An Insiders’ Illiberalism: France’s Republicans and the Illiberal Temptation

An Insiders’ Illiberalism: France’s Republicans and the Illiberal Temptation

Émilien Houard-Vial

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Keywords: French right, French far right, illiberalism, mainstream parties, rule of law

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In September 2024, the new French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who then became president of the Les Républicains (LR: The Republicans) party, sparked a controversy by declaring that the rule of law (état de droit) was “neither untouchable, nor sacred.”[1] In France, as elsewhere in Europe, the effects of the electoral successes of the far right on the mainstream right have been studied mainly through the latter’s ideological radicalization, particularly on cultural issues. This radicalization has been continuously attested since Nicolas Sarkozy’s victorious presidential campaign in 2007,[2] which reactivated[3] a focus on “the four I’s”: immigration, insecurity, Islam, and identity. Despite the electoral comeback of the Front National (FN: National Front) five years later,^[4] this strategy of ideological radicalization was maintained by many actors on the mainstream right. Ever since, the latter’s main objective—and one that became increasingly vital after the electoral decline of 2017—has been to win back voters whom they had lost to the far right. However, studies rarely focus on positions hostile to the country’s very institutions themselves, which is central to the definition of the contemporary far right, given the populist nature of most contemporary far-right parties.^[5]

Yet, assuming that the mainstream right seeks to parrot[6] what it perceives to be the reasons for the far right’s electoral success, this aspect should matter, and be ever more pressing as the mainstream right has faced particularly strong competition from the far right in Europe since the 1990s.^[7] Moreover, their mainstream identity, which was a supporting argument for this ideological co-optation (since they would be more likely to gain power and then implement the co-opted proposals),[8] becomes less and less worth defending given their own electoral decline. In a context of widespread distrust of political parties (which, among other things, fuels support for anti-establishment parties, particularly those on the right)^[9] the temptation to criticize the political system, its actors, rules, and fundamental values is bound to arise for established parties, as Retailleau’s statement illustrates.

How and why do certain actors from mainstream parties employ illiberal rhetoric, and to what effect? By studying the French case, in which the ideological convergence between the mainstream right and the far right is particularly advanced, and in which the mainstream right has experienced a significant decline, I aim to identify a particular use of illiberal rhetoric that I call an “insiders’ illiberalism.” This article focuses on the illiberal scripts mobilized by four Republican leaders in order to characterize their illiberal rhetoric centered around the defense of the will of the majority over liberal institutions, to maintain social order. I support the idea that this illiberal rhetoric can be mobilized by challengers from mainstream parties who present themselves as the right people to counter their party’s decline. As such, political elites may blame state, judicial, or intellectual elites to preserve their chances in the political system. I conclude with an analysis of the ways this illiberal rhetoric spreads based on illiberal proponents’ rise within the Republican party and their connections to illiberal intellectuals and media actors, and of the blurring of the party’s image, which calls into question the long-term efficacy of such rhetoric.

Why Study the Illiberal Rhetoric of Leaders of France’s Republicans?

The far right is usually examined through the lens of “populism,” which is associated with both stylistic and substantive antisytem elements. Radical right-wing populism is characterized by the denunciation elites—be they political, cultural, intellectual, financial, media, or administrative—as being opposed to a homogeneous invocation of “the people,” and by the rejection of certain liberal principles and the use of a polarizing rhetoric.[10] Despite its contributions, the concept of populism seems insufficient as it focuses on a dialectic between actors—an elitist “them” versus a popular “us”—and understates the ideological significance of the actors’ relationship to politics and liberal democracy. Besides, approaches to populist “contagion” generally focus mainly on stylistic aspects of populist forces,[11] as distinct from ideological ones. Yet, I wish to account for both ideological and metaideological dimensions, and especially for their articulation, by considering how mainstream parties align with far right’s rejection of the political system and its core values when their cooptation of far right’s ideological agenda proved unsuccessful.

