How populist are populist parties in France? Understanding parties’ strategies within a systemic approach

ABSTRACT

The Front National is the prime example of anti-systemic and populist party in France. But in the 2000s, La France Insoumise on the far left also developed a rhetoric that could fall into this category yet without sharing the ideology of far-right party. Reinvestigating previous studies, we may ask if the populist concept make sense to understand populism in France? Thus following a systemic field analysis, we study variations in the discourse of these two parties during campaigning and routine periods by analyzing the Facebook posts of their two leaders. They do not use the same strategies and, variations between the two periods highlight two different uses of populist rhetoric in addition to their two opposed ideologies. This paper discusses the relevance of the notion by stressing the need to think about populism within a systemic approach in the French political field that partly explains its spread to almost all parties.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• France
• Rassemblement national
• France Insoumise
• communication
• Facebook

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The first label comes from the end of the nineteenth century (1889–91), when General Boulanger succeeded in rallying nationalist voters seeking revenge against Germany and socialist voters (i.e., the ‘people’ versus the established parties). Then, more substantially, post–WWII academic discourse on French parties identifies a ‘bonapartist’ right-wing tradition in reference to Napoleon, combining conservatism and direct appeal to the people (e.g., via referendum). The third movement created by Pierre Poujade was characterised by its opposition to every type of tax and to parliamentary governmental practices, its anti-intellectualism, its xenophobia, and its anti-Semitism. It has been elected to the French parliament between 1954 and 1956. At that time, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was a young MP of the Poujade movement.

2 It should be noted, however, that the European elections mobilise voters far less than the presidential elections in France.

3 https://www.sciencespo.fr/cevipof/sites/sciencespo.fr.cevipof/files/CEVIPOF_confiance_vague10-1.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This publication was conducted within the scope of the H2020 Societal Challenges project Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe (DEMOS) and was funded by the European Commission under [grant number 822590].