ABSTRACT
The disappearance or expansion of Poujadism will depend less on the defects or characteristics of the social groups it seeks to organize, or on the extent of their divisions or capacity to unite, than it will on the regime’s ability to reform itself to keep the loyalty of the French. The argument will be that, despite itself, the Front National has been forced into political innovations in structure and program that make it a party of a new type in French politics. To begin with the continuities between the Front National and its right-wing antecedents, the essential point is the one on which Stanley Hoffmann concluded his 1956 study of the Poujadists: that the distinctive features of the movements reflect faultlines in the political system. The program of the Front National is written in a language strikingly familiar to anyone who remembers Poujade’s, but the same themes are used to approach new issues.
