History UsefulNotes / FrenchPoliticalSystem

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Rally): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria, and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the RN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the RN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as [[PoliticallyCorrectVillain "dédiabolisation"]] ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism". Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (niece of Marine) was the youngest MP in the 2012 legislature at the tender age of 23, a distinction she shares with her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Despite Marine's de-demonization attempts, her views on Europe, ecology, internal and external affairs (such as suggesting a partnership with UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin in the middle of a war between Russia and Ukraine, instilling a principle of "Préférence nationale"[[note]]"National preference", where a French has the exclusive right or a clear priority for social security, jobs, studies and housing over a non-French. She admits that, in order for it to be legal, she will have to [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem change the Constitution]] itself, not to mention how discordant this change will be with international political entities France is affiliated to.[[/note]]) remain as far-right as they ever could be. The result is that every election round where the party reached the second round (2002, 2017, 2022) leads to a situation where its opponents call for a "Front républicain"[[note]]"Republican front"[[/note]] to form and [[EnemyMine vote against it]] to keep it from allegedly threatening France's democracy as it stands.

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Rally): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria, and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the RN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the RN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as [[PoliticallyCorrectVillain "dédiabolisation"]] ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism". Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (niece of Marine) was the youngest MP in the 2012 legislature at the tender age of 23, a distinction she shares with her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Despite Marine's de-demonization attempts, her views on Europe, ecology, internal and external affairs (such as suggesting a partnership with UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin in the middle of a war between Russia and Ukraine, instilling a principle of "Préférence nationale"[[note]]"National preference", where a French has the exclusive right or a clear priority for social security, jobs, studies and housing over a non-French. A policy so blatantly racist, even she admits that, in order for it to be legal, she will have to [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem change the Constitution]] itself, not to mention how discordant this change will be with international political entities France is affiliated to.[[/note]]) remain as far-right as they ever could be. The result is that every election round where the party reached the second round (2002, 2017, 2022) leads to a situation where its opponents call for a "Front républicain"[[note]]"Republican front"[[/note]] to form and [[EnemyMine vote against it]] to keep it from threatening France's democracy as it stands.

** Their candidate in 2022 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon in his third and allegedly last attempt. He had the first round's third best score with 22% of the votes.

** Their candidate in 2022 was Fabien Roussel. He ended up with 2.3% of the vote.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Yannick Jadot. He scored 4.6% of the votes.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014). She ended up with 1.7% of the votes (an all-time low for the PS, or any major historical moderate Left wing party for that matter).

** Their candidate in 2022 was Emmanuel Macron. He won the second round of the election against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of 2017 with 58% of the votes.

** For 2022, the [=MoDem=] didn't field a candidate and supported Emmanuel Macron instead.

** They didn't field a candidate for 2022 and supported Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains).

** Their candidate for 2022 was Valérie Pécresse. She scored 4.8% of the votes, an all-time low for a major moderate right wing party in France.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, in his third attempt. He scored 2.1% of the votes.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Marine Le Pen, in her third attempt. She lost at the second round against Emmanuel Macron with 42% of the votes, in a rematch of 2017.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Éric Zemmour. He ended up fourth with 7.1% of the votes.

UsefulNotes/{{France}} is famous for [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution having gone from a monarchy to a republic]], but its political system has changed no fewer than ten--that's right, '''ten'''--times since Louis XVI's head came off in 1793, [[RevolvingDoorRevolution generally through revolutions]].

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it soldiered on and its leader Léon Blum was even Predient of the Council (Prime Minister) in 1936-37 with the Front Populaire coalition[[note]]which also comprised the Communist Party and the Radical Party (center-left), although the Communist didn’t take part in the government[[/note]]. But the party slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and what remained of its left wing left the party with Benoît Hamon after his humiliating defeat in 2017 (an all-time low 6%). After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of its former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his gestion of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politics there (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]]

