Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-qc88w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-10T07:40:32.024Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Appropriating the “No”: The French National Front, theVote on the Constitution, and the “New” April 21

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2006

Mabel Berezin
Affiliation:
Cornell University

Extract

On the evening of May 26, 2005, with the polls suggesting that theEuropean Constitution was veering toward defeat, Jacques Chirac madea final exhortation to the French public. He argued that the Frenchwere voting not on a sectarian political issue but on an issue thatwould determine the future of themselves, their children, France,and Europe. Chirac characterized the choice before French citizensas “neither right nor left.” His use of a phrase more commonlyassociated with Vichy displayed an uncharacteristic historicalamnesia and suggests that Chirac and his party were grabbing atstraws in those final days.

Information

Type
SYMPOSIUM
Copyright
© 2006 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Berezin, Mabel. 2003. “ Territory, Emotion and Identity: Spatial Re-Calibration in a New Europe.” In Europe Without Borders: Re-mapping Territory, Citizenship and Identity in a Transnational Age, eds. Mabel Berezin and Martin Schain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 130.Google Scholar
Berezin, Mabel. Forthcoming. Re-Asserting the National: Populist Politics in a New Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
European Commission. 2005. “The European Constitution: Post-referendum Survey in France.” Brussels: Eurobarometer.Google Scholar
Givens, Terri E. 2005. Voting Radical Right in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Douglas R. 2000. Integral Europe: Fast-capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neo-fascism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rydgren, Jens. 2004. The Populist Challenge. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
SOFRES. 2005. L'Image Du Front National Dans L'Opinion, December 7–8. Paris: SOFRES.Google Scholar