Politics in France?

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Rillifane

Political parties in France are very different from those in America.

Rather than two big organizations, each more than a century old with shifting ideologies, the French parties tend to be a constantly changing array of relatively smaller groups each of which organizes around miniscule differences from the others or even exist for no other reason than to further the political ambitions of a single individual.

Indeed, in France, a politician often signals his ambitions by forming his own political party, sometimes only months or even weeks before an election.

Instead of the two major parties there are shifting coalitions which sort themselves out into major groupings of "right" and "left" but often with several other parties or groups offering candidates in the same election.

In the last French presidential election there were twelve candidates ranging from the Neo-Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front to Marie-George Buffet of the French Communist Party. While the principal candidates were center right coalition Nicolas Sarkozy of the Union pour un mouvement populaire (who was the winner) and Left coalition SÃ©golÃ¨ne Royal of the Parti Socialiste the lesser ones could not be dismissed given that Neo Nazi Le Pen had actually finished second in the previous presidential election.

Issues in France today include:

1) "Reform" of the economic system.

In French terms this means dismantling some of the welfare state and reducing the size of government. Today about one quarter of the entire work force are government employees.

2) Immigration and assimilation.

Post war France developed a strong belief in assimilation. Immigrants would learn French, absorb French political and cultural beliefs, adopt French manners and tastes and thereby become French. There would be no hyphenated Frenchmen. The current president, M. Sarkozy, is an ethnic Hungarian (which to many Frenchmen makes him the equivalent of Obama in the USA). Religion made no difference as France was a resolutely secular state.

Unfortunately, they failed to reckon with the Muslim immigrants who poured in from France's former colonial empire. This group refused to assimilate completely and, to a great extent, found themselves discriminated against by the French population as a whole. What do to about them is one of most contentious issues in France.

3) France's role in the EU and the World.

Although a tiny country by the standards of the USA, Russia, and China (all of France fits into Texas with room left over) it remains a great economic power and the influence of its culture and language, though diminished, still place it in the top tier of the world's nations. It retains a seat on the Security council, maintains a large and highly professional army and is a nuclear power.

How to extert its influence remains a significant question.

Polska4ManUtd

here is a site for the POLITICAL PARTIES: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_France

veganarkismo

I think it's also worth noting that this year is the 40th anniversary of the rebellions of May 1968, often considered a 'student-rebellion' but was also the largest general strike in history, mobilizing 9 million workers in France and ended up as a world-wide revolutionary wave.

Workers set up democratic workplace councils and action groups to run society, took over their factories and ran production for human need. It provides a gimpse of what workers control would look like, but the key reasons for it's failures are lessons that can be drawn for future revolutions.

willyag

nicolas sarkozy is the president he's the right wing (equivalent democratic party), the left wings manage all regions, and a majority of french biggest cities (paris, lyon, toulouse, strasbourg...) it's "parti socialiste , the left wing (no equivalent in us, cause we have green party, and comunists with socialists)

ps: the president is very unpopular in france at the moment, like bush in us !

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