ABSTRACT
The story of Francois Mitterrand's two seven-year terms is one of rapid reversals of fortune, beginning with the triumphant and unexpected elections of the president and a Socialist parliamentary majority, then a brief honeymoon spent in intoxicated self-assurance. Entering into power after twenty-three years of Gaullist and post-Gaullist rule in the Fifth Republic, the Left had believed, in the rhetoric of Culture Minister Jack Lang, that it had crossed "the frontier that separates the light from darkness". It is easy enough, years after a political event, to scoff at the rhetoric of winners and losers. At the difficult end of the twentieth century it is harder to transport ourselves back to the time of unprecedented growth and understand the mind-set and the assumptions of both Right and Left in 1981. But the legislation of those years was responsible for changes both deliberate and unintended that have affected many aspects of French life.