The liberal dimension of democracy seems to be at the heart of the criticism which has recently appeared in some right-wing discourses in France. Given this, instead of the term “populism,” I will use the concept of “illiberalism,” which, although widely discussed,[12] is still rarely used in the case of mainstream political forces in liberal democracies, since the concept of illiberal democracies was initially coined in order to analyze the newly democratizing countries of Eastern Europe. However, Raphaël Demias-Morisset demonstrates how radical right movements in Western countries, which were not necessarily anti-intsitutionalist forces per se, adopted an illiberal rhetoric as they presented minority social movements and progressive actors in general as existential threats to Western civilization, beginning in the 1980s with the examples of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively.[13]

According to Marlene Laruelle, illiberalism be defined as a heterogeneous “ideological universe”[14] that can accommodate more atypical formulations. I concur with these characteristics she puts forward, according to which illiberalism arises in opposition to a liberalism that is considered “failed, inefficient, or excessive,” fueling a feeling of “loss of control over one’s own existential environment” and promoting ideological proposals such as “the law of the majority, sovereignty, traditional hierarchies … the right to particularism and certain forms of exclusivity.”[15] I therefore choose to treat illiberalism here, in operational terms, as a desire to gradually limit and weaken certain individual and collective rights associated with the various scripts of liberalism, and the political and social institutions responsible for ensuring their effectiveness, on the grounds that these rights constitute obstacles to the will of the majority. I approach this here as a coherent albeit multifaceted political discourse that can be mobilized systematically in public speeches, and which targets mainly political institutions (the justice system, the bureaucracy) or social institutions (in education, research, or the media), as being too independent from elected officials.

As such, one might wonder, after all, whether this seemingly illiberal rhetoric stems from a long-running political debate over the “government of judges,” and thereby ask what is really new about it. The French public has indeed been historically hostile to judicial politics[16]—that is to say, a judicial system which would exercise a political power rather than the mere authority of an equal branch of government—with primacy given to the law to ensure fundamental rights and a late adoption of real constitutional justice.[17] Even though there has been rich dispute among constitutional experts for decades in France,[18] the topic has sparked little debate among party actors, especially from the mainstream right. If the mainstream right has a long history of criticism of judges, originating from the litany of financial-political affairs in which it has been involved in since the ’90s, criticisms were mostly centered around an assumed permissiveness of left-wing judges, and their assumed loathing of the right, which would have led to unjustified legal proceedings. Before 2017, the reforms and policy proposals of the right on the relationship between politics and justice were limited to reinforcing the “independence” (both from the executive branch and from union membership) and accountability of judges, but talk of judicial control over political decisions—a key component of insiders’ illiberalism, as will be shown—remained rare,[19] even though one could argue that such denunciation of judges helped pave the way to a more radical, all-encompassing discourse on judicial politics.

The Scripts of Illiberalism among the Republicans

In order to limit the scope of the discourse I study, I will focus on that of four Republican leaders who appear to be particularly important in spreading illiberalism on the right: Éric Ciotti, the party’s president from 2022 to 2024, who left the Republicans to join the National Rally party[20] in 2024; Guillaume Larrivé, an MP from 2012 to 2022, in charge of the Republican platform between 2017 and 2019, and a former candidate for the party presidency in 2019; Bruno Retailleau, the current party president, former Minister of the Interior and former president of the Republican Senate caucus; Laurent Wauquiez, the current president of the National Assembly Republican caucus, governor of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region from 2015 to 2024, party president from 2017 to 2019, and once again a candidate for the party presidency in 2025. These four figures have invested in the four scripts of illiberalism that can be identified based on Laruelle’s classification: political, geopolitical, economic and cultural.[21]

The political illiberalism script is undoubtedly at the core of mainstream right-wing illiberalism. By criticizing the limits placed on the executive and legislative branches in the name of protecting individual freedoms, particularly on issues related to the abovementioned four I’s, it combines two central concepts of illiberalism according to Raphaël Demias-Morisset: the nation and the “decisionism.”[22] The latter is a concept coined by 20th-century German jurist Carl Schmitt, meaning that executive decisions should neither be constrained by the other branches, nor be controlled according to abstract, constitutional values. Insiders’ illiberal discourse promotes the growth of state power by arguing that legislation and even institutions are too favorable to people who represent a proven, supposed, or at least potential threat to the nation, be it concerning the rights of immigrants, of religious minorities, of demonstrators, or of citizens expressing any political opinion deemed subversive or dangerous. In this regard, many civil and political rights are targeted—rights to privacy, to asylum, to family life, to freedom of movement, etc. They undermine certain legal principles, such as the distinction between juvenile and adult justice, the independence and effectiveness of administrative justice, the hierarchy of norms, the clarity of the wording of the law, the principle of equality before the law, etc.

