Vive le neoconservatisme?

• Author: Mireur, Yannick
• Position: French politics

THE FRENCH Fifth Republic may be at its end. Already strained by Francois Mitterrand's two terms in office from 1981 and 1995, French political institutions are increasingly at odds with French society. Were President Jacques Chirac to depart overnight, the French would barely notice. A recent poll showed that only 1 percent wanted the president to seek a third term. The discomfiture of Chirac's presidency overshadows even the stagnating governance of his predecessor. While Mitterrand managed to maintain some buoyancy, Chirac has lost all policy credibility.

Because President Chirac is, according to customary political labels, a conservative politician, his decline has implications for the future of French conservatism. It may seem odd to consider, but the future of conservatism in France may now reside in the advent of some sort of neoconservatism--French style. It would not be the first time that social or political developments in the United States gave birth to stepchildren in Continental Europe. The spur of economic liberalism under Ronald Reagan (and in Thatcher's UK) was imitated to some extent in the 1980s, with French privatization and overtly pro-market policies.

In the United States, a loss of faith in the efficacy of government to solve social ills helped to give birth to the neoconservative movement. The decay of French institutions under a neo-Gaullist president could lead to a Continental resurgence of U.S.-style neoconservatism of the 1970s and 1980s--not to be equated with today's movement so heavily focused on regime change. But before exploring how a French neoconservative movement may gain momentum, it is important to first delineate the depth of France's political disillusion.

DUELING STRAINS of conservatism have enervated the movement in France, just as they have in America, over the past thirty years. While Nixon and Ford policies raised discontent among the gathering force of sunbelt Republicans in the 1970s, the moderate liberalism embodied by President Giscard d'Estaing (1974-81) alienated Chirac's neo-Gaullist base. Giscard's role in spurring the European integration process conflicted with de Gaulle's legacy of preserving national identities. Integration became a point of discord for the French Right.

Personal rivalries notwithstanding, popular resentment of Giscard's aristocratic, establishment-like style--what one may call a French version of "Rockefeller Republicans"--contributed to his defeat in 1981 and the election of a Socialist president (by a wafer-thin margin). Chirac's leadership in 1986 appeared to evoke a Reaganesque style, with deregulation and privatization. There was the pretence of a break with the diluted conservatism of the past; just as the Reagan triumph signaled a transition from the Nixon era. Free...