ABSTRACT
Both the character and the fortunes of the right during the last two decades of the twentieth century were highly mixed. On the one hand, the mainstream, parliamentary right was in terms of programme and ideology probably less exceptional and more like the conservative right in other western countries -thus less exceptional - than during the period from 1945 to 1980. This was largely to do with the decline of Gaullism as a separate ideology and is in keeping with the argument that French politics now conforms more to the west European model. However, the growth of the extreme right front national (FN), albeit in crisis in the late 1990s, very obviously runs counter to this trend and is one which we shall seek to explain towards the end of this section. Despite a general ideological confluence, the mainstream right has experienced electoral failure, much frustration in terms of strategy, fragmentation and a major split for the Gaullist RPR. The victory of the left in 1981 was of course a major blow. Subsequently the PS’s and in particular Mitterrand’s lurch towards the centre right allowed the Socialists to claim in the mid-to-late 1980s that Mitterrand and the PS represented the politics of national interest which the right had claimed to embody in its years of exclusive government between 1958 and 1981. Following this, the period of cohabitation between right and left from 1986 to 1988 led to frustrations during, and electoral failure at the end of, this two-year period. But the greatest problem for the parliamentary, nonextreme right was the existence of deep divisions within its own camp which had troubled it for many years and which the rise of the Front national compounded. Conclusive victory for the right came in legislative elections in 1993, but it was a victory explained more by the weakness of the left than by widespread popularity of the right. Presidential victory in 1995 was followed by surprise defeat in the parliamentary elections of 1997, and a weakened President Chirac.
