Deloye for his comments and help in the first draft of this text.

Notes

This research was funded by a grant from the INTUNE project (Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe) financed by the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union, Priority 7, Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society (CIT3-CT-2005-513421).

¹ We start the analysis from 1989 as for the first two elections only four manifestos are available. Manifestos will be quoted with the party's acronym and the year of the election. For example: (PS, 1989) for the Socialist Party manifesto during the 1989 election.

² All quotations are the authors' own translations.

³ The party received 4% of votes in the European Parliament elections in 1989 and 1994; 6.77% and 6 MEPs in 1999; 2% in 2004.

⁴ Variable modalities defining this first pole of the first axis are mentioned hereafter in decreasing order of positive contribution to the first factorial axis. It means that ‘Party family: extreme right’ and ‘National action in Europe: Defence/rejection’ display the highest weight on the first axis on the ‘euro-critic’ side. See Appendix.

⁵ Here again, the answers that define the second pole are mentioned in decreasing order of contribution to the definition of this pole.

⁶ Due to space constraints, we do not present the tables here, but they are available on demand.