Here, they are moving from a logic of rule of law, whereby no one is above the law and certain higher principles enshrined in the constitution reign supreme, to a logic of rule by law, whereby the law merely authorizes a priori the actions that the executive branch wants to implement. This illiberal script particularly insists upon the criticism of the various bodies empowered to carry out judicial review, which are supposed to block the will of the majority on numerous issues, and its proponents sometimes invoke opinion polls to prove their point. Guillaume Larrivé develops this idea in his 2018 book, Le coup d’État Macron:

In the sovereign heart of the state, it is not the Elysée [the president’s office] that “really” rules … It is even less so the Palais Bourbon [the National Assembly: the lower house of the legislature]. It is, increasingly, the sum of the five supreme courts: the three in Paris (the Constitutional Council, the Council of State [highest administrative court], and the Court of Cassation [highest judicial court]), the one in Luxembourg (the Court of Justice of the European Union), and the one in Strasbourg (the European Court of Human Rights) … The now dominant conception of the rule of law pushes it toward a state of weakness, since the very general provisions or stipulations of supra-legislative norms (the Constitution or international conventions) are over-interpreted by the supreme courts to frame, curtail, restrict, and sometimes even annihilate the law’s room for maneuver.[23]

Particular mention is made of the Constitutional Council, accused by Larrivé of pushing its prerogatives ever further since the decision of July 16, 1971, recognizing the existence of a constitutional block including other, prior texts like major historic laws,[24] and encouraged by the creation of priority constitutionality questions in 2008[25]—two changes viewed as treasons of the original spirit of the Gaullist institutional system of 1958, for which constitutional control of laws should remain minimal. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is also singled out for criticism for exceeding the scope of European treaties, as stated by Retailleau, who asserts that “certain European bodies have arrogated to themselves quasi-federal powers, behind the backs of the peoples of Europe.”[26] The accusation of biased ideological agendas is never far away, as evidenced by this other comment by Larrivé in his book: “As if spurred on by the pro-immigration ideology in vogue at the ECHR, the Constitutional Council took a new step in July 2018, under the personal influence of two former Socialist prime ministers, Laurent Fabius and Lionel Jospin [by recognizing a legal principle of ‘fraternity’ in its decision of July 6, 2018].”[27] The accusation was echoed by Wauquiez in an interview following the Constitutional Council’s censorship of an immigration law passed by the Republicans and the other pro-Macron-government parliamentary groups in 2023: “Between the jurisprudence of the Supreme Courts, the decisions of the administrative authorities, and the pressure from active minorities, everything is moving in the same direction: the collapse of authority, ever heavier constraints on our businesses, and the establishment of multiculturalism, on the basis of principles that one can wonder whether they are guided by law or by political ideology.”[28]

This political script has spillovers on the three other scripts described by Laruelle. Linked to the political script is a geopolitical script relating to the informal international alliances promoted by illiberal actors and the place given to liberal democracy and Western values—including human rights—in these alliances. Republican leaders have been relatively silent on the cases of authoritarian leaders who have emerged since the 2010s, neither condemning nor supporting them, as their interest in international issues in general has plummeted over the last couple of decades. International issues are not salient in Republican discourses, which take a realist approach to international relations in a world that they have come to perceive as one of renewed great-power rivalry, where interests prevail over values. Nevertheless, one can mention the case of Hungary under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (2010–2026), a salient issue given Hungary’s status as member of the European Union, and its will to build a transnational European network of conservative actors,[29] as the Republicans’ MEP refused to exclude Fidesz from the European People’s Party[30] and voted against a resolution describing the country as an “electoral autocracy.”[31] It should be noted that the Republicans’ European parliamentary group is led by François-Xavier Bellamy, a former philosophy teacher with close ties to French conservative intellectuals; and to the aforementioned illiberal actors, as will be shown later. Republican criticisms of the European Union can then be added to those coming from Orbán, as European institutions are accused of spreading a multiculturalist ideology, described as one of complacency in the face of Islamism,[32] and of curtailing national sovereignty by overriding EU member-states’ rights.

