Populist Pragmatism: the Governing Strategies of Rassemblement National Mayors in the North and South of France

The Rassemblement (formerly Front) National (RN) made a historic breakthrough in the 2014 municipal elections and gained control of 11 mayoralties. These local governments are concentrated in two clusters: one in the north of France and one in the south. The socio-economic contexts and the RN electorates of these two areas stand in stark contrast. While in the north social issues (welfare and the economy) are more salient, issues of identity (immigration and culture) predominate in the south. The RN has been shown to adopt different electoral strategies to respond to the different demands of its northern and southern electorates (Ivaldi and Dutozia 2018). In this paper we ask if the party has also responded with contrasting strategies of governing at the local level. The paper compares a case from each region – Hénin-Beaumont and Fréjus – the two largest towns governed by the party since the 2014 election. We analyse their discourse through core sentence analysis of mayoral statements in local newsletters, with a focus upon issue salience and the framing of policy outputs. In addition, we conduct 21 interviews with government and opposition actors to help explain the governing process behind these discursive and policy outputs. We show the extent of the difference in the salience of ideological themes usually considered central to the mariniste RN - especially, immigration, security and socio-economic policy – across the 2014-2020 government term. We argue the prioritisation of the national party aim of dediabolisation - in localities that have been the subject of a huge amount of media attention - has produced a nationally consistent approach to local government that we characterise as populist pragmatism.