This paper investigates how far right parties, along with mainstream actors, have sought to reconfigure the dimensions of conflict in the European political party system by seeking to establish a new cleavage that goes beyond left and right.
Focusing on the case of France and the discourse and political practices of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen and their respective parties, the paper identifies three strategies that these actors have used to manufacture a new political cleavage beyond Left and Right: the discursive rejection of traditional Left/Right politics, the combination of elements from across the Left/Right divide in a single programme, and the identification of each other as opposite sides on a new cleavage. The artificial creation of a new cleavage, it is argued, carries worrying normative implications as it creates a lack of ideological cohesiveness, failures of representation, and legitimizes the radical right.
Marta Lorimer is a LSE Fellow in European Politics. Prior to joining the European Institute, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Exeter. She has also held visiting positions at Forum MIDEM at TU Dresden and at the Centre d’Etudes Européennes in Sciences Po Paris. Marta’s research focuses on far right politics and differentiated integration in the European Union. Her research has been published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and the Swiss Political Science Review. She has also authored several book chapters on far right politics in France and has co-authored a book on ‘Flexible Europe: Differentiated integration, Fairness and Democracy’(Bristol University Press, 2022).
Hugo Drochon is an Assistant Professor in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham.