Abstract
This chapter shows that the ‘contentious French’ may not be that contentious anymore. The economic crisis provides a unique chance to argue that a post-contentious turning point is emerging in spite of a long-standing tradition of protesting. Yet the chapter suggests that this post-contentious turning point is not bringing about acquiescence but opens space for new forms of political participation, especially in connection with resources acquired through employment and educational track. In this case, we find a more extensive engagement in online activism and non-institutional forms of political participation, that is, the two forms of political participation that are less ‘active’ and require a more modest time commitment. These findings are also put in the broader context of contemporary French politics.
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Notes
- 1.
This rate has reached 85 per cent in 2016. Cf. available data online at http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country
- 2.
The percentage is more or less the same among the French population.
- 3.
See, for example, the strikes in the public sector or the 2006 protest against the reform of the labour law (Lindvall 2011).
- 4.
But see the exception of protests in Bayonne lasting over six weeks.
- 5.
On 15 October 2011, anti-austerity mobilisation organised simultaneously in several dozen countries made it possible to measure the level of mobilisation on a world scale. In Paris and in France’s main provincial towns, however, no gathering of more than 3,000 people was recorded, while in other European cities attendance was much multiplied in some cases by hundreds. Suffice it to put emphasis on numbers in Madrid (500,000), Barcelona (300,000), Rome (100,000), and Lisbon (80,000).
- 6.
For more details about question wordings, answer categories, and descriptive statistics of these behavioural variables, we refer to the Appendix.
- 7.
17 per cent voted for Marine Le Pen (+11 points compared to 2007). More than a third of them (35 per cent) used the 2012 presidential election to express their discontent and vent their worries, in the process disposing of the tag of ‘vote utile’ (useful vote), which the two main parties in the past took for granted. To put this in perspective again, in 2007, only 20 per cent ventured from the mainstream parties (Perrineau 2014).
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Chabanet, D., Cinalli, M., Muxel, A., Van Hauwaert, S.M., Vedel, T. (2018). A Post-contentious Turning Point for the Contentious French? Crisis Without Protest in France. In: Giugni, M., Grasso, M. (eds) Citizens and the Crisis. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68960-9_5
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