Gauche plurielle
Encyclopedia
The Gauche Plurielle was a left-wing coalition in France, composed of the Socialist Party
Socialist Party (France)
The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. It is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the center-right Union for a Popular Movement...

 (Parti socialiste or PS), the French Communist Party
French Communist Party
The French Communist Party is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism.Although its electoral support has declined in recent decades, the PCF retains a large membership, behind only that of the Union for a Popular Movement , and considerable influence in French...

 (Parti communiste français or PCF), the Greens
The Greens (France)
The Greens were a Green political party to the centre-left of the political spectrum in France. They had officially been in existence since 1984, but their spiritual roots could be traced as far back as René Dumont’s candidacy for the presidency in 1974...

, the Left Radical Party
Left Radical Party
The Radical Party of the Left is a minor social-liberal, and in opposition to its common understanding of its name, a moderate centre-left political party in France advocating radicalism, secularism to its french extend known as laïcité, progressivism, pro-Europeanism, individual freedom and...

 (Parti radical de gauche or PRG), and the Citizens' Movement (Mouvement des citoyens or MDC). Succeeding Alain Juppé
Alain Juppé
Alain Marie Juppé is a French politician currently serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He also served as Prime Minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac and the Minister of Defence and Veterans Affairs from 2010 to 2011...

's conservative government, the Plural Left governed France from 1997 to 2002. It was another case of cohabitation
Cohabitation (government)
Cohabitation in government occurs in semi-presidential systems, such as France's system, when the President is from a different political party than the majority of the members of parliament. It occurs because such a system forces the president to name a premier that will be acceptable to the...

 between rival parties at the head of the state and of the government (Jacques Chirac
Jacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...

 as President and Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

 as Prime minister). Following the failure of the left at the 2002 legislative election
French legislative election, 2002
-12th Assembly by Parliamentary Group:...

, it was replaced by another conservative government, this time headed by Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Jean-Pierre Raffarin
Jean-Pierre Raffarin is a French conservative politician and senator for Vienne.Jean-Pierre Raffarin served as the Prime Minister of France from 6 May 2002 to 31 May 2005, resigning after France's rejection of the referendum on the European Union draft constitution. However, after Raffarin...

.

The Plural Left government initiated several reforms, including the CMU
Couverture maladie universelle
The Couverture maladie universelle is a French social welfare programme concerning public health. It was voted through by Lionel Jospin's gauche plurielle government , at the initiative of the minister Martine Aubry...

 social welfare program for indigents, the PACS
Pacte civil de solidarité
In France, a pacte civil de solidarité commonly known as a PACS /paks/ , is a form of civil union between two adults for organising their joint life. It brings rights and responsibilities, but less so than marriage...

 civil union law, the 35 hours workweek, the creation of the FNAEG
FNAEG
The Fichier National Automatisé des Empreintes Génétiques is the French national DNA database, used by both the national police force and local gendarmerie.-Origins and evolution :...

 DNA database and several privatization
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...

s (France Télécom
France Télécom
France Telecom S.A. is the main telecommunications company in France, the third-largest in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It currently employs about 180,000 people and has 192.7 million customers worldwide . In 2010 the group had revenue of €45.5 billion...

, GAN, Thomson Multimédia, Air France
Air France
Air France , stylised as AIRFRANCE, is the French flag carrier headquartered in Tremblay-en-France, , and is one of the world's largest airlines. It is a subsidiary of the Air France-KLM Group and a founding member of the SkyTeam global airline alliance...

, Eramet
Eramet
Eramet is a French multinational mining and metallurgy company, listed on the Euronext Paris exchange under the symbol ERA.The company produces non-ferrous metals and derivatives, nickel alloys and superalloys, and high-performance special steels....

, Aérospatiale
Aérospatiale
Aérospatiale was a French aerospace manufacturer that built both civilian and military aircraft, rockets and satellites. It was originally known as Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale...

, Autoroutes du sud de la France). It also passed the SRU Law forcing each commune to have a 20% quota of housing projects, the 15 June 2000 Guigou law
Élisabeth Guigou
Élisabeth Guigou is a French Socialist politician.-Biography:After attending ENA, France's elite graduate school of public affairs, she worked on Jacques Delors' staff in 1982 before being hired by Hubert Védrine in François Mitterrand's...

 on presumption of innocence
Presumption of innocence
The presumption of innocence, sometimes referred to by the Latin expression Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat, is the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. Application of this principle is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, recognised in many...

, the Taubira Law
Christiane Taubira
Christiane Taubira or Christiane Taubira-Delannon is a French politician. President of her party Walwari, she has served as a deputy at the French National Assembly since 1993, and was re-elected in 1997. Non-affiliated in 1993, she then voted for the investiture of the conservative Edouard...

 recognizing slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

 as a crime against humanity, and the LSQ law concerning security. Furthermore, Jospin's government carried out a partial regularization of illegal aliens.

