Since the start of the "cohabitation" with the Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin (PS) in 1997, France's Conservatives led by state president Jacques Chirac (RPR) have been in continuous decline. A bottom line was reached now with the election of the EU-Parliament in June, when Chirac's Gaullist Party RPR reached only 12,7 %, its worst result ever. The biggest problem of Chirac's, who is still very popular among the French people, is now the growing party fragmentation in his conservative alliance, where Nationalist and Europhobic forces proved their strength. In the government coalition the Socialists, reaching 22,0 % of consensus, were at least able to consolidate their leadership, although even in the center-left-alliance some minor parties advanced. In view of the next presidential elections in 2002 both sides and both candidates, Chirac and Jospin, could find it now harder to reorganize their forces. All these difficulties seem to confirm the crisis of the French Presidential System, which has lately evidenced its growing tendency towards distributing the two major political offices to two opposing leaders.
From de Gaulle to "cohabitation"
"Cohabitation" was the new word in French politics in the year 1986. It was invented to denote an extraordinary event that had never occurred before: a state president governing together with a prime minister and a parliamentary majority of the opposite political party. In 1986 the president was Socialist François Mitterand (PS) and his prime minister was Gaullist Jacques Chirac (RPR). The experience lasted less than two years, then Mitterand proclaimed new elections and his party came back to power again.
The Mitterand-years
The first real change occurred only in 1981, when the Socialist leader François Mitterand (PSF) was elected state president. From his new residence in the Elysée palace a tricky Mitterand showed soon very able in using the instruments of the Gaullist constitution now against the Conservative alliance formed of Chirac's Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) and their Liberal and Centrist coalition partner Union for French Democracy (UDF). At this time the French party system seemed quite rational and stable with two parties on each side of the spectrum: RPR and UDF on the right, PSF and PCF on the left. After Mitterand's first legislation period with a stable Socialist majority, however, changes have become more frequent in French politics, new parties have entered parliament (the far-right National Front and the Greens) and especially since the first example in 1986 there have been other experiences of "cohabitation".
When general Charles de Gaulle designed the Constitution of the 5th French Republic in 1958 it was said that he had formed it as a permanent "coup d'état" against the unreliable left, which had ruined the former democratic experience of the 4th Republic. In fact, de Gaulle's conservative followers governed the new Republic for more than two decades, with the allied Communists (PCF) and Socialists (PS) always on the opposition banks.
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