For decades, the Parti Socialiste was the central governing force of the French left. It elected presidents, transformed daily life through shorter working hours, paid vacation, decentralization, abolition of the death penalty, and marriage equality, and then gradually lost much of the electorate it once claimed to represent.
In this episode, we trace the history of the French Socialist Party from Jean Jaurès and the SFIO to François Mitterrand’s victory in 1981, the turn to austerity, Lionel Jospin’s reforms, François Hollande’s presidency, and the party’s spectacular electoral collapse after 2017. We examine how a party built around social transformation became associated, for many voters, with privatization, labor-market liberalization, and compromise with European economic constraints.
The episode also looks at the PS today: Olivier Faure’s effort to preserve a place for the party within a united left, Raphaël Glucksmann’s attempt to build an autonomous pro-European social-democratic alternative, and the continuing conflict over Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise.
Can the Socialists rebuild a broad coalition of workers, public-sector employees, young urban voters, rural communities, minorities, and climate-conscious progressives? Or has the center of gravity of the French left shifted permanently away from the party that once dominated it?
From Mitterrand to Mélenchon, this is the story of power, reform, compromise, collapse, and the unresolved future of French social democracy.