Illiberalism also applies to the economic script. This script is peculiar in that most illiberal regimes actually adopt liberal, or even neoliberal economic policies, while others oppose them as they would endanger “the sense of community belonging.”[33] Following the main trends of Western illiberalism, I will treat it as less opposed to the principle of the free market itself than to its postwar, globalized version, in line with the conservative revolution in governance brought about in the 1970s and 1980s by the elections of leaders such as American President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,[34] and aims above all at its strong but limited extension to the national sphere. This takes the form, domestically, of market deregulation and the withdrawal of the welfare state in favor of “natural” forms of solidarity such as the family and, with respect to trade, of protectionism marked by increased customs duties and light taxation for large domestic firms.[35] The French mainstream right’s economic agenda has undoubtedly pointed towards less state involvement in the economy and a withdrawal of the welfare state for several decades, with even a shift towards workfare proposals and both national and European protectionism since the onset of the 2020s. I find that the politically illiberal script has specific consequences for the denunciation of independent public agencies linked to health, environmental, privacy, asylum, and media pluralism regulations, which would limit both state authority and private economic initiative. On this subject, Wauquiez has been a pioneer of radical proposals, declaring in 2023:

The first lever that politicians have lost is the administration. A deep state[36] has been formed with an administration that has become autonomous from politics, even politicized with its own objectives. Independent administrative authorities are a legal monster … We must rediscover the fine tradition of the French administration, which devoted its energy to ensuring that decisions made by universal suffrage were implemented. For me, this means abolishing almost all independent authorities such as the CNIL [National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties], ANSES [National Health Security Agency] and ARCOM [Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication].[37]

Finally, the last script is that of cultural illiberalism. This necessarily goes beyond the simple conservatism of right-wing parties, even though it has been reinvigorated in France by politicians like Retailleau promoting the Catholic roots of the country, with religion only being recognized as part of French culture and heritage within a secular context.[38] Contrary to what can be observed in Eastern Europe or the United States, there is no question of rolling back acquired rights.[39] However, there is a certain susceptibility among Republican leaders to the anti-woke moral panic analyzed by Margot Mahoudeau,[40] with outrage focused on issues such as inclusive writing[41] and transgender children.[42] In this regard, the academic and intellectual community is specifically targeted, accused of promoting a highly subversive “ideology of deconstruction,” as Wauquiez explains:[43]

All Western democracies are afflicted by the same deep-seated evil, this feeling of disintegration. It is the culmination of what I call the ideology of deconstruction. The battle to be fought is similar to that of Raymond Aron against the elites blinded by communist thinking, which caused so much damage. This ideology of deconstruction, which comes from intellectual figures such as Foucault, Bourdieu, and Derrida, is rampant in academic, administrative, media, and political circles, with catastrophic consequences. It is based on the idea that sabotaging order is liberating. It leads to the collapse of authority, both that of the president of the Republic and that of the teacher. It praises laziness and violence. It advocates hatred of our culture, submission to active minorities, and leads to the terrorist minority intellectually dominating the majority.[44]

These moral panics are part of a larger, renewed emphasis on national identity. In a “Letter to the French People,” published in 2020, Retailleau stated: “I believe in sovereignty and identity … I see no diversity in this Nomad’s Land where cultures are crushed and flattened by the steamroller of unbridled mobility.”[45] This illustrates the fact that a majoritarian democracy, free from liberal checks and balances (whether within political or social institutions), is seen as necessary to defend the national community against varied but related attacks against its moral, social, economic, and cultural order, coming both from outside (immigration, Islamism, etc.) and inside the community (progressive and multicultural actors, and the weaponizing of the language of human rights over and against the rights of the majority).

I thus propose a table summarizing the characteristics of this insiders’ illiberalism, distinguishing, within each script, what can be specifically associated with illiberalism, and not only to a radical-right ideology (Table 1). I present political illiberalism as the primary script, not because it would necessarily be the most frequently used, but because it embodies the very principle of this illiberal discourse (promoting the will of the majority to preserve order), whose other scripts represent varied byproducts. The table specifies the illiberal principle behind each script, the targeted social or political institutions, the liberal principles which are violated, examples of policy actions or proposals among those already mentioned, and finally the more general ideological dimensions of the French mainstream right which support each script. These dimensions have existed since before the emergence of the illiberal discourse, even though they have been simultaneously reinforced in the party. The principles shown in Table 1 are then illiberal offshoots of those supporting ideologies, which made them possible. In order to fully understand how these principles constitute a specific discourse which has been emerging for several years, I thus have to explain what are the specific platforms of the politicians who hold them and how they serves their goals.

