The Union for a Popular Movement after Sarkozy
Résumé
Ten years after its creation, France’s UMP party can truly be said to have changed the partisan right in French politics. Created in the very special circumstances of Jacques Chirac’s victory over Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 presidential election runoff , the UMP spent its first ten years as a party of government and only now, since its 2012 defeat in the presidential and parliamentary elections, has it found itself in opposition. At the same time, and in particularly acrimonious circumstances, the party had to choose a new leader after Nicolas Sarkozy stepped down following his electoral defeat.¹ Now,...