Political parties in France

France has a multi-party political system, that is to say one in which the number of competing political parties is sufficiently large as to make it almost inevitable that in order to participate in the exercise of power any single party must be prepared to negotiate with one or more others with a view to forming electoral alliances and/or coalition agreements.

The dominant French political parties are also characterized by a noticeable degree of intra-party factionalism, making each of them effectively a coalition in itself.

Since the 1980s, the government of France has alternated between two rather stable coalitions:

It is difficult for parties outside these two major coalitions to make significant inroads, although the National Front has had sizable successes.

Since 2014, the FN has established itself as the third sizable party, finishing in 1st place in the 2014 European elections as well as in the 2015 local elections, although it still didn't manage to win any executives mostly due to the last-ditch alliance between the center-left and the center-right coalitions in Hauts-de-France region as well as in the South of France. Now many political observers talk about the "tripartisme" (English: tripartism) of the French political landscape.

(with past or present representation in at least a regional council)

Note: Many of the parties in French oversea possessions have strong ties to counterparts in Metropolitan France.

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