Table 1. Characteristics of insiders’ illiberalism

Scripts	Principles	Targets	Infringements of liberalism	Policy examples	Supporting ideologies
Political (primary)	Decisionism (the will of the vast majority must never be stopped)	Constitutional and human rights courts	Hierarchy of norms / existence of non-negotiable human rights	Allowing Parliament to override constitutional veto	Gaullism (uncompromising majority represents national sovereignty)
Geopolitical (secondary)	Toleration of the rogue (non-condemnation of foreign illiberal forces)	International and supranational institutions	Respect for treaties and international norms	Opposing European sanctions against Hungary	Realpolitik (each nation follows its own interests, values should not prevent alliances against more important threats)
Economic (secondary)	Institutional deregulation (removing agencies and legislation regulating economic activities)	Independent public agencies	Independence of civil servants / public services guaranteeing civil and social rights	Getting rid of the agency in charge of enforcing environmental laws	Neoliberalism (the state should support a free and independent market, people should rely on themselves)
Cultural (secondary)	Moral panics (protecting the nation against subversive agents of cultural deconstruction)	Progressive intellectuals and academics	Plurality and freedom of expression / independence of academia	Cutting subsidies for controversial woke universities	Christian conservatism (nations have an ancient culture based on Catholic identity which should be preserved at all cost)

Actors, Contexts, and Interests of Illiberal Discourse on the Right

The observation of illiberal discourses notably promoted by certain Republican figures leads us to question the interests that illiberal discourse may serve for these actors in their context. It can already be noted that illiberal discourse corresponds to a moment of acceleration in the political careers of the aforementioned actors, who seek to draw on specific discursive resources to accumulate political capital that can be leveraged with the media and supporters, members, and other Republican leaders. Guillaume Larrivé, an MP from the Yonne department from 2012 to 2022, thus sought to bring this discourse to the forefront in 2017–2019, while he was gaining increased responsibility within the Republican party, as he was appointed deputy secretary general, which therefore made him responsible for proposing a new platform in response to the party’s electoral defeats of 2017. Having organized 15 monthly “Rendez-vous des idées” (“Ideas Meetings”) from 2018 through 2019, he sought to cast himself in the image of a political intellectual, which led him to publish two books in 2017 and 2018 (see above) and gave him the confidence to run for the party presidency (in which contest he won 16% of the votes).[46] At the time, his goal was to propose ways to differentiate the mainstream right from the center as led by Macron, acknowledging the party’s need for renewal.

Bruno Retailleau became known for his illiberal rhetoric at a much later stage in his career. As an MP, senator, and president of a general council and regional council, he quietly rose to the position of president of the Senate Republican caucus, after having started as the right-hand man of Philippe de Villiers, once the most prominent figure of the sovereigntist right.[47] He became more visible in 2017, when he took over the Force Républicaine (“Republican Force”) club launched by François Fillon (a former Republican presidential candidate), before narrowly losing out in the contest for presidency of Republican party itself in 2022 to Éric Ciotti.[48] His appointment as Interior Minister in September 2024 in the Michel Barnier government gave him a central position in the political landscape. Having also built himself an image of a political intellectual, with two books published in 2019 and 2021 and the invitation of intellectuals to his movement’s conferences, he has, since his early days, been part of a conservative tradition in the Vendée region where he was elected, which suggests that his illiberal rhetoric is less a strategy of opportunism than the activation of latent dispositions.

Although Wauquiez’s career has been long and prestigious (he has been a MP, mayor, regional president, and minister) his illiberal rhetoric was only really asserted later in his career, particularly after he was pushed out of the Republican party presidency, building on his long-term, far-right, identitarian discourse. Although he has been playing the populist card for several years, extolling rural and suburban France, he is, like Guillaume Larrivé, a graduate of the École Nationale d’Administration (National Administration School: ENA) and graduated top of his class in the history teaching qualification (agrégation d’histoire), and does not hesitate to multiply historical references and present himself as a thoughtful politician in his YouTube channel. His aforementioned interview in 2023, wherein he first developed his attacks on the “deep state,” announced his return to national politics while he still was president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, which was substantiated by his return at the National Assembly in 2024—taking the lead on the parliamentary group—and his failed attempt to regain his position as party president.

Finally, Éric Ciotti represents a less intellectual version of illiberal discourse within the Republican party. A lifelong professional politician, he has carved out a niche for himself within the party, with radical legislative proposals often aimed at restricting freedoms—whether it be religious expression in the workplace or in higher education, or the right to film police officers—or breaking with certain legal principles, such as making parents criminally liable for their children’s crimes and offenses. He took advantage of the 2021 Republican closed primary to increase his political capital by distinguishing himself from his competitors with more radical rhetoric and proposals—which he used in order to become party president the following year. In 2024, he chose to join (with only a few followers) the National Rally when snap legislative elections were called, hoping to gain its support to be elected as mayor of Nice (which he was, in 2026). The rise of illiberal discourse in the Republican party thus corresponds to the emergence of a new political generation, building on the pre-existing ideological radicalization of the party, which prepared its members’ minds for the qualitative leap that illiberalism represents as an intrinsic dimension of their political discourse.