Origins

During the 1970s, the PS, the PCF and the Left-wing Radicals formed the "Union of Left" based on a Common Program (1972). But the policy of Socialist leader François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the only figure from the left so far elected President...

, elected President of France in 1981, did not correspond exactly to this programme, notably since 1983. One year later, the Communist ministers resigned. After that, the "Union of Left" was only a circumstantial electoral alliance.

After Mitterrand's re-election in 1988
French presidential election, 1988
Presidential elections were held in France on 24 April and 8 May 1988.In 1981, the Socialist Party leader, François Mitterrand, was elected President of France and the Left won the legislative election. However, in 1986, the Right regained a parliamentary majority. President Mitterrand was forced...

, the PS and the Left-wing radicals obtained a relative parliamentary majority. However, the PCF chose to support the government only issue-to-issue. Consequently, the PS tried an alliance with the center-right which ultimately failed. Due to its electoral disaster in 1993
French legislative election, 1993
French legislative elections took place on 21 and 28 March 1993 to elect the 10th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic.Since 1988, President François Mitterrand and his Socialist cabinets had relied on a relative parliamentary majority. Without the support of the Communists, Prime minister...

. new PS leader, former Prime Minister Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard
Michel Rocard is a French politician, member of the Socialist Party . He served as Prime Minister under François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991, during which he created the Revenu minimum d'insertion , a social minimum welfare program for indigents, and led the Matignon Accords regarding the status...

, called for a political "big-bang", a new attempt of to transcend the traditional Left-Right divide in French politics. This was generally seen as unsuccessful. Rocard resigned the leadership of the PS after its loss in the 1994 European Parliament election.

The PS contested the 1995 presidential election
French presidential election, 1995
Presidential elections took place in France on 23 April and 7 May 1995, to elect the fifth president of the Fifth Republic.The incumbent Socialist president, François Mitterrand, did not stand for a third term. He was 78, had cancer, and his party had lost the previous legislative election in a...

, but was not it a position to win without electoral alliances. Its candidate Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin
Lionel Jospin is a French politician, who served as Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002.Jospin was the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in the elections of 1995 and 2002. He was narrowly defeated in the final runoff election by Jacques Chirac in 1995...

 was supported by the PRG and the MDC.

In 1994, Robert Hue
Robert Hue
Robert Hue, in full Robert Georges Auguste Hue , is a French politician who was National Secretary of the French Communist Party from 1994 to 2001 and President of the PCF from 2001 to 2002...

 succeeded Georges Marchais
Georges Marchais
Georges René Louis Marchais was the head of the French Communist Party from 1972 to 1994, and a candidate in the French presidential elections of 1981 - in which he managed to garner only 15.34% of the vote, which was considered at the time a major setback for the party.-Early life:Born into a...

 as head of the PCF. Responding to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR
Revolutions of 1989
The Revolutions of 1989 were the revolutions which overthrew the communist regimes in various Central and Eastern European countries.The events began in Poland in 1989, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and...

, Hue campaigned on broadening the PCF's electoral base. This was part of a larger strategy addressing the PCF's ongoing electoral decline—following the split of the European Communist block from the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in the 1970s the French Communist Party had entered a period of electoral decline, its electoral vote totals being reduced by half.

The Greens, founded in 1984, benefited from the PS crisis at the beginning of the 1990s. However, their leader Antoine Waechter
Antoine Waechter
Antoine Waechter is a French politician, leader of the Independent Ecological Movement, born on February 11, 1949 in Mulhouse -Early Activism:...

 refused to integrate the party in the left/right cleavage. Without allies, the Greens were unable to gain seats and enter government. In 1993, Dominique Voynet
Dominique Voynet
Dominique Voynet was a French senator for the département of Seine-Saint-Denis, the mayor of Montreuil and a member of The Greens.-Life:...

, who favoured an alliance with the left-wing parties, replaced Waechter.

Jospin lost the second round of the presidential election, but obtained a respectable result. The 5 left-wing parties formed a coalition called the "Plural Left". The name was founded by the Socialist politician Jean-Christophe Cambadélis
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis
Jean-Christophe Cambadélis is a member of the National Assembly of France. He represents the city of Paris, and is a member of the Socialiste, radical, citoyen et divers gauche.-References:...

. It meant the PS wanted to respect its allies and not to impose its hegemony, what the other parties reproached it.

