modern political parties, especially in the period of Republican experi- ments (1848–1851 for the Second Republic and 1870–1914 for the first stage of the Third Republic). Even today, historians and political scientists alike are struck by the fragmentation of political groups by political activ- ism6 or within the chambers of the parliament.7 According to the young
political science, the dispersion of groups and factions and the absence of stable political parties were the causes of the repetition of ministerial crises.8 It fuelled the general image of weakness and political chaos often
associated with French Republican politics. It also prevented France from gaining the status of a genuine ‘parliamentary government’ based on the criteria that were beginning to be fixed and canonized by the European constitutionalists and specialists of Public Law.9
The absence or weakness of French political parties was not only a topic of discussion among scientists and academics but also the constant obsession of leading French political actors. From the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century, French politicians like Léon Gambetta, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, André Tardieu and Michel Debré bemoaned the lack of organized parties. The British example of Whigs and Tories was widely praised by French politicians despite their ignorance of the actual functioning of British politics. There were many attempts at creating organized and modern political parties, notably in the 1870s (with Gambetta) or in the 1890s (with Waldeck-Rousseau). All these attempts ended in failure. The ‘French problem’ was seen as a counter- model in the evaluation of political systems. Influenced by foreign experi- ences that seemed more stable but also by the French liberal tradition, prominent French political scientists and jurists like Adhémar Esmein and Raymond Carré de Malberg thought that the French Republic had fol- lowed a deviant path of parliamentary development. They preferred the ‘rule of law’ (Etat de droit) and its constant progress based on the activity of the Council of State and its jurisprudence, and did not like the existing political and legislative regime.10 The French parliamentary system was
incomplete because it was not based on disciplined political parties. From this point of view, the Fifth Republic was presented as the constitutional regime that put an end to that curse. The Gaullist Constitution, at last, had found the key to the ‘true’ way of the parliamentary regime. Michel Debré, for instance, one of the two ‘founding fathers’ of the new Republic along with De Gaulle, introduced the new Constitution of 1958 not as a decline of the parliamentary system but as a way to restore it on a solid and efficient basis.11
However, the peculiarities of the Republican forms of political organi- zations should not be seen as anomalies but as part of a particular political experience. If large and organized political parties did not exist in France (or were very awkwardly shaped and weakly disciplined12), how can we
explain the fact that French politics was able to develop in a continuous and rather flourishing manner, notably under the Republic? How did the French Republic achieve democratic ‘performances’ quite comparable to the ones obtained by other democracies based on modern party systems. Why was there, for example, a high electoral turnout, a successful politici- zation of the masses and political pluralism? In other words, what system did replace the nation-wide political parties? Should we stick to the the- sis of ‘delay’ in the development of the French political life comparable to the economic and social backwardness found in the paradigm of the ‘stalemate society’ proposed by Stanley Hoffmann 50 years ago?13 Or had
French politics, in the absence of political parties, followed a specific path of political modernization that proved efficient in its own right?
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The hesitation to even envision organization and discipline in the politi- cal realm in general, characterized both the political culture of the right (carried by the monarchists and the Bonapartists) and the political culture of the left (embodied by Republicans of different hues including social- ists). The major political traditions in France rejected the model of politi- cal parties even if they did so for very different reasons. On the right, the dominant ideology has long maintained reluctance towards what the Italian political scientist Paolo Pombeni has called the ‘forme-parti’ or party model.14 The monarchists have experienced multiple political divi-
sions that have been traditionally simplified by the distinction between ‘légitimistes’ and ‘orléanistes’.15 However that may be, they have all long
rejected the organization of modern political parties. Their political ideal was the national ‘concord’: general reconciliation in respect and, for some monarchists, in devotion to the king. The fact that the monarchists (including Legitimists) were for most of the nineteenth century in the opposition did not prompt the formation of a party but an eschatological hope for the return of the king. The restoration of the monarchy was seen as an almost miraculous event that would silence the quarrels dividing the nation since the Revolution of 1789. It is striking to note, for instance, how the Legitimists circles behaved around 1871–1873 when several