However, this raises the question of the temporality of the rise of illiberal discourse—with a catalyzation at the turn of the 2020s. The radicalization of the right has been underway for almost two decades, accompanied by a meta-discourse on the need for an “unapologetic right” (droite décomplexée), rejecting compromise with left-wing ideas and pragmatic and technical solutions, and in a way valuing radicalism for its own sake. The proponents of this discourse grew in importance from 2017 onwards, with the departure of more moderate figures from the party, who withdrew from national political life or left to join Macron’s adventure, as was the case with former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe. Opponents of Wauquiez have often preferred to distance themselves from the party or even leave it in order to voice their criticism,[49] as in the case of Valérie Pécresse (LR’s presidential candidate in 2022). The radical discourse thus lost its counterweight and became hegemonic insofar as it was no longer contested as it had been (albeit timidly) before. This also means that illiberal proposals, which are normally taboo insofar as they undermine the liberal character of democracy and of which the governing parties claim to be the primary guardians, are less likely to be suppressed.

This illiberal discourse also comes at a particular moment in the party’s history regarding its place in the French party system. The party, which previously dominated the right wing of the political spectrum, is now being overtaken by both the National Rally and En Marche, which has been poaching a large portion of its voters[50] since 2019 by establishing itself as a governing party compatible with the broad outlines of the mainstream right. Given that ideological radicalization has become a dominant, almost hegemonic strategy within the Republican party, it has seemed necessary to find an argument to distinguish the party from both the populist far right and the technocratic center. It remains difficult to appear as distinct from both rivals on the major dimensions of the left-right axis—where the Republicans still appear to be somewhere in between—but this could be easier on a meta-ideological dimension (that is, regardingthe relationship of politics to democracy itself). From this perspective, illiberalism is certainly meant to denounce the lack of political radicalism and the absence of any real desire for change from the Macron camp, given how they do not fundamentally challenge established, liberal institutions.[51] But it is also a means of asserting the competence and realism of the Republicans by demonstrating not only a desire for change, but also a concrete path towards achieving it—unlike the far right.[52] While Ciotti shocked some of the party’s opponents by declaring that “what sets [them] apart from the [National Rally] is [their] ability to govern,”[53] he was merely acknowledging the strong ideological convergence between the two parties—which might even seem difficult to extend further—while emphasizing the importance of the historic relationship to power as a comparative advantage over the far right. Illiberalism is both a way of asserting oneself as being more democratic than “the system” that denies the will of the French majority, and as being more capable of implementing the changes desired by the far right than the far right itself. This idea is reinforced by Wauquiez in his interview following the Constitutional Council’s censorship of the 2023 Immigration Law:

My strength is that, through my training and experience, I know perfectly well how the machine works and what ended up blocking it. And it is because I know these inner workings that I can unlock them. I have been told many times that, given my personal and academic background, I should not question the functioning of our political and administrative system. Yesterday, I was told that it was not serious to denounce the excesses of welfare dependency, and then that it was not necessary to question Europe’s inability to defend its businesses; today, it is not necessary to challenge the excesses of the Supreme Courts. I will say it simply: just because you went to the École Normale Supérieure [one of the most prestigious higher education institutions] does not mean you are condemned to be a disciple of Jacques Attali [a senior official who advised several presidents, seen as a fierce partisan of post-nationalism]. Quite the contrary![54]

Larrivé links his criticism of the Supreme Courts directly to the Republicans’ latest experience in power (2007–2012), during which its co-opting of the National Front’s ideas was put to the test. During one of its Ideas Meetings, on February 27, 2019, welcoming Maxime Tandonnet (his colleague from former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet) he evoked the observation, supposedly based on their shared experience, that “the power of the state has been considerably reduced since the early 1970s,” and listed the case laws of the Constitutional Council and the ECHR that could prevent a future government from suspending such things as family reunification for spouses and minor children. He added that “it is as if [Thomas] Hobbes had been defeated by [John] Locke. And by drawing limits on the state to prevent the Leviathan from encroaching too much on individual rights, we have considerably reduced the scope of the sovereign state.”[55] Tandonnet has supported the idea that the disappointing results of Sarkozy’s migration policy were not due to his lack of will, but to a broader institutional configuration that needs to be overcome in order to restore power to the will of the majority, and by extension, to the political actors who represent it:

