Repeated twice, worse ? In 2017, for the first time since 1958, neither of the two major parties that had succeeded each other in power was qualified for the second round, with sometimes historically low scores: 6.4% for the candidate of the Socialist Party ( PS), Benoît Hamon, and 20% for François Fillon on the side of Les Républicains (LR). Five years later, the polls record for Anne Hidalgo and Valérie Pécresse voting intentions halved. “If we had been told that the PS and LR would weigh around 12% between them, we would not have believed it”, summarizes the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, according to whom the mayor of Paris “will pay the mortuary wreath” du PS.
Struck by the disintegration of the great ideological narratives, shunned by their electorates, can political parties die? Yes, assure many elected officials and political executives, like the communist Robert Hue, who, in 2014, titled his book thus: The parties will die… and they don’t know it (The Archipelago). The reasons for the crisis are multiple: multiplication of political scandals, rise of individualism and the Internet, convergence of economic and social policies carried out by the right and the left, ultimately taxed with impotence.
In this context, the parties struggle to fulfill their traditional functions: the programmatic function, delegated to think tanks; militant animation and popular education (gentrified, they have become parties of elected officials); and the selection of candidates, which is increasingly done through open primaries. “A friendly of bowlers, without friendship and without the balls”, had summed up, in 2017, Emmanuel Macron, who tried to make up for these failures, especially with En marche !, before acknowledging during his term that he had failed to break the spiral of mistrust.
“What is dead is bipolarization”
If they are very weakened, the parties would not be destined to disappear, wants to believe the professor of political science Frédéric Sawicki. The latter observes that the Communist Party (PCF), whose agony is interminable, or the Radical Party are still in the landscape, where the PS and LR could also remain, strong in their “historic capital” and their local roots. For the political scientist, the parties are nevertheless condemned to transform themselves in depth if they want to continue to structure representative democracy. “What is dead is bipolarization”, continues Sawicki, according to which Emmanuel Macron succeeded in ” to break “ the old partisan system, “the resulting fragmentation reminiscent of the IVe Republic “.
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