Managing the plural left

The plural left marks a new type of alignment within the French party system. Left parties had cooperated previously according to varying formulae. The type of majority known as concentration républicaine (Goguel, 1946) is arguably the first manifestation, followed by the hegemony of the délégation des gauches in the 1900s, which put through anti-clerical measures of ‘republican defence’. The interwar period witnessed the cartel des gauches – tactical electoral alliances of Radicals, SFIO and selected ‘left republicans’ – invariably unstable and short-lived. Famously, the 1936 Popular Front, a formal alliance of the three main left parties plus smaller allies, managed to campaign on an agreed programme but, although a government was formed and enjoyed some success, this too fell apart under various pressures. After the Second World War, formulae for broad left cooperation ran from tripartism (SFIO and PCF without any Radicals, but including the new force of Christian Democracy) to the more restricted and temporary defensive arrangement of SFIO, Radicals and centre oddments in ‘Republican Front’ alliances excluding the by-now pariah PCF. Under the Fifth Republic, the growing reality of bipolarisation drove the left’s leaders to the inevitable – a pact between the PS (as it now was) and the PCF, resting on a detailed and ambitious programme to which the incoming coalition government would be committed. The break-up of the Common Programme alliance generated sufficient movement to bring about Mitterrand’s 1981 win and, significantly, for him to feel obliged to involve the PCF in government for the first time in thirty-four years. PCF failure to use this opportunity intelligently soon led to further marginalisation, and by the mid-1980s the left-wing alliance consisted of a large PS with an undisputed leader of high status capable of winning a second presidency (and thus itself capable of winning a majority or nearly), trailing in its wake a small ally (the left Radicals),