Much of the handling of immigration is governed by international conventions and court rulings … Nicolas Sarkozy was a very active, proactive president, driven by a deep desire to change things, but he faced many obstacles: inertia in ministries, the weight of case law, etc. … It is important to note that the Constitutional Council censors half of all laws, including those of the current [Macron] government. That’s huge when you think about it![56]

This is why I choose to call this discourse an “insiders’ illiberalism,” as those who hold to it are political insiders, who have used and intend to continue exercising political power nationally, and still do at the local level. The four actors I studied are professional politicians who followed prestigious paths dedicated to political careers in prestigious French institutions of higher education: all four went to Sciences Po Paris, and two of them also went to the National Administration School. Before getting elected, two of them (Larrivé and Wauquiez) were high-ranking civil servants, and the other two (Ciotti and Retailleau) were political staffers, and as such were part of the “political professionals” who are the targets of anti-system discourse. And as for the first two, they were remnants of an administrative culture that has been delegitimized in the post-Gaullist parties.[57] Their illiberal rhetoric then appears as a way to blame the unelected professionals in the political system—notably the judges and the bureaucrats—in order to preserve their own credibility. Their criticisms of the disconnect between those who supposedly wield real power (the unelected officials) and those who are responsible to the citizens (the elected ones) also conceal the fact that the mainstream right has participated in the administrative reforms[58] which made such a disconnect possible.[59]

Furthermore, as actors on the mainstream right, their position has been challenged by centrist newcomers and far-right anti-system actors, and on top of this, they also need to appear as change agents despite their past responsibilities. While it is a collective question for Republicans, this is a particular challenge facing and instrumentalized by certain actors within the party—insiders amongst insiders—who have been played a central role in the organization and governing experience of the party, whether as government officials or as leaders of the parliamentary majority. As their rise in the party continues, they mobilize an illiberal discourse to present themselves as the solution to the decline of the mainstream right. This solution takes into account the already existing strategy of co-opting the far right’s talking points and ideas, as the mainstream right does not appear sincere and credible enough to implement radical solutions. The illiberal discourse, which insists upon far-right talking points such as immigration or identity, is then used as a proof of engagement with far-right ideas, and explains why the mainstream right failed to solve the so-called immigration problem while in government, in order to justify a second chance.

The Diffusion of Illiberal Discourse in the Party Organization

One may wonder whether the adoption of an illiberal discourse is specific to the few actors mentioned throughout this article. Indeed, rare public disagreements over this illiberal discourse exist,[60] but reflect less an intra-party debate than the coexistence of divergent interests and strategies within the party (in this case, the priority of distinguishing oneself from the far right or, on the contrary, of appealing to its voters). Above all, they illustrate the fact that despite a few forays into partisan programs, illiberal rhetoric has not yet established itself in the collective discourse, and that the person who has pushed it furthest, namely Éric Ciotti, is also the one who has left the party organization. The party’s weak institutionalization[61] certainly favors the best-organized and most resourceful actors but does not allow for rapid and coordinated ideological and strategic transformations. The illiberal discourse is, first of all, a way to distinguish oneself from one’s intraparty competitors, in a context of party decline with uncertainty over the best way to regain its position in the party system. It is then developed during crucial windows of opportunity in the career of the aforementioned actors, and can get them additional exposure and possibly support, and even push their competitors to adopt similar positions as the illiberal discourse is presented as popular amongst party activists. This was the case in the closed primary of 2021, when Éric Ciotti’s competitors were forced to demonstrate their radicalism with their proposals on the ECHR, as the former promised to withdraw from and then renegotiate the Schengen Agreement and the ECHR: Michel Barnier, even though he is a former vice president of the European Commission, wanted to provide France with a “constitutional shield” until revision of its migration policy; while Valérie Pécresse, who became the Republican presidential nominee in 2022, wanted to affirm France’s “constitutional identity”[62]—two ways to call for the idea of giving the French Constitution priority over European treaties on certain issues.

