Presidential elections in France determine who will serve as the President of France for the next several years.
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was a French statesman who served as President of France from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in French history. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, he was the first left-wing politician to be elected President of France under the Fifth Republic.
The Fifth Republic, France's current republican system of government, was established by Charles de Gaulle under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic on 4 October 1958. The Fifth Republic emerged from the collapse of the Fourth Republic, replacing the former parliamentary republic with a semi-presidential, or dual-executive, system that split powers between a Prime Minister as head of government and a President as head of state. De Gaulle, who was the first French President elected under the Fifth Republic in December 1958, believed in a strong head of state, which he described as embodying l'esprit de la nation.
In the first round of voting on 26 April 1981, a political spectrum of ten candidates stood for election, and the leading two candidates – Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing – advanced to a second round. Mitterrand and his Socialist Party received 51.76% of the vote, while Giscard and his Union for French Democracy trailed with about 48.24%, a margin of 1,065,956 votes.
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing, also known as Giscard or VGE, is a French elder statesman who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and was, for decades, the largest party of the French centre-left. The PS used to be one of the two major political parties in the French Fifth Republic, along with the Republicans. The Socialist Party replaced the earlier French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1969, and is currently led by First Secretary Olivier Faure. The PS is a member of the Party of European Socialists (PES), the Socialist International (SI) and the Progressive Alliance.
The Union for French Democracy was a centre-right political party in France. It was founded in 1978 as an electoral alliance to support President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in order to counterbalance the Gaullist preponderance over the political right in France. This name was chosen due to the title of Giscard d'Estaing's 1976 book, Démocratie Française. The party brought together Christian democrats, liberals and radicals, and non-Gaullist conservatives, and described itself as centrist.
110 Propositions for France was the name of the Socialist Party's program for the 1981 presidential election during which the Socialist Party's candidate, François Mitterrand, was elected by 51.76% of the people. This program influenced significantly the policies enacted during Mitterrand's two terms.
Giscard d'Estaing's government
The most important set of circumstances that gave François Mitterrand the advantage over President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was Giscard’s incumbency itself. Usually, being an incumbent is an advantage. This was not the case, however, during the 1981 French elections. The incumbent seemed to have been cursed with many financial and political misfortunes during his presidential term; these crippling situations included internal matters that he could have controlled (and chose to ignore), and external forces that were beyond the incumbent’s control.
Centralisation
Internal political shortcomings seem to have been at least as responsible as the external factors in causing Giscard's electoral loss. Though a pragmatic leader, Giscard had a haughty and disparaging personality. This made him appear inaccessible not only to the French people themselves but also to other cabinet members whose support he needed to reinforce his political legitimacy.
Moreover, Giscard himself felt that others involved in the political machine were inept and ill-suited to correctly implement his important policy decisions; he therefore took over the most minute details in his policy-making, leaving Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, his ministers, and several layers of civil servants without duties, dissatisfied and ultimately without any power. Frustrated, Chirac resigned in 1976, built his own party and proceeded to lambast Giscard's policies, starting with the December 1978 Call of Cochin. The scene was set for the 1981 election when Chirac, having lost the "primary", failed to fully support Giscard in the second round, clearing the path for Mitterrand to take power.
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra from 1995 to 2007. Chirac previously was Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988, as well as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.
The Rally for the Republic, was a Neo-Gaullist and conservative political party in France. Originating from the Union of Democrats for the Republic (UDR), it was founded by Jacques Chirac in 1976 and presented itself as the heir of Gaullist politics. On 21 September 2002, the RPR was merged into the Union for the Presidential Majority, later renamed the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
The Call of Cochin is a famous discourse published on December 6, 1978 by Jacques Chirac, former Prime Minister of France, president of the Rally for the Republic (RPR) party, and mayor of Paris.
Policies
Besides Giscard’s almost obsessive control over policy implementation, another internal political shortcoming of the incumbent appeared to be his ineffective tactics for deciding policy strategy. To the public at least, Giscard’s policies seemed to be sporadic, hasty, and ill-timed. His reforms proved unpopular with both the left and the right. In addition, Giscard abandoned other platforms that he had campaigned on in 1974. These policies were often couched as conspicuous (if not overly ambitious) pledges that ended up never quite being undertaken.
As an indication of Giscard's failing popularity, a poll taken in June 1980 showed that even some people on the Left (15% of Socialists and 13% of Communists) had liked and endorsed Giscard previously because of his reformist attitude. By April 1981, however, his support on the left had dropped dramatically (7% and 1% of Socialists and Communists respectively). And there was no offsetting rise in his support on the Right.
As the election wore on and Chirac joined the race, Giscard had to appeal to his rightist constituency and drop most of these radical views. As a result, his popularity fell and he was thought of as an opportunist.
Finally, Giscard had promised to be open to the opposition in Parliament, but his behaviour in office did not match the expectations he had made for himself. Because of his personality and his control over policy implementation, the executive powers had become highly centralized; control was concentrated in the hands of Giscard and his cabinet composed of a few trusted friends—namely, Michel Poniatowski, a "faithful friend and advisor".
