ABSTRACT
A curious thing happened after Alain Juppe, by his arrogance and rudeness, provoked massive strikes in last months of 1995. The strikers themselves were scarcely blameless; they were, to a very large degree, representatives of the narrow corporate interests of highly favored trade unions, and they were striking for the preservation and extension of their privileges, which included things like full retirement benefits at age fifty, six-weeks of paid holidays, nearly ironclad job security. The legislative elections followed five weeks later, in mid-June. Aware that cohabitation meant inefficiency, the voters gave a huge majority back to the right, as huge as the one Jacques Chirac and Juppe had thrown away in 1997. The newly formed Union for the Presidential Majority, which was the Chiracquian Rassemblement pour la Republique plus a large chunk of the Giscardien UDF, took 398 of 577 parliamentary seats; this meant five years of security in the parliament.
