Safia Dahani

Thesis in political sciences

Defended on January, 2022

An institutionalization in the tradition : Sociology of a patrimonial party, the National Front under the supervision of Éric Darras

Abstract

This political science thesis aims to update Weberian thinking on domination and patrimonial legitimation by applying it to the study of the late institutionalization of the Front National. To consider the FN as a patrimonial party is to study its trajectory as an acting collective, a trajectory in the political field that is sometimes bumpy, but which is indeed a matter of legitimation. This legitimization is not linear, but can be explained by the tensions between charismatic, traditional and bureaucratic legitimacies. T

he sociology of the national frontist leadership groups thus reveals a party structure, as an objectification of the social relations of associate-rivals on the extreme right of the field, which is particular because it is marked by patrimonial domination. It also questions the professionalization of the organization, the rewards of activism, and the reproduction and subversion of hierarchies within the party. It also shows how the FN participates in the closure of the political field on itself.

The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first two chapters examine the filial succession at the head of the party. The third chapter examines the structure of the relations between the leading groups, and in this sense questions the court society with its National-Frontist court sub-societies. The fourth chapter examines the social and gendered logics of political recruitment at the top of the FN. The fifth chapter questions, in the same movement, the commitments and disengagements, including partisan exclusions, in order to show the permanence of the patrimonial order even in the crises of the organization.

The thesis is based on an investigation using a combination of methods, interviews of all types, ethnographic observations of places of power and meetings, but also on an original prosopography of the leaders since 1972, coupled with work on party archives and on INA databases.