Electoral system
If Giscard’s internal political handicaps had effectively "crippled" him in the initial race, the external factors that decided the 1981 election were a deadly blow. Neatly summarized in an article by Hugh Dauncey: "It was Giscard's double misfortune that his presidency should be blighted both by unprecedented economic difficulties, and by a political system which was stubbornly unreceptive to the ouverture and centralist compromise that he required for his reforms to fully succeed". The electoral and party system (political system) in France had, indeed, undergone many critical changes during the previous years. In particular the introduction of the two-round, majority vote requirement played a large role in the election of 1981. The new electoral system divided the various right and left factions within themselves during the first round, but led to right and left polarization during the second round. This forced the right and left to strategize for both the first and second parts of the election.
Thus in the first round each candidate must present him or herself as the better candidate while being careful not to remove all credibility of his/her fellow right or left candidates, as their opponents may have to run again in the next round against the opposing right or left candidate. (Much as is the case with the primaries in the USA).
In the second round, however, total unity must be achieved. This leads to the movement of both groups toward the center, with coalitions between center groups and extremists within the right and left.
Division Tactics
The new electoral "rules of the game," was one of the most notable factors that decided the 1981 election. The division within the right between the two main rightist factions, Giscard’s Union pour la démocratie française (UDF), and Chirac’s neo-Gaullist Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) proved to be the final blow to Giscard (Painton, par. 12). When Chirac lost the "primary," he refused to advise his supporters to back Giscard in the runoff, though he himself stated he would vote for Giscard. In effect, Chirac refused to endorse Giscard as the sole candidate of the centre-right.
There was also the tactical ingenuity on the part of the Left that brought about Mitterrand’s victory. As author Penniman points out, in a shrewd move, the left gained "strength through disunity." The right’s disunity between the UDF and RPR factions brought about the downfall of their major candidate. The split between the left’s Socialist and Communist Parties, however, allowed the electorate to be more comfortable voting for the Socialists while gaining the Communist Party votes, which retains roughly 20% of the electorate votes.
Results
e•dSummary of the 26 April and 10 May 1981 French presidential election result
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Related Research Articles
In France, the Gaullist Party is usually used to refer to the largest party professing to be Gaullist. Gaullism claim to transcend the left-right divide but in practice the current Gaullist party is the centre-right Republicans.
Presidential elections took place in France on 23 April and 7 May 1995, to elect the fifth president of the Fifth Republic.
Presidential elections were held in France on 24 April and 8 May 1988.
Presidential elections were held in France in 1974, following the death of President Georges Pompidou. They went to a second round, and were won by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing by a margin of 1.6%. It is to date the closest presidential election in French history.
The 1965 French presidential election, held on 5 December and 19 December, was the first direct presidential election in the Fifth Republic and the first since the Second Republic in 1848. It had been widely expected that incumbent president Charles de Gaulle would be re-elected, but the election was notable for the unexpectedly strong performance of his left-wing challenger François Mitterrand.
Jean Adrien François Lecanuet was a French centrist politician. He was born to a family of modest means, and gravitated towards literature during his studies. He received his diploma at the age of 22, becoming the youngest agrégé in France. He participated in the Second World War French Resistance movement. He was arrested by the German forces in August 1944 but managed to escape. After the Liberation, he became a general inspector at the Ministry of Defence. Under the Fourth Republic, he held ministerial posts numerous times and was a member of the Christian-Democratic Popular Republican Movement (MRP). From 1951 to 1955, he was MRP deputy from the Seine-Inférieure region. He became senator from Seine-Maritime in 1959 and was president of the MRP from 1963 to 1965.
The Republican Party was a conservative-liberal political party in France founded in 1977. It replaced the National Federation of the Independent Republicans that was founded in 1966. It was created by future President of France, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. It was known to be conservative in domestic, social and economic policies, pro-NATO, and pro-European.
French legislative elections took place on 5 June and 12 June 1988, to elect the ninth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic, one month after the re-election of François Mitterrand as President of France.
French legislative elections took place on 14 June and 21 June 1981 to elect the seventh National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.
The French legislative elections took place on 12 March and 19 March 1978 to elect the sixth National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.
French legislative elections took place on 5 and 12 March 1967 to elect the third National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.
The Gauche Plurielle was a left-wing coalition in France, composed of the Socialist Party, the French Communist Party, the Greens, the Left Radical Party, and the Citizens' Movement. Succeeding Alain Juppé's conservative government, the Plural Left governed France from 1997 to 2002. It was another case of cohabitation between rival parties at the head of the state and of the government. Following the failure of the left at the 2002 legislative election, it was replaced by another conservative government, this time headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
French presidential debates, broadcast on TV, traditionally occurred only between the two rounds of the presidential elections. In 2017, for the first time, a presidential debate took place prior to the first round.
There have been eleven presidential elections in France since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
