The Resurgence of the Radical Right in France From Boulangisme to the Front National

This book attempts to account for the resurgence of significant political movements of the Radical Right in France since the establishment of democracy in the country at the end of the nineteenth century. Taking to task historical treatments of the Radical Right for their failure to specify the conditions and dynamics attending its emergence, and faulting the historical myopia of contemporary electoral and party-centric accounts of the Front National, it tries to explain the Radical Right's continuing appeal by relating the socio-structural outcomes of the processes of industrialization and democratization in France to the persistence of economically and politically illiberal groups within French society. Specifically, the book argues that, as a result of the country's protracted and uneven experience of industrialization and urbanization, significant pre- or anti-modern social classes, which remained functionally ill-adapted and culturally ill-disposed to industrial capitalism and liberal democracy, subsisted late into its development.

1. Introduction; 2. Defining the radical right in France, past and present; 3. The class-cultural roots of the radical right: structures and expressions of indépendance; 4. The age of contentment: petits indépendants during the belle époque; 5. The fateful transition: petits indépendants in the interwar period; 6. The eclipse of the petty producer republic: petits indépendants from Vichy through the Fourth Republic; 7. The age of decline: petits indépendants under the Fifth Republic; 8. Epilogue: French workers in crisis and the entrenchment of the front national; 9. The radical right in France in comparative perspective; 10. Conclusion.

Gabriel Goodliffe currently teaches courses in International Relations and International Political Economy at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City. In addition to the present volume on the Radical Right in France, he is the author of the chapter on French politics for the forthcoming (fourth) edition of Europe Today, as well as a chapter on the Front National in New Perspectives on European Right-Wing Extremism, Identity and Passions, also forthcoming. Goodliffe earned his doctorate in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC, in 2008. He previously taught courses in comparative politics, international relations and international political economy at the American University and The Johns Hopkins University.