H.J. KAPlA
377
with fire. In any event, each new round orIocal and national elections seems
to confirm first, that the National Front's following is no longer confined to the
old far right, and second, that Le Pen's success is psychologically as well as
statistically related to the striking decline in voter participation in recent con–
tests, that is, he has managed to make himself the spokesman for the in–
creasing numbers of voters who feel that neither the Socialists nor the
opposition are willing or able to address their most urgent concerns: - the
rise in criminality, for example, official colTuption and the degradation of the
educational system, all of which for one I-eason or another are linked in the
public mind with immigTation.
The immediate effect of all this, clearly, since Le Pen draws most of his
votes from the conservative side of the electorate, is
to
make it easier for the
Socialists to retain their grip on power.
Now, has all this anything to do with events in Eastern Europe? Not
much, perhaps. Not necessarily. It depends on what the French want to
make of it, after all; on whether, now that democracy is "winning" over
there, they are prepared
to
give some thought on how to make it work over
here. The Le Pen phenomenon will be of" some use, in other words, if it re–
minds the so-called political class, Socialist and opposition alike, that precisely
as they were celebrating the triumph of' democracy in Eastern Europe they
were losing touch with their own people at home. In reflecting on how this
happened and what to do about it, French political thinkers will at the very
least be obliged to deal, for once, not with general principles, however grand
and stirring they may be, but with how democratic institutions actually work
in the heterogeneous, consumer-oriented, media-influenced society that
France - alas for our vanished youth, dear William! - has now become.
