and underlying the literature about the regime of the Fifth Republic in France,namely,the nature of the relationship between a particular form of presidential rule on the one hand,and parliamentary,party and republican politics on the other.Although this literature examines the effect on politics of the Republic's first President,Charles de Gaulle - notably his encouragement of the institutionalisation of presidentialism - ,it neglects three central questions concerning: 1. the interrelationship of his idea of authority and principles of republican rule; 2. the nature of republicanism; 3. the manner and mode of party political adaptation to the norms and practices of the Fifth Republic.In general,this literature does not direct sufficient 'attention to the complex relationship between leaders and their actual or potential constituencies (Chapter I). The agenc~ of this relationship is language;the major context,public discourse in ritual settings.Before examining examples of such discourse,a discussion of their conditions of. existence and of their organisational and discursive contexts notes the intrusion into party discourse of myths and appeals to forms of allegiance which transcend traditional part~ allegiances in order to enhance the status of leaders.The discussion further demonstrates the centrality of discourse in political exchange in democratic politics (Chapter 2).Three case studies of the public discourse of the Communist,Socialist and Gaullist parties in the 1970s are prefaced by a discussion of the methodological issues involved in such a study (Chapter 3).Each of the case study chapters (Chapters 4,5 and 6) establishes an~ analyses the .strategic,doctrinal, organisational and other conditions of the texts to be studied,before analysing them in detail. The case studies illustrate the complexity both of discursive claims to leadership and of their relationship to political organisation.Each of the political parties studied responds in a different way,depending upon its traditions and dispositions,to the constraints imposed upon it by presidential practice in the Fifth Republic.The essence of the Communist response is the presentation of innovation as orthodoxy;the Socialist,the conflation of pragmatism and millenarianism;the Gaullist,the reconstruction and deployment of an abandoned Gaullist myth.The study of these party discourses further indicates: the formative influence of discourse upon political pract,ice; the polyvalence of party doctrines; and the subtle interaction of intra- and extra-party myths and traditions in the general development of a presidential regime.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:352695 |
| Date | January 1984 |
| Creators | Gaffney, J. |
| Publisher | University of Sussex |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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