Amid France’s political 'fragmentation', 'a case needs to be made for participatory democracy’

Carys Garland is pleased to welcome Dr. Andrew Smith, Historian of Modern France and Lecturer in Liberal Arts at Queen Mary University of London. He argues that Marine Le Pen and the National Rally’s commanding position in early presidential polling should not be regarded as an inevitable far-right victory. They are benefiting from political clarity, while the left, center and center-right remain divided over candidates, programs and messaging. The National Rally currently offers voters a familiarity, unity and laser-focused messaging. More fundamentally, however, Smith sees the polling as a reflection of a French electorate shaped by anger, anxiety, economic insecurity and political fatigue. Rather than describing this landscape simply as one of growing “polarization,” he proposes the more revealing concept of “fragmentation.” Political preferences are increasingly differentiated by geography, generation, class, education and gender, producing distinct constituencies for competing forms of political expression. Keywords for this article