Frankisation is a term that, to my knowledge, has not been used before to describe the shifts in a particular political environment. It is a concept that seems increasingly relevant, notably for the UK. But to explain what it means (and to whom it applies), first we need to understand the term it rips off: Dutchification.
Very simply, Dutchification refers to a situation where a stable, usually two-party, political environment, begins to fracture into a larger number of smaller parties, each representing more specific ideological tendencies. This is called Dutchification because the Netherlands is generally considered to be the pioneer in this regard. The lower house of the Dutch Parliament contains no fewer than 13 different parties, each holding between 2 and 33 seats. The current Dutch government is a four-way coalition in which not even half of the government’s seats are held by the leading party. As a consequence of this wide array of parties, the Dutch Parliament is ideologically very diverse, representing Social Democracy, Christian Democracy, far-right Nationalism, Christian fundamentalism, animal rights, environmentalism, Liberalism and even a pensioners’ interests party.
Frankisation then is a phrase drawn up to build on this idea but using France as the reference point rather than the Netherlands. It can be considered as an offshoot or mutation of Dutchification and, though they both start with a fracturing of the traditional political landscape, they end up in very different places.
Frankisation should be understood as a two-step process. In the first instance, it is essentially indistinguishable from Dutchification. A stable two-party left/right political system starts to break down as these parties lose support to other parties. The parties within the political system represent less and less the big tent parties or Volkspartei of the 20th century, instead focusing on a specific section of the electorate (even if, rhetorically, most parties continue to claim to speak for all citizens). Support for the main parties of left and right declines and support for other parties rises. In some cases these may be brand new parties (in France’s case, La République En Marche) while in other cases the parties may be quite old (as with the Rassemblement National, ex-Front National).
Now, political fragmentation can produce a wide variety of winners and there is no rule to say that one party or another would necessarily benefit. It is the specific circumstances of the political system and wider society in question that play a big role in determining the exact shape of any political fragmentation. A distinguishing characteristic of Frankisation specifically however is that at least among the big winners are a Liberal pro-EU party and a far-right Nationalist party. Typically then, the political system splits into four: a party of the left, a liberal party, a party of the right and a far-right party. This is the first step in Frankisation.
The second step is then that the fragmentation starts to go into reverse. Rather than staying as a fragmented system between four equally strong political parties or fragmenting even further, the system moves back towards a two-party system but one where the most major dividing line is not the left and right contest over economic policy but a Liberal and Nationalist contest over culture, social policy and European integration. Debates over taxation or the size of government do not necessarily disappear but they are present less often and other questions take centre stage.
As evidenced by the name, Frankisation, France has so far demonstrated precisely this tendency. In the first round of the 2017 presidential election there was a four-way contest where all the main contenders came within a few percentage points of one another in the final result (Macron 23.9%, Le Pen 21.4%, Fillon 19.9%, Mélenchon 19.6%). Fast forward to the 2019 European Parliament elections and, while their respective parties have not expanded their support by much, La République En Marche and the Rassemblement National have no clear rivals other than each other. They respectively won 23.3% and 22.4% of the vote, with the next closest party (the Greens) winning only 13.5%. The parties of Fillon (8.5%) and Mélenchon (6.3%) were a long way behind. Macron and Le Pen (and the rest of France’s political system) are now in a mutually enforcing logic where fear (or hatred) of one convinces voters to stay with the other. Not to say that there are no genuine positive supporters for these their two parties but negative partisanship (opposition to the other party) has always been an important structural factor in sustaining two-party systems.
To summarise therefore, Frankisation is not simply political fragmentation but the restructuring of a political system, occuring in two stages. First, a limited fragmentation positioning Liberal and Nationalist parties as key forces, and second, the reforming of a two-party system around this Liberal/Nationalist divide.
So, with the concept now understood, the obvious question is whether the same thing is happening in the UK. The early evidence would suggest it is. Though pollsters currently disagree on the order in which the parties would come, since the European Parliament elections, all the Westminster voting intention polls have shown Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit Party converging around the 20% mark – exactly the kind of four-way split that France underwent in 2017. Stage one of Frankisation appears to be complete.
Will the UK also follow France into stage two? This is of course difficult to predict but there are two factors that would support this possibility. First is the prominence of European integration within daily political debate. In both France and the UK a number of political forces place the issue of their country’s participation in European integration front and centre among their policies. Some might argue that in the UK this is a temporary phenomenon driven by the ongoing question of Brexit and yet, whether Brexit happens or not, there is every reason to believe that the debate will be far from ‘settled’. If Brexit is stopped then it seems unlikely that it’s supporters will suddenly down tools and go home. Equally well, if it goes ahead then the UK will be faced with another decade of debate to determine just how close it should be to the EU and to what extent it should participate in the EU’s structures as an outside country.
The other factor to keep in mind is that both France and the UK have more or less majoritarian voting systems. The incentives for voters to line up behind one of two big parties are therefore high as there is a substantial risk of ‘splitting the vote’ and letting your ‘main opponent’ through. In a system fractured around social values and European integration, the likelihood is that your ‘main opponent’ will not be the party of left or right, it will be the party of Liberalism or Nationalism. Voters will therefore be more likely to back one of these two parties. By contrast, in a highly proportional system like the Netherlands, the costs of voting for a minor party are relatively low, partly explaining why the Dutch political system simply continued to fracture rather than restructuring.
Of course, in the end, either the Conservatives or Labour (or both) may be able to retain their relevance. If they can pivot to present themselves as the natural party of pro-EU Liberals or anti-EU Nationalists then it’s possible to imagine that they will stay as the main political forces in this country (even if, for all intents and purposes, the realignment of politics around a new axis will have still taken place anyway). But on the other hand, an entirely new political system that pits the Liberal Democrats against the Brexit Party, a full Frankisation of UK politics? It no longer seems so unlikely.
(And yes I’m aware that strictly speaking Frenchification would be the exact equivalent of Dutchification – I just think Frankisation sounds better.)
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