* '''Mouvement Démocrate''' ([=MoDem=], Democratic Movement): the main centrist party, founded by the former lead of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), François Bayrou (deputy of Pyrénées-Atlantique at the time and now mayor of Pau). Economically mildly liberal, it created a surprise in 2007 with a score of 18,5%, [[OneEpisodeWonder but nothing ensued from it]]. Bayrou explicitly cites the American Democrats as an inspiration (hard to believe, we know, but the "neither socialist nor conservative" thing is actually kind of appealing to some in France), and actually tried to call his party ''Parti démocrate'', but learned that some dinky party nobody had ever heard of already had the name, which apparently pissed Bayrou off to no end. The orange color of the party's logo meanwhile was inspired by the 2004-2005 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Revolution Orange Revolution]] in UsefulNotes/{{Ukraine}}. In 2017 the [=MoDem=] forged an alliance with the aforementionned En Marche!, which ended up winning both the presidency and an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly.
** Basically half the UDF already split to join Alain Juppé/ Jacques Chirac to found the UMP in 2002. Bayrou was not one of them. Then, in 2007, virtually all of what was left of the UDF dumped him to found the Nouveau Centre under Hervé Morin, which then promptly joined a coalition with the UMP and was mostly absorbed by them, until the 2012 election, where Nicolas Sarkozy is perceived to have ditched the centrists to try to please the far-right (basically, ''not'' doing what got him elected in 2007, which worked just as well as you can imagine). What was left of centrists still loyal to the UMP at this point left to form the UDI.

* '''Union des Démocrates et Indépendants''' (UDI, Union of Democrats and Independants): A new party created after the 2012 elections by Jean-Louis Borloo (a former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy) and member of the Radical Party, to try and unite the "centrist wing" after Bayrou seemingly failed to do so. Notable members/supporters include former President Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing and the late Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and minister of health under Giscard who legalised abortion back in TheSeventies. In 2017, they more or less broke ties with Les Républicains and were one of the groups closest to En Marche! in the parliament, basically it looks like the UDI is going to be roughly [[HereWeGoAgain what the UDF had been pre-2002.]] In 2022 however, they allied with LR instead of Macron’s party for the parliament elections.

* '''Union des Démocrates et Indépendants''' (UDI, Union of Democrats and Independants): A new party created after the 2012 elections by Jean-Louis Borloo (a former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy) and member of the Radical Party, to try and unite the "centrist wing" after Bayrou seemingly failed to do so. Notable members/supporters include former President Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing and the late Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and minister of health under Giscard who legalised abortion back in TheSeventies. As of 2017, they've more or less broken ties with Les Républicains and are one of the groups closest to En Marche! in the parliament. Basically it looks like the UDI is going to be roughly what the UDF had been pre-2002. [[HereWeGoAgain Well that was useful.]] For 2017, they considered taking part in the rightwing primary in 2016, but the party's activists opposed the idea in an internal vote.

After a big crisis on 17 May 1877 (involving a constitutional dispute between a monarchist president and republican parliament) the Third Republic settled into the form that it would take until 1940: a parliamentary republic, with very little role for the President and incessantly-changing political alliances. For all its alleged instability, the Third Republic has thus far proved to be the longest-lived French regime since 1789, lasting 70 years. (The only other system to come close--the current system, the Fifth Republic--won't match it until 2028.)

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it soldiered on and its leader Léon Blum was even Predient of the Council (Prime Minister) in 1936-37 with the Front Populaire coalition[[note]]which also comprised the Communist Party and the Radical Party (center-left), although the Communist didn’t take part in the government)[[/note]]. But the party slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and what remained of its left wing left the party with Benoît Hamon after his humiliating defeat in 2017 (an all-time low 6%). After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of its former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his gestion of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politics there (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]]

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and what remained of its left wing left the party with Benoît Hamon after his humiliating defeat in 2017 (an all-time low 6%). After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of its former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his gestion of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politics there (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]]