Jospin's government

In 1997, President Chirac
Chirac
Chirac may refer to:* Jacques Chirac, the President of the French Republic.* Bernadette Chirac, the wife of President Jacques Chirac** Their two daughters, Claude Chirac and Laurence...

 dissolved the French National Assembly
French National Assembly
The French National Assembly is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. The upper house is the Senate ....

 before the expected end of term in 1998. Much to his surprise, the left won the legislative election
French legislative election, 1997
French legislative election took place on 25 May and 1 June 1997 to elect the 11th National Assembly of the Fifth Republic. It was the consequence of President Jacques Chirac's decision to call the legislative election one year before the deadline....

.

Chirac's then advisor, Dominique de Villepin
Dominique de Villepin
Dominique Marie François René Galouzeau de Villepin is a French politician who served as the Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007....

, is rumoured to have been behind the move. The decision surprised many: although it was the fourth dissolution from a directly-elected President, it was most importantly the first one for no given reason - inspired perhaps by the Westminster tradition.

The left-wing parties were:
  • Socialists, who had been in power for ten of the last sixteen years, yet were being criticized inside and outside the party
  • Communists, who fell from Postwar's First party to a single-digit party, yet experiencing a last surge at the time
  • Radicals, acting as a more centrist counterweight to Communists
  • The Citizens' Movement, born in 1993 as a left-wing Eurosceptic force, which also incorporated Left-wing Gaullists, Radicals, and Feminists
  • The Greens, who experienced great divisions in the 1990s on strategic issues, and who had just chosen to side with the Left


The French MPs were elected within 577 single-winner districts through a two-round system
Two-round system
The two-round system is a voting system used to elect a single winner where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate...

. Tactically, it is near to impossible to win without multiple-party agreements, except when the President's party can draw a large support.
  • First-round agreements
    • In January 1997, the Socialist party withdrew from 29 districts against the Green party's withdrawal from 79 others.
    • The Socialist party and the Radicals decided that in 40 districts, they would support a common candidate
    • Communists and Citizens did not pass any agreements with Socialists
  • Entre-deux-tours agreements
    • Communists withdrew from 16 districts where Citizens were in the runoff, and Citizens called to vote for 33 Communist candidates
    • Automatic withdrawal for the best left-wing candidate in the case of triangulaires or quadrangulaires


There was little to no platform agreement

The final results:
  • Socialist group: 250 MPs
  • Communist group: 36 MPs
  • Radical, Citizen and Green group: 33 MPs (Radical: 12, Greens: 7, Citizens: 7, Misc.: 4)


The balance of power was clear: Socialists were the driving force, and their lack of cohesion might be fixed by the other parties. Jospin became Prime minister. On May 14th, he announced that the political balance of power would be the same of the first-round results.

In his government, not counting secretaries of state (the third tier in the hierarchy), there were:
  • 10 Socialist ministers and 8 delegate-ministers
  • 2 Communists ministers: Jean-Claude Gayssot
    Jean-Claude Gayssot
    Jean-Claude Gayssot is a French politician. A member of the French Communist Party , he was Minister of Transportation in Lionel Jospin 's government, from 1997 to 2002. He gave his name to the 1990 Gayssot Act repressing Holocaust denial and speech in favor of racial discrimination...

     for the Transport ministry, Marie-George Buffet
    Marie-George Buffet
    Marie-George Buffet is a French politician. She was the head of the French Communist Party from 2001 to 2010. She joined the Party in 1969, and was the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports from June 4, 1997 to May 5, 2002. Ms...

     for the Youth and Sports ministry
  • 1 Green minister: Dominique Voynet
    Dominique Voynet
    Dominique Voynet was a French senator for the département of Seine-Saint-Denis, the mayor of Montreuil and a member of The Greens.-Life:...

     for the Environment ministry
  • 2 Left-wing Radicals: Emile Zuccarelli
    Émile Zuccarelli
    Émile Zuccarelli is a French politician from Corsica. He serves as honorary President of the Radical Party of the Left and mayor of Bastia. Until his defeat in the French legislative election, 2007, he was deputy for Haute-Corse.In the French regional elections, 2004, he led a PRG list in Corse,...

     for the Civil Service ministry, Jacques Dondoux for the External Trade ministry)
  • 1 MDC: Jean-Pierre Chevènement
    Jean-Pierre Chevènement
    Jean-Pierre Chevènement is a French politician. He was Minister of Defense from 1988 to 1991 and Minister of the Interior from 1997 to 2000. He was a presidential candidate in 2002 and since 2008 has been a member of the Senate....

     for the Interior ministry

The end

In 2000, Jean-Pierre Chevènement resigned because of his opposition to negotiations with the nationalists of Corsica
Corsica
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

. Preparing his candidacy for the 2002 presidential election
French presidential election, 2002
The 2002 French presidential election consisted of a first round election on 21 April 2002, and a runoff election between the top two candidates on 5 May 2002. This presidential contest attracted a greater than usual amount of international attention because of Le Pen's unexpected appearance in...

