ABSTRACT
Parties are a product of long-term historical developments. Contemporary events are usually loaded with historical significance: on 7 May 1995, Jacques Chirac regained possession of the presidency for the Gaullist party, once the largest right-wing movement France has ever seen, after an absence of twenty-one years (Georges Pompidou was the last Gaullist to hold this office from 1969 until his death in April 1974). The public sector strikes in December 1995 and the death of François Mitterrand on 8 January 1996 rekindled memories of past glories and polemics of left-wing politics in France.