attempts were made to put the count of Chambord (‘Henri V’) on the throne. Everything happened through negotiations between parliamen- tary factions and the entourage of the royal heir. An agreement between aristocratic groups was supposed to play a key role. Neither a monarchist party with a minimum of coherence nor a political organization like a club was involved in that dubious enterprise. The attempt was not based on the political organization of the masses. And it failed.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, when political life became increasingly modernized, especially in urban areas, distrust if not rejection of political parties remained a key feature of the conservative and national- ist political culture. Political parties were accused of dividing the ‘people’ and the ‘country’, and of weakening the State and therefore of jeopardiz- ing France as a prominent power on both the European and the imperial stages. These ideas, which were still widespread around 1910, strongly influenced, for example, the young Charles de Gaulle. Even in the 1950s, the most popular politician of the Fourth Republic, along with Pierre Mendès France, was Antoine Pinay, the man who had built his whole career of local and national representative on the image of an ‘a-political’ politician. He rejected ideologies, constantly called for national ‘concord’, and was a staunch opponent of parties, which he saw as political machines incompatible with the ideal of liberty. During the Fourth Republic, he was a member of the Centre national des indépendants, a party that, as its name suggests, imposed little discipline on its members. It is clear that Antoine Pinay was the most popular politician of his time, in part at least because of his anti-parties stand.16
The ‘nationalist synthesis’, to borrow a concept of René Rémond, that appeared during the Dreyfus Affair in the 1890s, did not help to rec- oncile the French Right with the model of an organized political party willing to comply with normal or stable politics and with Republican and Constitutional rules. The Anti-Dreyfus fight led to the decline of the ‘notables’, the modernization of the repertory of action and a deeper pen- etration into the popular classes of the French Right.17 However, noth-
ing of this was going in the direction of organized political parties ready to accept the constitutional game. The modernization of the right-wing movements stimulated political activism like street activism but also intel- lectual and cultural fights as launched by the Action française,18 rather
than political parties. If one fraction of the Right within the parliamentary sphere had repeatedly tried to promote the creation of a major political party (peopled by moderates and conservatives), another important frac-
tion had given their preference to anti-constitutional forms of political action, by recourse to extra-parliamentary agitation and rejection of elec- toral competitions. These radical groups of the Right were not available for the formation of a conservative party on the British model, which had long been the dream of French moderates. In this context, the ‘league’ was widely praised as a form of organization that was able to challenge the party model, which appeared too conventional from a rightist point of view. It is sufficient to cite the Ligue des Patriotes or the Ligue de la Patrie française, two prominent actors in the anti-dreyfusard camp in the 1890s and the 1900s. The structure of the Ligue was preferred to the politi- cal party because it allowed maintaining the traditional rejection of the Republic. It was seen as a better tool in promoting the cause of the mon- archy in the case of the Action française, or the cause of an authoritarian and nationalistic type of Republic in the case of the Ligue des Patriotes, which was founded in 1882 and played a crucial role in the populist wave of Boulangism of the late 1880s. The modern frame of a league was also better adapted to the new urban and popular clientele than the traditional ‘party’, which was more a sort of conglomerate of elected people and notables than a popular organization.
It was not until the advent of the Fifth Republic in 1958 that the right- wing movements acceded to the status of ‘constitutional’ actors, support- ers of the regime, and ready to adopt the modern model of political parties and its discipline. However, the organizational instability epitomized by frequent changes of party names has also characterized the history of the French right since 1958. The anti-party spirit remains a central feature of the political culture of the Right up to our time. This cultural trait explains partially the success of the National Front since the mid-1980s.
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eFtStrong ambiguities had also existed in the camp of the Left. Yet, from the Revolution to the creation of the Third Republic, left-wing groups had seemed several times on the brink of the foundation of political parties. Forced to organize themselves in the opposition and sometimes clandes- tinely, the groups of the Left had relied on the politicized fractions of the working classes all through the nineteenth century, which provided a context that could have been a good basis for the formation of politi- cal parties. Indeed, the groups of the Left were also able to inherit the legacy of old forms of popular sociability, as Maurice Agulhon had dem-
onstrated.19 The Left had a rich past of organizing in popular societies and
political clubs, especially during the 1830s and the 1840s.20 Nevertheless,
these clubs and associations had not succeeded in uniting themselves in a modern nation-wide political organization (under the Second Empire for instance). The catchword ‘Republican party’ was often used during the nineteenth century, especially between 1820 and 1870, but its meaning was not associated with a formal organization. It was rather a rhetorical expression to unite the numerous fractions of the Left, from moderate Republicans to socialists. The ‘Republican party’ had a strong resonance as a sentimental evocation but almost no actual reality in terms of political organization.
