This has been an insurmountable obstacle for successive governments over the past twenty years’. How often have we heard this refrain from the mouths of commentators and often politicians too – at least those of the Centre and Right, the Left being less prone to self-criticism?
Does this mean that the policies of Pierre Mauroy and Jacques Chirac, of Pierre Bérégovoy and Édouard Balladur, of Alain Juppé and Lionel Jospin have all been the same and that their governments have found themselves in identical political situations? Certainly not!
Over the twenty-one years since the double transfer of power in 1981, the Left has been in government for fifteen years – three quarters of the entire period. Three times it has had the benefit of a full legislative term of five years, giving it the necessary continuity to apply its ideas. On each occasion, the electorate has delivered a damning verdict on its performance. Socialism, French style, is definitely not good for France.
The RPR-UDF alliance has also been in power three times, but each of its terms of office has lasted for only two years. For two of these three truncated terms, it was in a situation of uncompromising cohabitation with a President, François Mitterrand, who prevented his Prime Ministers, particularly Jacques Chirac, from using executive orders (ordonnances) to fast-track reforms. In spite of this, each of the RPR-UDF governments initiated radical reforms. In each instance, there was insufficient time for their benefits to be appreciated by the general public. The great reformers in other countries, such as Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl or Ronald Reagan, would have been swept out of office if they had been required to face the electorate after two years in power, for two years is enough time to grimace at the bitterness of the medicine but not enough to appreciate its healing properties.
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