The crisis of political parties in France: The presidentialization process and its' effects on representative democracy

Abstract

In most European countries, party democracy - political parties as pillars of representative democracy - are commonly accepted. Political parties exist to animate political life and political debate. They mediate between the people and the government. They represent the people and their varying opinions and, in this way, assure their participation in politics and policymaking. Despite their importance, formerly well-established parties have been claimed to be in an "existential crisis" (Morin, Perron 2020, p. 7) in many countries for several decades. New, highly presidentialized political movements, often with populist and even radical tendencies, tend to take the lead. Over time, scholars of different nationalities have established a list of factors for this crisis of party democracy, such as corruption scandals, intransparency, non- compliance of election pledges, arrogance, the lack of willingness of politicians to take certain needs and claims of the people more seriously, a crisis of representation, as evoked by the French scholar Rosanvallon, a lack of direct participation of the citizens, or, more broadly, a democratic deficit (Balme, Marie & Rozenberg 2003; Van der Meer, 2017; Grossman/Sauger, 2017; Cole et al. 2018; Mayer 2019; Selinger 2020). In this thesis, I hypothesize that an additional...