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Structure versus accident in the defeat of France’s mainstream Right, April–June 2017
Widely expected to recapture France’s presidency and win a parliamentary major
ity in the 2017 elections, France’s mainstream Right instead suffered a crushing
and divisive defeat. A major reason for this was contingent: the selection of a candidate who three months before polling day was placed under investigation
for embezzling public funds. Other reasons were more structural, in particular
the progressive dislocation of the bipolar multipartism which had characterised
France’s party system for over four decades and the resultant strategic divisions
within the Right. Although broadly chronological, this analysis of the long electoral cycle of 2016–2017 assesses the respective importance of proximate and long-term factors in the Right’s defeat