What's left of the French right? The RPR and the UDF from conquest to humiliation, 1993–1998

The years 1997–98 were among the most difficult in the history of France's moderate Right‐wing parties. This article analyses their difficulties in three contexts: that of long‐term electoral decline since the 1960s; that of a continuing ‘gravitational pull’ of French parties towards Duverger's cadre model, despite the apparent ‘presidentialisation’ of parties under the Fifth Republic; and that of the weaknesses underlying Jacques Chirac's presidential victory in 1995. A concluding section assesses the mainstream Right's prospects in the light both of its structural disabilities and of the opportunities offered, in late 1998, by the break‐up of the extreme right‐wing Front National.