France: Communication Policies Pursued by Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande to Fight their Unpopularity

Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande have experienced high levels of unpopularity, soon after their election. They received an "etat de grace" more or less long and a fall in the polls came quickly. Their first political decisions led to a high level of dissatisfaction among the public opinion. There seems to be structural factors that make difficult the art of government in contemporary democracies. The other explanatory factors abound: economic crisis of 2008 and mass unemployment for Sarkozy, debt crisis of 2012, mass unemployment and tax policy for Hollande. But there are personal factors that count: personal behavior and privacy display, breach of the promises of the presidential campaign for Sarkozy and Hollande. Faced with growing discontent, Sarkozy and Hollande have adopted different communication policies: the first has tended to make his presidency less flamboyant ; the second was out of its initial posture of "normal president". The objective of this paper is to analyze the use of various means of communication to regain some popularity: use of communication experts, targeted movements with specific audiences in the provinces, interventions on television, radio and the press. But it is interesting to analyze the return toward a greater interest for issues of traditional 'reserved area' of the president under the 5th Republic: national defense, foreign policy and African policy. Sarkozy was heavily involved in the crisis in Georgia, but also by initiating a strong action against Libya's colonel Gaddafi. Hollande has been involved in military interventions in Africa (Mali and the Central African Republic) and in Iraq and Syria, where he was taken to air-attacks. However, this involvement in the field of defense and foreign policy has not (for Sarkozy) or do not appear (for Hollande) to have led to a return to a high level of satisfaction.