Francois Mitterrand: A Study of His Internal Policy: Cohabitation Governments as Sample

Abstract

This paper sheds light on a political figure that played a great role in the modern history of France. His term witnessed a governing experiment that was the first of its kind in the French Fifth Republic, which is known as cohabitation.

That experiment inspired the title of this paper "Francois Mitterrand: A Study of His Internal Policy: Coexistence Governments as Sample". The significance of this topic lies in that Mitterrand was the first socialist to be elected as a president in the French Fifth Republic. He adopted a special policy that enabled him to share executive power with the opposition in two governments called the first and second cohabitation governments.

The paper concludes that Mitterrand was a pragmatic politician who dealt with events realistically to overcome any obstacle standing in the way of his political career. He did that successfully as he did not resign from his position as president of the republic when his socialist party lost the legislative elections in 1986. Instead, he worked on finding common grounds with the opposition to form the first and second cohabitation governments – a unique experiment in the French political system at the time. Thus, he proved anyone who expected him to fail wrong by relying on the French law and constitution to impose his policy and secure his place in French policy, using different tactics employed through his policy, which can be called "Mitterandism" He created for himself special principles in French politics by following policies which had not existed before that in France.