* '''Renaissance''' (Rebirth): Intially called "En Marche!" (Forward!) then "La République en Marche" (Republic Forward). A movement founded in April 2016 by former Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron (the fact that the party's initials were the same as their founder's is not a coincidence), in a way similar to Unyielding France mentioned above. A centrist and liberal party, claiming to be "above left and right" and taking cues from the US' Third Way Democrats and the British Liberal Democrats. They support free-market economics and deficit reduction [[note]]initially at least, the French national debt actually skyrocked under their governance, before and ''especially'' during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic[[/note]], but also support the European Union, climate change legislation, immigration and acceptance of refugees[[note]]However, on the last two points, many non-governemental associations accuse the party of having nice speeches but not acting, or even worsening the climatic and migration crisis[[/note]]. The party’s creation lead to a reshuffling of sorts of the French political landscape, with Macron drawing in a large part of the Socialist Party’s more liberal voters and doing the same thing to Les Républicains five years later. Since 2017, they haven't managed to gain much ground at each election due to a combination of the Macron presidency's unpopular policies, the older parties (mainly Les Républicains) still having strong local footholds, and abstention beating new records in France (even before the COVID-19 Pandemic).

* '''La République En Marche!''' (LREM, Republic Forward!): A movement founded in April 2016 by former Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron (the fact that the party's initials are the same as their founder's is not a coincidence), in a way similar to Unyielding France mentioned above. A centrist and liberal party, claiming to be "above left and right" and taking cues from the US' Third Way Democrats and the British Liberal Democrats. They support free-market economics and deficit reduction [[note]]initially at least, the French national debt actually skyrocked under their governance, before and ''especially'' during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic[[/note]], but also support the European Union, climate change legislation, immigration and acceptance of refugees[[note]]However, on the last two points, many non-governemental associations accuse the party of having nice speeches but not acting, or even worsening the climatic and migration crisis[[/note]]. The party’s creation lead to a reshuffling of sorts of the French political landscape, with Macron drawing in a large part of the Socialist Party’s more liberal voters and doing the same thing to Les Républicains five years later. Since 2017, they haven't managed to gain much ground at each election due to a combination of the Macron presidency's unpopular policies, the older parties (mainly Les Républicains) still having strong local footholds, and abstention beating new records in France (even before the COVID-19 Pandemic).

* '''Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste''' (NPA, New Anticapitalist Party): ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. A refoundation of an old Trotskyst party (the Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), whose most famous figures are postman Olivier Besancenot in the 2000s and car factory worker Philippe Poutou in the 2010s.[[note]]For his first presidential campaign in 2002, Besancenot scored 4%. That's right, along with LO, the Trotskyst parties gathered ''10%'' of voters that year)[[/note]] They're composed of and led by mostly non-professional militants, and proud of this fact. They put an emphasis on ecological and social issues and like the previous party, they consider only social struggle brings any change.

* '''Lutte Ouvrière''' (LO, Workers' Struggle): A (very) old Trotskyist party which gives great importance to the defense of workers' rights and revolution. Formerly led by Arlette Laguiller, who was the first woman to run in a French presidential election. Which she did ''[[{{Determinator}} 6 successive times]]'', scoring as high as 5-6% in 1995 and 2002. Like all Trotskyist parties, though, they don’t really care about ''winning'' elections, only using them as platforms to make their voice heard. The party is notorious for its utter refusal to make alliances with anyone, even the ideologically close NPA.

* '''Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste''' (NPA, New Anticapitalist Party): ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. A refoundation of an old Trotskyst party (the Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), led by young postman Olivier Besancenot until recently.[[note]]For his first presidential campaign in 2002, he scored 4%. That's right, along with LO, the Trotskyst parties gathered ''10%'' of voters that year)[[/note]] They're composed of and led by mostly non-professional militants, and proud of this fact. They put an emphasis on ecological and social issues and like the previous party, they consider only social struggle brings any change.

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and disobeying European treaties if they contradict their platform. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left following the PS’s collapse in 2017, but failed to really expand its influence in other elections[[note]]case in point, they scored 19.6% in the 2017 election (just 600,000 votes shy of reaching the second round) but only 6.5% in the 2019 European election[[/note]], with internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character.

After a big crisis on 17 May 1877 (involving a constitutional dispute between a monarchist president and republican parliament) the Third Republic settled into the form that it would take until 1940: a parliamentary republic, with very little role for the President and incessantly-changing political alliances. For all its alleged instability, the Third Republic has thus far proved to be the longest-lived French regime since 1789, lasting 70 years. (The current system, the Fifth Republic, won't match it until 2028.)

