The French Elections of 2002: The Issue of Insecurity and The Le Pen Effect
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The French Elections of 2002: The Issue of Insecurity and The Le Pen Effect Thomas R. Christofferson Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA. E-Mail: [email protected]
The French electorate in the elections of 2002 focused on one primary issue: insecurity. The left’s main advantage — 5 years of successful reforms — was trumped by the right’s ability to capitalize on the fear of crime. As a result, JeanMarie Le Pen edged out Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential elections. However, this proved short-lived as Jacques Chirac and the parliamentary right organized a successful campaign to take the issue of insecurity away from Le Pen and the National Front, attracting voters from all parts of the political spectrum to support a moderate, republican attack on crime, eschewing the antiimmigrant and anti-Moslem politics of the extreme right. The presidential and legislative elections ended in triumph for the parliamentary right and total defeat for Le Pen and the National Front. Although the far right was marginalized once more, its structural strengths in places such as Provence and its appeal to protest voters guarantee that it will not disappear as a force. Still, the elections of 2002 reinforced the dominance of two political parties in France — the parliamentary right and the socialist left — to the detriment of all others. Acta Politica (2003) 38, 109–123. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500028 Keywords: security/insecurity; Jean-Marie Le Pen; Jacques Chirac; Jean-Pierre Raffarin; Nicolas Sarkozy; National Front
To the surprise of the vast majority of the French, the extreme right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen finished second on the first round of the April 2002 presidential elections, obtaining the right to face President Jacques Chirac in May on the second and final round. Le Pen’s victory over Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, the Socialist party candidate and favorite to be one of the final two contenders, left the French asking why it happened and blaming one another for such a horrendous result. Was Le Pen’s victory a second ‘divine surprise,’ as Marshal Pe´tain’s elevation to head of state was called in 1940? Or was it far more banal than this: a ‘divine fluke’ perhaps? Was it part of a European drift to the right, as previous elections in Austria, Denmark, and Italy might suggest? Or was it tied specifically to indigenous factors that had little to do with what was happening elsewhere? Did Le Pen provide his National Front party with the momentum needed to win in the future? Or was
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this Le Pen’s swan song, his last try for the presidency — and the last time we will hear of the extreme right National Front as a significant political force? In a sense, the April election was a ‘divine fluke.’ Le Pen should have never won second place. His margin of victory was less than one per cent over Lionel Jospin.1 While Jacques Chirac faced only two or three serious rightist candidates among the record 16 who ran for election, Jospin confronted at lea
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