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The French Fifth Republic and populism : a neo-institutional analysis of the Front national

The aim of the thesis is to offer an explanation for the emergence and success of the French political party the Front national. The project uses theories of political opportunity structures, neo-institutionalist approaches and a theory of ideological morphology to argue that institutions and ideologies have particular links to one another. This, in turn, leads to the argument that the FN's success can be attributed to the relationships between the institutions of the Fifth Republic on the one hand and fascist ideology in France on the other. It is argued that the gradual presidentialisation of French politics from 1958 onward reconciles two contradictory drives in French politics (the party drive and the rally drive), this reconciliation of the two drives and the institutionalisation of the rally drive grants renewed legitimacy to populist ideas in France. It is also argued that, given the component concepts of fascism as an ideology (its ideological morphology) and the links between ideologies and the contexts (institutional, social, political) in which they emerge, institutional pressures such as those generated by the Fifth Republic and its subsequent presidentialisation accounts for a mutation of French proto-fascism into a type of populist ideology. The FN's modification of its fascist ideology and conversion to an overt form of populism is depicted and analysed as a case study of a party's adaptation to, and exploitation of, the new structures of political opportunity created by the Fifth Republic; one in which populist ideas were more likely than fascist ones to lead to a measure of political success given the institutionalisation of a form of hitherto marginalised rally politics.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.36767
Date January 2000
CreatorsFieschi, Catherine.
ContributorsMeadwell, H. (advisor)
PublisherMcGill University
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Formatapplication/pdf
CoverageDoctor of Philosophy (Department of Political Science.)
RightsAll items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.
Relationalephsysno: 001777962, proquestno: NQ69877, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest.

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