The French Socialist Party in Hard Times: Reform or Keep the Same?

The French Socialist Party in hard times: reform or keep the same? – In France, the Socialist Party has been one of the two main political forces for decades, both at the national and local levels: beyond the election of François Hollande as the President of the Republic in 2012, the Socialists controlled the National Assembly, the Senate, the regions, the counties (départements) and most of the big cities. But since 2014, the Socialists have experienced a succession of electoral defeats that have deeply weakened the party. Since the historic defeat at the presidential election (6.36%) and the following parliamentary elections, the size of the Socialist Group in the National Assembly has been reduced from 295 to 29 deputies. 75% of voters now consider that the Socialist Party can disappear, and even 64% of socialist voters think so (Odoxa, February 2020). The Socialist Party, faced with a series of splits, by the departure of the most left-wing factions of the party, has sought to rebuild its internal organization and redefine its political strategy. Using the ethnographic material we have collected with a participant observation at the local and national level and a series of individual interviews, our study will analyze the three main crisis the party is faced with: the decline in numbers of activists, the rejection of its traditional organization, and the dilemma around the conditions on which they can make electoral alliances. We will first focus on the analysis of the consequences of the electoral defeats for a party that was in government, in terms of the retraction of the party apparatus in particular. We will then address the attempts at internal redesign of the organization and the question of the opening of the party (and its democratization), confronted with new parties such as En Marche or the France Insoumise, which value different forms of engagement. The growing rejection of the open primaries process for example, accused of being responsible for the electoral defeat of 2017, will be discussed at length. Finally, we will discuss the strategies of electoral alliances with the other parties, at the occasion of the European elections and the 2020 municipal elections, and the internal debates on this strategy, which is far from reaching consensus, especially for those who hope in a socialist party that would be once again dominant among the leftist organizations.