“French political parties are seriously ill, but still necessary”

has At the LCI, on Monday 21 November, almost 288,000 viewers watched the debate between Eric Ciot, Bruno Rétaille and Aurelien Pradier, the three candidates who will compete for the presidency of the Les Républicains (LR) party, during the scheduled vote 3 and 4. Then 10 and 11 December. The life of one of the two main movements that embodied the alternation in France has dwindled to the point that it is now only of interest to a limited circle of enthusiasts.

At the Congress of the National Rally (RN) on Thursday, November 3, Jordan Bardella was crowned with 84.84% of the vote, but the total number of voters was 36,673, which is particularly low for a full party. Electoral conquest.

At Renaissance’s founding congress, on Saturday, September 17, no figures were announced for the electorate for fear of revealing the small number of members certified by their contribution: only 27,000 when Emmanuel Macron announced in 2016. The impression of raising an army of “walkers” in his wake.

French political parties are seriously ill. They certainly never attracted the masses, unlike most of their European counterparts, but in its heyday (1978) the Communist Party was able to count up to 500,000 members. No organization dares to set such a goal anymore, most of them, on the contrary, give the impression that they are fighting for their survival, in the face of increased restraint and opposition from political representatives.

sinking

Mandated by Article 4 of the Constitution to contribute to the expression of votes, parties ideally have three essential functions: to recruit members to prepare for elections, to structure the debate of ideas, to produce and – or ensure – consolidation of a leader.

In the case of the Socialist Party (PS), these three functions combined perfectly in the 1970s to ensure that François Mitterrand came to power. The process obviously ran out of time, as the second seven-year term barely started, the dynamics stopped. The leadership crisis was accompanied by the weakening of currents and the loss of ideological substance, which is only accentuated over time.

in his book Are you still on the left? (Flammarion, 256 pages, €18), Gaspar Ganzer, a former adviser to François Hollande, recounts his disillusioned impressions of the young Socialist member after the shock of April 21, 2002: “A galaxy of local barons gravitated around the tenors… Little was said in the background. We were interested in the socialist identity… but there was no real confrontation. » The ideological vacuum barely filled by the activities of the Terra Nova think tank and the Jean-Jaure Foundation, the blocking of the apparatus by the apparatus army, the inability to produce a new generation of leaders, were already part of the paroxysmal crisis of 2017. while receiving.