List of political parties in France

France has a multi-party political system: one in which the number of competing political parties is sufficiently large as to make it almost inevitable that in order to participate in the exercise of power any single party must be prepared to negotiate with one or more others with a view to forming electoral alliances and/or coalition agreements.

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The dominant French political parties are also characterised by a noticeable degree of intra-party factionalism, making each of them effectively a coalition in itself.

Up until recently, the government of France had alternated between two rather stable coalitions:

• on the centre-left, one led by the Socialist Party and with minor partners such as The Greens and the Radical Party of the Left.
• on the centre-right, one led by The Republicans (and previously its predecessors, the Union for a Popular Movement, Rally for the Republic) and the Union of Democrats and Independents.

This was the case until the 2017 presidential election, when Emmanuel Macron of the centrist La République En Marche! defeated Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Rally in the second round. This was the first time in which a third party had won the presidency, as well as the first time that neither of the major coalitions had appeared in the second round of a presidential election. This was followed shortly by a significant victory for LREM in the 2017 legislative election, winning a majority of 350 seats. Both the traditional coalitions suffered major defeats.

The National Rally (previously known as the National Front before a name change in 2018) has also experienced significant successes in other elections. Since 2014, the party has established itself as a major party in France, finishing in first place in the 2014 and 2019 European elections as well as in the 2015 local elections,[1] though the party failed to win government in any regions due to the last-ditch alliance between the centre-left and the centre-right coalitions in Hauts-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.[2]