The French National Front
Abstract
In France, as in most Western democracies, the main political change of the 1980s was the emergence of a radical right. For more than ten years, the Front national (FN) of Jean-Marie Le Pen gained at least 10 percent of the valid vote in every national election, with peaks of over 15 percent in the 1995 presidential and 1997 parliamentary elections. [First paragraph]