* The '''Third Republic'''. This was proclaimed after Napoleon III surrendered to the German armies at Sedan in 1870, but the subsequent course of the war meant that its provisional government had to leave Paris and only returned, first to Versailles, then to Paris, after the peace treaty with the new German Empire was concluded. The early years were dominated by disputes among the two flavors of monarchist: the ultraconservative Legitimists, who were by and large aristocratic and/or deeply Catholic and wanted Charles X's grandson to become King, and the rather more liberal Orléanists, largely bourgeois or otherwise middle-class, who supported the descendants of Louis-Philippe. Between them, they had a large majority, and the Orléanists had a plurality, so they sought to make a deal--you know, standard parliamentary negotiations. They quickly settled on a governing platform and agreed in principle to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the only sticking point being who would become king--and on that front, they found themselves (they thought) in luck. As it happened, Charles X's only grandson, Henri, Comte de Chambord, was an elderly childless bachelor, meaning that they could have him become King and name the Orléanist claimant, Louis-Philippe's son Philippe, comte de Paris, as his heir. All it would take to make this work was the assent of both of the royals in question. Philippe had no problem waiting, as anticipated. But although the Comte de Chambord was willing to hand the heirship to the throne to the Comte de Paris,[[note]]He had the strongest claim anyway...unless you claim that Louis XIV had no right to give up his grandson Philip's claim to the French throne with the Treaty of Utrecht that settled the UsefulNotes/WarOfTheSpanishSuccession... Yes, royalist politics can get a bit odd at times.[[/note]] he refused to become a constitutional figurehead monarch ruling under the republican tricolor (which is what almost everybody wanted--even the Legitimists). So the royalists took to waiting until he died, so Philippe could take the throne. And they waited. And waited. And waited. And for six years the man would not die. Eventually, people got tired of waiting, and before Chambord (1820-1883) could kick the bucket, the French people decided that monarchy really wasn't on anymore if the fate of the country could be decided by the matter of one man's opinions about a ''flag'' and voted in a republican majority in Parliament for the first time (as a result, republicans like Georges Clemenceau joked that the Comte de Chambord was "the French [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington Washington]]": the man without whom the Republic would not exist). After a big crisis on 17 May 1877 (involving a constitutional dispute between a monarchist president and republican parliament) the Third Republic settled into the form that it would take until 1940: a parliamentary republic, with very little role for the President and incessantly-changing political alliances.

[[caption-width-right:350:The Palais Bourbon in UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, which houses the French National Assembly.]]

[[quoteright:224:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/dlf.png]]

[[quoteright:224:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rn.jpg]]

* '''Debout la France''' (DLF, "Rise Up, France!"): Formerly a current within the UMP, led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, it seceded and became an independent party (initially called "Rise Up, Republic") in 2007, to represent the nominally Gaullist right-wing. They promote a Keynesian flavour of capitalism rather than what they perceive as the deregulated, neo-liberal capitalism of the EU, as well as a confederal model for UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. Critical of the European Commission for being unelected. They also promote the Euro as a common reference currency (with national currencies in parallel) rather than a single currency. At first critical of the National Rally, Dupont-Aignan was the only candidate who gave his support to Marine Le Pen in the 2017 election’s second round, and the party got somewhat ideologically closer to the RN afterwards.
** Their candidate for 2022 was Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, in his third attempt. He scored 2.1% of the votes.

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and disobeying European treaties if they contradict their platform. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left following the PS’s collapse in 2017, but failed to really expand its influence in other elections[[note]]case in point, they scored 19.6% in the 2017 election (just 600,000 votes shy of reaching the second round) but only 6.5% in the 2019 European election[[/note]], with internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character, as well as disagreements on policies, especially societal ones, that some see as too close to American identity politics.

* '''La République En Marche!''' (LREM, Republic Forward!): A movement founded in April 2016 by former Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron (the fact that the party's initials are the same as their founder's is not a coincidence), in a way similar to Unyielding France mentioned above. A centrist and liberal party, claiming to be "above left and right" and taking cues from the US' Third Way Democrats and the British Liberal Democrats. They support free-market economics and deficit reduction [[note]]initially at least, the French national debt actually skyrocked under their governance, before and ''especially'' during the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic[[/note]], but also support the European Union, climate change legislation, immigration and acceptance of refugees[[note]]However, on the last two points, many non-governemental associations accuse the party of having nice speeches but not acting, or even worsening the climatic and migration crisis[[/note]]. Since 2017, they haven't managed to gain much ground at each election due to a combination of the Macron presidency's unpopular policies, the older parties (mainly Les Républicains) still having strong local footholds, and abstention beating new records in France (even before the COVID-19 Pandemic).

