En Marche!

The 2017 French electoral process

Abstract

Since the Great Recession, almost a decade ago, new trends in domestic politics have appeared in most countries across the globe. Being globalized economies incapable of keeping up with the provision of significant material benefits to their citizens, the old flags of nationalism and protectionism surged to produce a rhetorical breakdown within those States. This tension between cosmopolitan economic openness and sovereign isolationism has become the protagonic cleavage in the beginning of this century. In this context, the 2017 presidential and legislative elections in France constitute an example of how these contradictions have manifested inside a country: changing the programmatic and discursive dimensions of electoral campaigns, tackling governmental elites, shaking party systems that seemed stable and even outlining new political representation loyalties for citizenry.