Washington D.C.: School of Advanced Int. Studies

French Politics

Mitterrand′s first term, 1981-88:
France embarks on socialism

Gisela Spreitzhofer

December 2006

François Mitterrand’s election as president of the French Republic on May 10, 1981 marked the beginning of a new era in French politics. For the first time in the Fifth Republic, a socialist had become head of state. The new prime minister Pierre Mauroy formed a ministry that consisted mainly of socialists. Their power was enormous after winning clearly the majority in the National Assembly one month after the presidential elections, reducing both the communists and the conservatives by half. Mitterrand formed a coalition of socialist and communist parties whose goal was to redistribute power between state and society and within society itself.

Who was the man that had caused this landslide in the French political landscape (Friend 1998:8-21)? While Mitterrand had always been anti-communist, his leftist orientation was far from obvious in the beginning. Born in the small town of Jarnac, Charente in 1916 in a conservative middle class, Catholic background, Mitterrand became a mid-level functionary of the Vichy government during World War II, but served as a spy for the Free French Forces. Disliking Charles de Gaulle, he sympathized with his rival Henri Giraud. In the Fourth Republic he was a centrist moving leftward, holding various offices as deputy and minister.

By 1958, Mitterrand clearly wanted to be seen as belonging to the left. He had become one of the strongest opponents of de Gaulle against whom he lost in the 1965 presidential campaign. In the presidential election after de Gaulle had resigned in 1969 following a failed referendum, only 5% of the voters supported the socialist candidate Gaston Defferre, while the stalinist Jacques Duclos took over 21% of the vote. This outcome shocked the socialists, and they restructured themselves in the Parti Socialiste (PS). Mitterrand became member of the PS and its first secretary on the same day, which brought him the nickname “the foreign prince”. In 1974, he lost his second presidential campaign against Valérie Giscard d’Estaing.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the communists were the largest French party. Both communist and socialist voters shared an aspiration for social justice. Having a keen feel for political and institutional areas (rather than economic matters), Mitterrand realized that splitting the communist party required entering into an alliance with its leaders and adopting their language, for instance of “breaking capitalism”. His task was to prove that the socialists were more powerful than the communists who had always been better at organizing themselves. The PS was composed of the following competing groups (Hall 1986:193):

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