French Social Democracy in Turmoil

In the history of European social democracy, the Parti socialiste's recent downfall in France stands out. With the benefit of hindsight, it would be tempting to claim today that this ‘socialist collapse comes from afar’. In truth, no one saw it coming.

It remains quite difficult to explain why the dominant party of the French left suffered two crushing defeats in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections and why it has such a modest parliamentary representation in the National Assembly today.

What caused the 2017 electoral car crash?

Dominant on the left until 2012 and one of the two main parties in French politics (along with the conservative Républicains), the PS suffered a calamitous electoral car crash in 2017. Seven years on, it is showing little sign of a national recovery, although it remains influential through its strong local base of municipalities.

In 2012, the PS concentrated most political powers: besides the presidency, it had an absolute majority in the National Assembly. It was the main party in the senate for the first time in the Fifth Republic and it ran France's major city councils as well as fifteen out of twenty-one regions. However, it turns out that the PS was a political colossus with feet of clay.

The 2017 election marked the end of a long phase of political domination, which relied on the PS's ability to appeal to various social classes. First, working class support was on the wane from the 1990s. By the 2010s, a third of them voted for the far-right Front National (FN) and many had simply stopped voting. The party still had around 170,000 members in 2012. Today, there are barely 40,000.

The PS's rise to power in the 1980s coincided with the electoral breakthrough of the far right. During François Mitterrand's first term in office (1981–1988), the FN was able to impose its political agenda in the mainstream.

Between 2012 and 2017, President Hollande had to fight high unemployment and his economic and social policies left his electoral base disenfranchised and angry. Evidence of this included the electoral defeats in the 2014 municipal and the 2015 regional elections. Hollande's presidency was marked by the pursuit of austerity policies and supply-side economics. Once elected, he broke or dramatically watered down his main campaign pledges.

François Hollande somewhat surprisingly defined his fiscally conservative policies as ‘social democratic’, but his policies lacked in-depth redistribution. In short, his economics ran counter to classic social democratic policies of state intervention and redistributionism.

This time round, Hollande could not point to any progressive ‘flagship measures’ on a par with those of the Mitterrand presidencies—like nationalisation, the granting of a fourth week of paid holiday, or the reduction in retirement age to 60.

The dwindling number of PS members had another negative effect; it became what Angelo Panebianco labelled an ‘electoral-professional party’—that is, a publicly funded party, media-driven rather than based on a mass membership and with its electoral performance its main objective. With fewer members, the PS progressively lost touch.

Beyond political divisions, the party has an image problem. Since their retirement from politics or their death, party grandees have progressively been replaced with younger and untested party officials. To win a presidential election, the PS will first have to generate savvy and popular party figures.

The PS is currently in decline at the national level, so it is paramount to maintain its local and regional base. It is impossible for a party to dominate French politics without solid local or regional anchoring.

The uneasy left unity (2022–2023)

The NUPES (New Ecological and Social People's Union was an electoral coalition that gathered the main left-wing parties between June 2022 and October 2023: the PS, LFI, PCF, EELV (the Green party) as well as smaller parties. The new alliance's programme was of a radical reformist nature with an ecological focus.

LFI was the dominant force within NUPES. NUPES represented a major tactical change for Jean-Luc Mélenchon who, between 2016 and 2020, deliberately scorned the left and embraced a ‘populist’ strategy. The NUPES had 151 MPs altogether, but it did not form a parliamentary group. Once elected, the left-wing MPs joined their respective party groups. Thus, with seventy-nine MPs, LFI was only the third parliamentary group. The PS was only the sixth largest parliamentary group.

The PS was in a most unusual position as part of an alliance under the leadership of LFI, a left populist movement. Mélenchon's abrasive style and his unwillingness to compromise were problematic for many socialists. According to a study by the Jean Jaurès Foundation (a think tank close to the PS), a majority of socialist voters think that LFI is a party which ‘stirs up violence’ (56 per cent) and is ‘dangerous for democracy’ (51 per cent). These results underlined a deep schism within NUPES. Socialist voters do not regard LFI as a natural partner. On 17 October, the PS's national council decided on a ‘moratorium on its participation in the NUPES’.

Conclusion

Socialists have reason to be confident, having recently bounced back from their disastrous 2022 presidential result. In June 2024, the PS list—led by Raphaël Glucksmann, who is not a socialist—finished with 13.8 per cent, more than doubling his 2019 performance. Weeks later, following Macron's decision to call a snap general election, PS candidates fared well. As part of a new left-wing coalition called New Popular Front, sixty-nine socialist MPs were elected versus thirty-one in 2022.

It remains to be seen whether the PS can be competitive again when it comes to the presidential election. However, there is little reason why there should not be a revival. The renewal of the PS will not only depend on further realignments to its left (LFI) and to its right (Renaissance). In terms of public image, the PS must rebuild virtually everything from scratch.

Politically and programmatically, the PS will have to decide if it stands on the social democratic left, or if it is now a centre-left party which can form coalition governments with centre-right or liberal parties. Studies have shown that rightward economic movements of social democratic parties significantly reduce their support under higher levels of income inequalities, especially when they are combined with rightward sociocultural movements, as is the case in France. They also demonstrate that there are no massive voter flows from social democratic parties to right-wing populists or far-right parties. Disenfranchised social democratic voters switch allegiance to green or populist left parties or to mainstream centre-right parties. They also abstain from voting. Again, the PS is a case in point.