, he criticized the governmental policy and proposed to rally the "Republicans of the left and the right".

Futhemore, in 2001, the economic growth slowed. The Communists and some Greens criticized the government's moderate economic policy. The Economy ministers, Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Strauss-Kahn
Dominique Gaston André Strauss-Kahn , often referred to in the media, and by himself, as DSK, is a French economist, lawyer, politician, and member of the French Socialist Party...

 and later Laurent Fabius
Laurent Fabius
Laurent Fabius is a French Socialist politician. He served as Prime Minister from 17 July 1984 to 20 March 1986. He was 37 years old when he was appointed and is, so far, the youngest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic.-Early life:...

, were accused of being social liberals
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...

 because of the privatisation of public companies. They claimed no main social reforms were done after the reduction of working time to 35 hours. The parliamentary majority was divided about the law to restrict the dismissals.

The presidential campaign focused on an alleged insecurity problem. In contrast to the right, the left-wing coalition was divided about this problem and had not a clear policy. Finally, those who were disappointed by the "Plural Left" voted for the Trotskyist candidates (Arlette Laguiller
Arlette Laguiller
Arlette Yvonne Laguiller is a French Trotskyist politician. Since 1973, she has been the spokeswoman and the best known leader and perennial candidate of the Lutte Ouvrière political party...

, Olivier Besancenot
Olivier Besancenot
Olivier Besancenot is a French far left political figure and trade unionist, and the founding main spokesperson of the New Anticapitalist Party from 2009 to 2011....

, Daniel Gluckstein
Daniel Gluckstein
Daniel Gluckstein is a French Trotskyist politician for running for French presidential election of 2002 as candidate of the Workers' Party .-Biography:...

).

All the left-wing parties were represented by their candidates. In the first round, Jospin (PS) obtained 16.2%, Chevènement (MDC) 5.3%, Noël Mamère
Noël Mamère
Noël Mamère is a French singer, cyclist and politician.He rose to fame in the 1980s as a TV entertainer, in particular on Antenne 2....

 (the Greens) 5.2%, Hue (PCF) 3.4%, Christiane Taubira
Christiane Taubira
Christiane Taubira or Christiane Taubira-Delannon is a French politician. President of her party Walwari, she has served as a deputy at the French National Assembly since 1993, and was re-elected in 1997. Non-affiliated in 1993, she then voted for the investiture of the conservative Edouard...

 (PRG) 2.3%. Arriving in third position, Jospin was eliminated and no left-wing candidate contested the second round, leaving space for far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen is a French far right-wing and nationalist politician who is founder and former president of the Front National party. Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times, most notably in 2002, when in a surprise upset he came second, polling more votes in the first round than...

. Two months later, the left lost the 2002 legislative elections
French legislative election, 2002
-12th Assembly by Parliamentary Group:...

.

In consequence, Jospin announced his political retirement. Hue stepped down the head of the PCF, replaced by Marie-George Buffet
Marie-George Buffet
Marie-George Buffet is a French politician. She was the head of the French Communist Party from 2001 to 2010. She joined the Party in 1969, and was the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports from June 4, 1997 to May 5, 2002. Ms...

 who attempted to continue the PCF's policy of opening towards social movements, including the alter-globalization
Alter-globalization
Alter-globalization is the name of a social movement that supports global cooperation and interaction, but which opposes the negative effects of economic globalization, feeling that it often works to the detriment of, or does not...

 movement. Chevènement failed to rally all the "Republicans" and founded a new left-wing party, the Citizen and Republican Movement
Citizen and Republican Movement
The Citizen and Republican Movement is a political party in France. The party replaced, in 2002, the Citizens' Movement founded by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who left the Socialist Party in 1993 due to his opposition to the Persian Gulf War and to the Maastricht Treaty...

 (Mouvement républicain et citoyen or MRC). After an attempt to ally with a part of the far-left, the Greens returned finally in the parliamentary left.

See also

  • Couverture maladie universelle
    Couverture maladie universelle
    The Couverture maladie universelle is a French social welfare programme concerning public health. It was voted through by Lionel Jospin's gauche plurielle government , at the initiative of the minister Martine Aubry...

     (CMU, a social welfare program)
  • FNAEG
    FNAEG
    The Fichier National Automatisé des Empreintes Génétiques is the French national DNA database, used by both the national police force and local gendarmerie.-Origins and evolution :...

    , a government database
    Government database
    Government databases collect personal information for various reasons .-Canada:...

     registering DNA
    DNA
    Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

    information
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