ABSTRACT
Within the first two decades of its existence, the newly designed institutions of the Fifth Republic did progressively bring about a much more stable pattern of ‘bipolar multipartism’ than had been characteristic of the Fourth Republic. The existence of two antagonistically related ideological camps, however, was dependent on the close association of the two major lines of cleavage, pitting against each other a secular socialist/communist and a Catholic anti-communist subculture. Since the late 1970s, however, the party system has been transformed in significant ways. The balance of power among the main left-wing and right-wing parties has changed. The Communist party and the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) have lost ground to the Socialists and to the Gaullist RPR, respectively. Then, starting in the mid or late 1980s, the traditional pattern of opposition between the left-wing and right-wing blocs has also been altered by the electoral gains of the Front National. This party has appeared as a powerful new actor on the political space, giving rise to a ‘tripolar’ pattern of party competition. Finally, the fragmentation of the party system has also increased, at least temporarily, within the traditional left-wing and right-wing ideological blocs. Although no single explanation can account for this phenomenon, we claim that the fragmentation of the party system is at least to some degree related to the emergence of new conflicts that fit uneasily in the traditional structure of oppositions represented in the party system.