With the advent of the Third Republic in the 1870s, a change seemed plausible. Léon Gambetta tried to become the leader of a large and popu- lar Republican party. The Republican party should change from a mere rhetorical or sentimental signification into a real organization, notably in the electoral field. This change should have led to unity and discipline of the Republican group within the National Assembly. The perspective envisioned by Gambetta was explicitly to foster a British-style political life characterized by the existence of two major parties: one moderate with a conservative leaning and the other more radical and progressive. The req- uisite was that both parties should be Republican in their principles. They should support the constitutional regime of the Republic. Gambetta’s scheme implied that the Republicans first had to win a total victory over the monarchists and the Bonapartists. As a harbinger, Gambetta had undertaken a considerable electoral project by centralizing a large file of Republican candidates with their respective constituencies.21
However, Gambetta never succeeded in reaching the scale of a truly organized political party. That failure could partially be explained by polit- ical circumstances and notably feelings of jealousy and distrust among other Republican leaders. Many of them had always been suspicious about the authoritarian tendency attributed to Gambetta. The experience of the Government of the National Defence of 1870–1871 during which Gambetta had been accused of behaving like a ‘dictator’ was often held against him. But the failure of Gambetta can be explained more convinc- ingly by the existence of structural obstacles, both intellectual and ide- ological, opposed to the formation of modern political parties. Several reasons can be invoked here. Firstly, a modern British-style political party entailed the acceptance of strong personal leadership. The role played by Gladstone at the head of the English Liberal party showed that only a
form of personal power could guarantee the internal unity of the party and its consistency in parliament. The majority of the French Republicans were not ready to accept this type of strong leadership. For many Republicans, lulled by the ideal of popular sovereignty and the idea of collegiate power, it made no sense to accept the kind of personal tyranny for the sake of a modern party that they had so strongly objected to with respect to mon- archs or the idea of a strong president that they had fiercely fought against during the Second Empire. They rejected any absolute ‘personal power’ (pouvoir personnel).
Moreover, Gambetta’s idea was that the Republicans would organize themselves into two different parties after previously having vanquished or absorbed the ‘old parties’ of Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists. Yet, the Republicans never managed to eliminate the representatives of the former political regimes. The Right was beaten but retained strongholds almost everywhere in France.22 The ‘old parties’ that the Republicans
tended to see as definitively condemned by History have often re-emerged. Monarchism, for instance, was usually seen as a species endangered around 1890, and yet it enjoyed a process of renaissance with the success of the Ligue of Action française in the 1900s. The influence of both the Action française and its intellectual leader, Charles Maurras, lasted until the estab- lishment of the Vichy Regime in 1940. The Bonapartists were fading away little by little in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century Bonapartist culture was successfully transmitted to a modern patriotic right-wing movement, mainly through leagues, first of the nationalists in the fin de siècle, then in several leagues of the interwar period like the Jeunesses Patriotes and eventually in the Gaullism of the RPF during the Fourth Republic.
The survival of the old parties posed a challenge for the Republicans, especially within the troubled game of the parliament. Under the Third Republic, the peculiar process of the formation of political majorities makes it difficult to draw clear boundaries between political groups.23 For
reasons of parliamentary tactics, the Republicans often called for the unity of all Republican tendencies under the label of the ‘Republican party’ and against the anti-Republican Right. This propensity to favour politi- cal majorities of a ‘Republican concentration’ (moderate Republicans and Radicals together) delayed the emergence of a moderate Republican party and another Republican party of a progressive type. When the moderate Republicans tried to build a majority (and possibly a political party) by an alliance with different groups of the Right, the more advanced Republican
fractions immediately accused them of betraying the Republic, as was the case with Méline in the 1890s. Thus, many moderate Republicans did not want to cross the line that might have led to the creation of a modern political party similar to the English Conservative Party. It would have meant cutting ties with the rest of the Republicans. Raymond Poincaré, for instance, was the leading political figure of the 1920s. Yet, despite the moral prestige he enjoyed around 1926–28, he had never envisioned the creation of a modern political party of the French Right or Centre Right. He still wanted to be remembered as a good Republican, that is to say as a man faithful to the Republican regime and its values, including laïcité. Most moderate Republicans did not feel at ease within a coalition that separated them from their Radical partners.
To borrow an expression from Freud, we could say that a Republican ‘superego’ impeded many moderate Republicans from going beyond the boundaries of the old Republican identity of the defence of the regime, the defence of the State school system, the laïcité.24 Symmetrically, when the
radicals of the Radical Party, which had been founded in 1901, decided to conclude an alliance with the Socialists, the moderate Republicans accused them of betraying the Republic. This accusation was an obstacle to the cre- ation of a large party of the Left uniting Socialists and Radicals. Moreover, many Radicals who actually defended moderate ideas about economics and social issues did not feel at ease in an alliance with the Socialists. That was the case in 1924 with the ‘Cartel of the Leftists’ (Cartel des gauches) and even more in 1936 with the Popular Front (because the new alliance included not only the Radicals and the Socialists but also the Communists).
The French parliamentary game had long been characterized by politi- cal majorities swaying from the centre-left to the centre-right. This parlia- mentarianism à la française that blurred the map of political groups had a permanent impact on the French political system. The French Republicans were never able to choose between a large Republican party, which would have rallied all the Republican fractions, or the formation of two separate parties, one moderate and the other radical. The programme of Gambetta ended in a complete failure in the early 1880s. The Third Republic never became a Republic of parties.
The reluctance towards creating organized and disciplined parties also derived from the specific conditions of political life under the Third Republic. Alternatives to political parties were sometimes more efficient as was shown in the Dreyfus Case. The ‘dreyfusard party’ was not a political