Introduction

Since 1945 the French Right had taken almost as an axiom that the state should have the leading role in the economy. In 1986, the Right won back a parliamentary majority. Post-1981 politics have been de-ideologized on both sides, the two years of cohabitation by a Socialist president and a conservative prime minister have finished the job. The Right can no longer claim to offer the only possible non-collectivist and democratic government for France. After the unexpected defeat of conservative president Valery Giscard d'Estaing by the Socialist Mitterrand there followed the election of a Socialist parliamentary majority, and a brief honeymoon spent in intoxicated self-assurance. Some writers have seen the years 1981-1986 as a botched effort by the Socialists to assert their ideas and principles, in which failure under Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy was followed by retrenchment, normalization under his successor Laurent Fabius, and defeat in 1986.