Will France insoumise be able to sustain itself?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon's score of third place in the first round of the presidential election in April 2022 is the culmination of a third effective campaign by the leader of the French radical left, far more than an underlying dynamic dating back to the launch of France Insoumise.

Arthur Groz, University of Montpellier

Jean-Luc Mélenchon - Livre Paris 2017 - Flickr

To understand the current state of this political structure, we need to assess its strengths in the reshaping of the national political landscape, as well as the limitations it has encountered in the six years since it was founded.

In the 2010s, the electoral successes of Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain inspired a movement centred around the Left Party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who shared the failure of attempts to create a "cartel of the left" comprising a coalition of parties.

On Wednesday, February 10, 2016, during a television appearance, Jean-Luc Mélenchon sprang a surprise by proposing his candidacy for the 2017 French presidential election. Only a few people close to him had been aware of this choice, signaling the end of the Left Front experiment and the launch of a new movement, France Insoumise.

A structure inspired by leading left-wing forces

Success was immediate, facilitated by a minimalist, free online membership typical of the new partisan forms emerging in Europe: by March 27, 2017, the campaign website totaled 332123 registrants. This structure, openly inspired by Podemos, attempts to reconcile the vertical decision-making and charismatic leadership of a patrimonialized party with the horizontal commitment of local support groups, characteristic of the "party-movements" analyzed by Rémi Lefebvre.

The Insoumis candidate eventually won 19.58% of the vote in the first round of the 2017 presidential election, nipping at the heels of the Republican candidate, a breakthrough partially confirmed in June by the election of 17 deputies. Such initial successes could have given France insoumise the role of leading opposition force it had set out to assume.

Five years on, the initial gamble has given way to major disillusionment, without leading to the collapse of the organization. The insoumise partisan label has lost some of its value, and is now merging with a broader identity that embraces the idea of a coalition of progressive forces under the name of the People's Union.

This new label is a clear reference to Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular in Chile, as well as to the legacy of the Programme Commun or, more recently, the Greek Syriza coalition of parties and associations.

But in both its technical aspects (candidate holograms, coordinated campaigns on social networks) and its programmatic elements, the 2022 campaign is largely a rehash of the 2017 campaign.

The slightly declining mobilization of members and supporters at meetings and marches (both in Marseille and Paris) testifies to the difficulty of making a long-term commitment to training. These extremely mixed results can be explained by both cyclical factors and structural weaknesses, which have become particularly apparent over the past few years.

Effectiveness and failures of a populist strategy

The FI's 2017 strategy can be described as " left populist ", in line with the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. For its thinkers, the aim is to break the electoral deadlock in which the radical left is languishing by proposing a clear program.

This is synthesized around cross-cutting themes, likely to mobilize beyond the ranks of the left, targeting in particular the working classes attracted by abstention or by a protest vote to the far right.

The Republic and national symbols are given a new meaning in the leader's discourse, interwoven with those inherited from social protest movements. Both symbolically and in terms of commitment, the break with the parties of the traditional left is complete: the minimal structure of the party avoids the formation of local baronies, and the rebellious conventions simply sanction the general orientation defined upstream. The network of Parti de Gauche cadres forms the insoumise backbone in the field.

"walking on two legs" doesn't prevent crisis

To maintain momentum between two electoral periods conducive to politicization, the FI needs to "walk on its two legs", mobilizing both in institutions and on the streets. Sequences such as these have left their mark on the radical left in southern Europe: the Indignés in Spain, the Occupy the Square movement in Greece in 2011, or the protest against the "Labor Law" in France in 2016 are springboards for the launch of new partisan forces relaying their demands in parliaments.

But far from strengthening these movements, the arrival in power of Syriza and Podemos at municipal level has tended to accompany a decline in social mobilizations.

The same applies to the FI, which went through a major crisis between 2017 and 2019. Some of the original leaders, such as Thomas Guénolé, Charlotte Girard and Georges Kuzmanovic, left, disappointed by the weakness of internal democratic mechanisms and changes in line.

With 11.03% in the first round of the 2017 legislative elections, then 4.86% in the second round, 6.31% in the 2019 European elections (for 6 seats obtained), as well as disappointing results from the "citizens' lists" supported in the 2020 municipal elections, the Insoumis' scores are in sharp decline.

The gap between emerging popular aspirations and political proposals geared towards young urban graduates is particularly glaring in 2019. Despite a possible convergence in demands, the Gilets jaunes movement is thus in no way benefiting the FI, whose activists are nonetheless rapidly getting involved.

The failure is real: during the five-year term, the FI failed to generate around itself a popular coalition bringing together those disappointed by institutional politics while carrying the voice of emerging mobilizations, according to the tribunitian function dear to the political scientist Georges Lavau.

Grassroots activists are struggling to find their place in an organization that, while giving them a great deal of autonomy, is extremely vertically oriented. Plans to establish a counter-hegemonic discourse through relays such as Le Média, or by rallying figures such as MP François Ruffin, are struggling to bear fruit in the cultural "war of position " drawn from the thinking of Antonio Gramsci. For all that, the leadership gained over the rest of the French left in the previous presidential election has been maintained.

A turning point for the left in 2022?

The interminable setbacks of the Socialists and Ecologists, whose lifeblood has been largely swallowed up by Emmanuel Macron's momentum, echo the persistent weakness of a lacklustre far left. A political space therefore remains open for the FI, which is gradually repositioning itself on the left.

Does this mean that the party is making a break with its populist strategy, anticipating instead an overcoming of the right-left divide in favor of new social cleavages? More simply, it's a choice of opportunity, given the weakness of the parliamentary left, coupled with the growing appeal of new players. Issues such as ecology, feminism, anti-racism and the fight against authoritarianism are being fully embraced by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his supporters. At the risk of importing into the structure a set of cleavages specific to these movements, particularly on the left.

The media visibility of these issues and the over-representation of a young, qualified population could, however, have the effect of cutting the Insoumis off from a section of the working classes sensitive to social justice themes but wary of the left-wing label.

These "angry not fascists" who appeared on the political scene during the Gilets jaunes movement constitute the visible part of a mosaic of abstentionists and Lepéniste voters that the FI set out to seduce. Breaking with this initial project, while failing to reach out to a social-democratic electorate that retains an abysmal image of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, could mortgage the radical left's prospects of coming to power in future elections, particularly since the Insoumis candidate failed to make it to the second round of the 2022 presidential election. For the Insoumis leader, the 2022 ballot represented a final campaign before handing over the reins.

Sustaining a party dynamic after his departure will be a major challenge, given that both the FI and the Union Populaire are highly personalized initiatives based around him. However, the emergence of a figure who can replace him or her while maintaining programmatic coherence could enable this political camp to break through the electoral glass ceiling that is largely due to Jean-Luc Mélenchon's divisive personality.The Conversation

Arthur Groz, Associate Researcher, University of Montpellier

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.