French Political Battles
In no major European country have politics remained as frozen since the Cold War’s end as in France, where the old guard has proved largely impervious to the remaking of the world.
Britain got New Labour and Tony Blair with their slick market-oriented makeover of a tired socialism. In Spain, Felipe González’s elegant refashioning of the left helped lay the basis for post-Franco democracy.
Italian politics could never be the same after the Berlin Wall fell because the system had revolved around keeping the Communists from power: the vehicle designed to that end, the Christian Democrats, disappeared. As for Germany, it incorporated a collapsed state, East Germany, and seems about to elect a woman raised there.
While all this happened – not to mention the complete reinvention of central Europe – France managed to pass power from a man who first served in government in 1944 to another who first did so in 1967. Even for a country attached to its traditions, this amounts to a singular triumph of immobility.
Source: International Herald Tribune.
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