The parties of the French 'plural left': an uneasy complementarity

Focusing on the period June 1997 to April 1999, this essay considers the extent to which the `plural left' coalition constituted an instance of party system change in France. It reviews ways of assessing party system change, analyses renewal within the individual parties of the gauche plurielle and probes the relationships between them. It concludes that although a distinct evolutionary stage emerged, allowing a new aggregation of electoral and social demands, a realignment of the French left did not take place.