ABSTRACT
In the 1990s, almost at the same time as in Japan and Italy, corruption scandals repeatedly washed over all of the major political parties in France. Many powerful party politicians, from both the Left and the Right, were arrested and expelled from public life. Typically, they were charged with misappropriating public money from the local governments under their care. However, their reputations were also damaged by rising criticism of their extensive and blatant practices of political clientelism. Illegal fundraising is one way of diverting public resources to a politician’s or a party’s electoral mobilization efforts. Clientelism is another. However, taking kickbacks from companies seeking public contracts evidently represents a flagrant act of corruption, while distributing government benefits to a politician’s clientele is not always considered as such. Historians know that clientelism has always prevailed in French political life since the very early days of the Third Republic (1871-1940), but it used to be rarely criticized so harshly, at least before World War II.
