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As regional elections draw closer, the prospect of seeing the National Front win in one or more French regions has been backed by opinion polls. An FN victory is possible not only in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions, but also in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Normandy, Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine and even Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées.
The public positions taken by civil society institutions such as the French Business Confederation (Medef), trade unions (CFDT-UNSA-FSU) and sections of the local press, notably La Voix du Nord, show that the idea of being governed by the far right generates concern as well as questions.
Since Marine Le Pen became the head of the National Front in 2011, she has been determined to "de-demonize" the party. Yet her desire has run up against a number of stumbling blocks.
First of all, Le Pen's party has retained most of its controversial "fundamentals." This is particularly the case with regard to policies advocating suppressing the right of birthplace, limiting family allowances from the state exclusively to families "in which at least one parent is French or European" and "national preference" (giving priority to the French in hiring and attributing subsidized housing).
Although Marine LePen has purged the FN of its openly neo-fascist activists, she has created the Marine Blue Gathering (RBM: Rassemblement bleu marine), a political coalition focused on "identity" that considers skin color part of one's identity. Renaud Camus, a propagandist of the "theory of the great replacement" of people of French "stock" by immigrants from outside Europe, joined the RBM on Nov. 20, while in Nice Philippe Vardon, leader of the "nativists," is a candidate on the voting list of Marion Maréchal-Le Pen's (Marine Le Pen's daughter) for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.
Finally, by presenting the "demonization" of the FN as an outside construction, rather than as the fruit of its own history, Marine Le Pen hopes to differentiate herself from the party's inflammatory past.
Yet she has refrained from actually making a break by condemning it.
"The discourse on demonization is based on a rhetoric of victimization and conspiracy," explains political scientist Alexandre Dézé. In other words, for Marine LePen, the "demonization" was a construct by her adversaries to keep the FN from being seen as an acceptable governing party. Therefore it is not due to the convictions and verbal gaffes of former FN president, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen for such comments as calling Nazi gas chambers "a detail in the history of World War II"(1987) or claiming there is an "obvious inequality between the black race and the white race" (1996).
The adversaries of the FN regularly argue that it is one thing to run a municipality like Fréjus or Hénin-Beaumont, and quite another to be in charge of a whole region such as Nord-Pas de Calais-Picardie, a large territory with 8,000 civil servants for nearly 6 million inhabitants.
The last municipal elections showed that the FN was capable of finding competent civil servants to occupy the sensitive position of city council chief executive, a person who acts as the interface between the administration and the national government. To avoid repeating previous mistakes in FN city management, in 2013 Steeve Briois, now the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, began organizing the recruitment of a pool of Category A civil servants Marine Le Pen could draw on to occupy strategic posts following any future municipal victories.
Still, when a party becomes the government of a region, it has little political or financial leeway. On the one hand, the election of an FN majority and regional president would not change "anything in the daily management of these regions, which is ensured by an administration that runs the machine as far as everyday actions are concerned," insists Jean-Luc Boeuf, a senior regional civil servant.
On the other hand, after reforms that saw the general jurisdiction clause eliminated, regional government in France is now focused on transport, economic development, occupational training and high schools, for which most of its financing is earmarked. "If there are any tensions, they are likely to arise over the grants made to culture or to associations,"added Boeuf.
FN policies that have been devised for the national level "would be hard to adapt to the regional level as regards immigration, security or exiting the Euro,"emphasizes Gilles Ivaldi, a researcher in political science at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Nice.
The FN economic agenda in the regions, which is oriented to small business and focused on eliminating waste and bureaucracy"is closer to the concerns of the traditional right wing,"Gavaldi added. Regional patriotism,a variety of "national preference,"which consists of favoring local businesses when awarding government contracts – despite a European Union prohibition – is a measure recommended by other candidates "and is already widely practiced by officials,"the civil servant noted.
But there is one remaining uncertainty, according to Ivaldi. The president of a region is a key political figure, who must work with all the major institutions in the region including the prefecture, school board, the SNCF railroad company and business groups- as well aselected officials in other regions.
"The FN is still an isolated party, which has limited networks in socio-professional circles and occupies an anti-establishment position,"he notes. "Will it be capable of adopting a cooperative approach towards the elected leaders from other parties?"
Regional elections aside, the National Front's priority remains, of course, the 2017 national elections, starting with the presidential election. "It is essential for the FN to win a regional victory because it offers a unique opportunity to demonstrate that it is capable of governing," Ivaldi said. "At the core of the dynamic that keeps the party going lies a delicate balance which Marine Le Pen has managed to achieve: on the one hand, a radical discourse that allows her to bring in votes; on the other, the gradual dissemination of the idea that the FN can also be a governing party."Marion Maréchal LePen herself acknowledged during the campaign that if her party failed at regional management, "2017 will be called into question."
For the adversaries of the FN, short-term and long-term strategies might work against each other. In the second round, a triangle involving the left, the right and the far right would be the most favorable configuration to allow the National Front to win regional control.
For that reason, the Socialist Party is considering the advantages of withdrawing its candidates between rounds in regions where the party is trailing both the right and the far right. Or even, as Prime Minister Manuel Valls has suggested, a merger with the right wing to form a "technical" regional majority, although Nicolas Sarkozy immediately ruled out the possibility.
Marine LePen has also declared she would be "very happy"to see a concrete "UMPS"(UMP: Union for a Popular Movement + PS: Socialist Party). Indeed, even if a withdrawal or a merger keeps her from winning a region in the short term, in the long term it would strengthen her claim that the FN is the only alternative to the "system" (or "caste" ). Besides, if a FN victory is achieved in a run-off with more than half the votes, it will have much more symbolic power than beating two opponents.
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