Down South, up North: party strategy and performances of the Extreme Right in municipal office in France

Paper delivered to the Workshop on 'Populists and Public Office' ECPR Joint Sessions 22-27 March 2010, Münster; This paper aims to assess the French Front national's performances in municipal office following its success in securing a majority in four city councils in the mid-1990s. First, a brief account of the local political opportunity structures that participated in the municipal success of the FN is provided. The paper then suggests a characterisation of two divergent models of policy and vote-seeking styles of municipal governance whilst pointing at the commonality in the classic far right agenda underpinning social and cultural policies across the four localities under FN administration. As will be discussed, this strong authoritarian tropism translated into sectoral re-allocation of council financial resources and the targeting of the party's traditional constituency at local level. The building of an electoral clientele paved the way to the development of political corruption and municipal nepotism, which in most cases would later account for the rejection of incumbent FN mayors by voters. Wherever possible, the above framework for analysis is applied to exploring the strategic attempts by the extreme right to get hold of the Northern city of Hénin-Beaumont in the recent 2008 and 2009 municipal elections. The emphasis is on how a more pragmatic line of political communication was again replicated in combination with the populist anti-tax and anti-corruption agenda that had already contributed to the municipal rise of the party in the South in the mid-1990s.