Gaullism is a post-war French political movement originated by General Charles de Gaulle, but by no means limited to his own views, or parties founded by him. It nowadays represents perhaps the major conservative force in French politics. There have been several Gaullist parties, the names of which change from time to time, starting with the party de Gaulle founded at the end of the Second World War, the RPF; the current version, the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR), is headed by Jacques Chirac. The prime ministership of Chirac in the mid-1980s, under a socialist president, François Mitterrand, whose presidential term overlapped parliamentary elections which the right had won (a period known as cohabitation) demonstrated the flexibility of Gaullist politics, as well as the strength of the constitution. Chirac was still the leading figure in French politics, this time as president, cohabiting with a socialist prime minister, at the beginning of the 21st century. The extent to which he was any longer a Gaullist in anything but name remains unclear.
As an overall movement, Gaullism has no particularly distinctive ideology, except its adherence to some of the views that were dear to de Gaulle. Of these the most significant is a belief in the importance of a strong centralized state, with a powerful executive and without France’s traditional burden of a powerful but anarchic parliament, which had weakened and made ineffective all governments during the Third and Fourth Republics. This had been de Gaulle’s aim at the beginning of the Fourth Republic, and it was what he created in the Fifth Republic. Even this, though, is by no means new as an ideal in French politics, being a re-interpretation of the Jacobin tradition. The other vital element of de Gaulle’s thinking accepted by modern Gaullism is the importance of French national independence and a suspicion of internationalist movements.
Thus de Gaulle partially withdrew France from NATO, and the Gaullists remain lukewarm towards France’s membership of the European Union. This position went hand-in-hand with a stress on France’s own military forces: de Gaulle created a nuclear deterrence force, and the Gaullist parties have always been determined to keep up such independent military strength. Even these policies, however, except perhaps the attitude to Europe, may be seen as essentially French rather than Gaullist, because the socialist Mitterrand, president from 1981–95, kept faith with them. Representing what France essentially is, though, is exactly how the party would describe itself.
De Gaulle himself had a more complicated political philosophy built round a distinction he drew between ‘Noble’ and ‘Base’ politics. Noble politics, which he felt he practised as president, had to do with uniting the nation and leading it in crucial areas of the public interest, being a non-partisan activity. Indeed, de Gaulle derided political parties as divisive and often corrupt, and his personal relations with his own political parties (they never, in fact, had ‘party’ in their titles) were always distant and aloof. In contrast, base politics were the politics of haggling and compromise on private or sectional interests, which he felt were best left to others, especially parliament, in the day-to-day running of society. Politically, the Gaullists are now a fairly orthodox conservative party, with a predictable support among the middle and upper classes, the religious, the older, and, often, women. Originally it had been an ideologically diverse movement, united above all by a commitment to de Gaulle as a national saviour, and to the need to fight for the stability of the Fifth Republic. With de Gaulle dead and the Republic safely entrenched it has narrowed its ideological and voting base, but remains well organized and politically the main opposition to the united French left, particularly when working in alliance with other centre-right groupings.
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