Can the French far right do local politics? The case of the Rassemblement National (2011-2024)

This paper examines the conditions for the development of the French far right at the local level, focusing on the French Rassemblement National under Marine Le Pen's and Jordan Bardella's presidencies (2011-2024). This aspect of far-right politics has received little attention in France mainly because the local level is not reputed to be the most developed within the organization, given its characteristics which bring it closer to personal or charismatic parties. But the RN has long been trying to structure itself locally with varying degrees of success. This paper proposes to open the black box of extreme-right politics at local level, by looking at three elements that help us to understand how the organization “thinks” the local level, how it invests it and how departmental federations are structured. First, I'll demonstrate the weight of the national level : the RN is a centralized party run by a small circle of people, who gravitate mainly around Marine Le Pen. De facto, departmental federations are mainly managed from the national level: appointments to head federations are personalized and often directly dependent on the President's choices. They represent rewards for services rendered either to herself, or to those close to her, who divide up the "territorial cake" among themselves. Next, I'll take a closer look at the social properties of local leaders. The particular logics of their appointments, linked to personal considerations and strong interpersonal relationships, are part of the changing social structure of this population. I'll show how, since the 1990s, we've witnessed a feminization of the local leadership and a social recruitment that now leaves more room for the upper classes and the highly educated activists. Finally, I'll show that these two elements (personal appointments or "parachuting", and the social mutations of this population) contribute to the instability of the local politics pursued by the far-right: militant numbers fluctuate a lot, ordinary turn-over is very present in the federations, and regular conflicts punctuate the various local organizations, particularly during election periods, in view of the increased competition being played out as the market for elective positions offered by the RN becomes more fluid. More broadly, this paper will show that, in the absence of the ability to organize locally like other more "mainstream" parties, the local politics pursued by the far right is fraught with multiple tensions, mainly correlated with its highly centralized division of political labor and its personalized operating logics. The paper will draw on data from a mixed-methods research (prosopography of local executives and candidates in various elections, semi-directive interviews with members of the administration in charge of local federations, semi-directive interviews with local executives, ethnographic observations of local mobilizations).