* '''Les Républicains''' (LR, The Republicans): Formerly called the UMP (Union for a Popular Mouvement), founded in 2002 by Jacques Chirac and Alain Juppé, it was actually a gathering of several right-wing parties but was basically the successor of the former Rally For Republic (RPR). Known for its neoliberal economic views and its harsh positions on immigration and insecurity (even more so after Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead and wanted to attract far-right voters). It is basically the Republican Party to the PS's Democratic Party. Sarkozy announced that he retired from poltitics after his defeat in 2012, but in November 2014, after much turmoil caused by the rivalry between the party's (very unpopular) leaders, a new internal election was held, and the same Sarkozy was comfortably elected president of the party. Then in April 2015, Sarkozy decided to change their name into "The Republicans". In 2021-2022, the party has seen its electorate drawn by Macron's liberal orientation on one side and Reconquête's nationalist line on the other, trying to find a compromise between the two.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014). She ended up with 1.7% of the votes (an all-time low for the PS).

* '''Mouvement Démocrate''' ([=MoDem=], Democratic Movement): the main centrist party, founded by the former lead of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), François Bayrou (deputy of Pyrénées-Atlantique at the time and now mayor of Pau). Economically mildly liberal, it created a surprise in 2007 with a score of 18,5%, [[OneEpisodeWonder but nothing ensued from it]]. Bayrou explicitly cites the American Democrats as an inspiration (hard to believe, we know, but the "neither socialist nor conservative" thing is actually kind of appealing to some in France), and actually tried to call his party ''Parti démocrate'', but learned that some dinky party nobody had ever heard of already had the name, which apparently pissed Bayrou off to no end. In 2017 they forged an alliance with the aforementionned En Marche!, which ended up winning both the presidency and an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in late 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years).[[note]]He actually has the open support of billionaire media mogul Vincent Bolloré, [=CNews’=] owner.[[/note]] A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one. Some analysts suggest that his presidential campaign helped Marine Le Pen expand her voting base by making her look almost moderate by comparison.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in late 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years).[[note]]He actually has the open support of billionaire media mogul Vincent Bolloré, [=CNews’=] owner.[[/note]] A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

** Their candidate in 2022 is Emmanuel Macron, who vies for a second term. He ended up first at the first round with 27.6% of the votes, and will go up against Marine Le Pen in a rematch of 2017.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Marine Le Pen, in her third attempt. She ended up second at the first round with 23.4% of the votes and goes up against Emmanuel Macron, in a rematch of 2017.

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Rally): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria, and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the FN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the FN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as "dédiabolisation" ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism". Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (niece of Marine) was the youngest MP in the 2012 legislature at the tender age of 23, a distinction she shares with her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

** Their candidate for 2022 was Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014). She ended up with 1.7% (an all-time low for the PS).

** Their candidate for 2022 is Yannick Jadot.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014).

** Their candidate in 2022 is Emmanuel Macron, who vies for a second term.

** For 2022, the [=MoDem=] won't field a candidate and supports Emmanuel Macron instead.

** They haven't fielded a candidate for 2022 and support Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains).

** Their candidate for 2022 is Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, in his third attempt.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Valérie Pécresse.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Marine Le Pen, in her third attempt.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Éric Zemmour.

** Their candidate for the 2022 presidential election is Nathalie Arthaud (economy and management teacher). It's her third attempt.

** Their candidate for 2022 is Philippe Poutou (worker and union leader in a car factory). It's his third attempt.

** Their candidate in 2022 is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. It's his third and allegedly last attempt.

** Their candidate in 2022 is Fabien Roussel.

** Their candidate for 2012 is Anne Hidalgo (mayor of UsefulNotes/{{Paris}} since 2014).