Opposing populist radical right parties in France: The surprising persistence of the marginalization strategy

This article examines how public authorities, political parties, and civil society have opposed two French populist radical right parties, Rassemblement national (RN) and Reconquête (R!). Recent research has highlighted the normalization of this political family in Europe, suggesting that it is not only due to the success of populist radical right parties but also due to the accommodating strategies employed by their adversaries. In this article, I adopt a different approach to analyzing reactions to populist radical right parties. I ask why, despite the growing popularity of these parties and the normalization of their ideas, they are still marginalized in France. After more than 50 years of existence, one would have expected the full integration of RN into the French political arena. To explain this puzzle, I use a dataset of 378 initiatives opposing RN and R! (2020–2024). First, I show how political parties marginalize populist radical right parties, a strategy actively supported by civil society actors. Then I highlight the reasons for this persistent practice and discuss the role of historical and institutional factors. Initiatives opposing RN and R! draw on the salient memory of authoritarianism. In addition, underfunded and weakly structured opponents from civil society benefit from the resources provided by the two-round first-past-the-post voting system. This system enables them to deploy their resources during election campaigns, saturating the media with anti-RN/R! messages. By doing so, they legitimize the practice of marginalization, campaign after campaign. In sum, the article emphasizes the path-dependent dimension of responses to populist radical right parties.