Beyond these contextual appearances, illiberal discourse gains importance inside the Republican party as a whole because its proponents climb the party ladder, more than because it spreads as a consensual discourse amongst party leaders. The immigration issue can be used to illustrate these dynamics: the Republicans issued a very restrictive program under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2015, but without addressing any of the legal obstacles it faced, whereas the program drafted in 2018 by Wauquiez added that it would be necessary to “submit these proposals to the French people by referendum in order to remove the legal obstacles to their implementation.”[63] In 2023, under the leadership of Éric Ciotti, Olivier Marleix, and Bruno Retailleau, then respectively party president and presidents of each parliamentary group, the Republicans went even further by presenting a constitutional bill on immigration issues in Parliament in May 2023,[64] aimed at allowing the legislators to break free from the hierarchy of norms. The bill included, among other things, the relegation of the Constitutional Council to a purely advisory role in the case of referendums, the fact that “no principle, including constitutional principles, no treaty, agreement, convention, standard, or international act, even European ones, can be invoked” against legal entry limits voted by Parliament, and making it impossible to raise any objections whatsoever to the expulsion from Frech territory of any “foreign national who represents a threat to public security [according to administrative authorities] or who has been sentenced to imprisonment.”[65] The party president’s nominating powers also allow him to appoint actors sensitive to illiberalism, like François-Xavier Bellamy, who was appointed head of the party’s list in the 2019 European election by Wauquiez, and then was reappointed by Éric Ciotti (who at the time supported Wauquiez to be the party’s 2027 presidential candidate) before being appointed as the Republicans’ second-in-command by Bruno Retailleau in 2025. All the same, after his failure to become party president in 2019, Larrivé was appointed as Ciotti’s counsellor in 2022, before becoming one of the Republicans’ vice presidents along with Retailleau in 2025.

Finally, I note that the spread of illiberal rhetoric is linked to the simultaneous constitution of an ideological environment wherein media and intellectual actors connected to the party legitimize and support illiberal ideas. On one hand, illiberal media outlets, whether recently created or reconverted to radical-right ideas,[66] like the Bolloré media empire,[67] promote the voices of illiberal right and far-right actors, with a particular focus in the former case on the most radical actors of the Republicans and their supporters (whether through interviews, opinion pieces, headlines, etc.).[68] In return, they encourage political actors to participate in a number of illiberal vendettas—particularly against other outlets such as public service media, universities, and the justice system. One cannot help but think in this context of the outcry from Ciotti, Retailleau, and Wauquiez in response to the ARCOM’s decisions to revoke the allocation of a public frequency to the TV channel C8, which is part of the Bolloré empire.[69] On the other hand, illiberal intellectuals can be invited to take part in the party’s activities. A trend of jurists, critical of an assumed judicial activism and of an extensive interpretation of the Constitution[70] (including figures such as former Secretary General of the Constitutional Council Jean-Éric Schoettl, former Member of the Constitutional Council Noëlle Lenoir, and Professor of Public Law Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet) is well known to the Republicans.[71] I also noted that the historian and philosopher Marcel Gauchet, a critic of the “society of individuals” and the rule of law that guarantees it,[72] is quoted in the Republicans’ aforementioned 2018 programmatic document on immigration, as he denounces the fact that immigration has “completely escaped, from start to finish, democratic debate and decision-making” Finally, Wauquiez has also paid close attention to publications by essayists who have approached the tension between the people and the elites from a culturalist perspective on the problem of multiculturalism, similar to that of British journalist David Goodhart, who is known for his distinction between the “somewhere” (people who feel attached to a particular territory) and the “anywhere” (people who would feel attached to the globalized world).[73]

The System against Itself: Ambiguities in the Republicans’ Illiberal Discourse

In this article, I have presented an apparent paradox, namely the development of an illiberal discourse within a so-called governing party, which was built within power (to support De Gaulle as he became president in 1958) and continues to claim it. Despite their ideological radicalization, the Republicans have sought to maintain the image of a competent, realistic, and pragmatic party fit for office (and therefore whose destiny is to achieve this). The party wishes to distance itself from the extremes, as it wishes to preserve the institutions of the Fifth Republic against any temptation from other parties to break with the social, economic, and cultural order.[74] However, as their illiberal discourse presents itself as a means of preserving order in a situation of worsening crisis—particularly with regards to migration—the party encroaches on the territory of the far right, which is usually stigmatized for its criticism of the justice system, the Constitutional Council, and the ECHR, from which it wishes to withdraw.[75] The adoption of this discourse by the mainstream right therefore not only contributes to its normalization and thus to the mainstreaming of the far right,[76] but also narrows the mainstream’s own identity. It also reinforces the Republicans’ roots in ideological and political networks that are not representative of the entire political spectrum that the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement, the Republican party’s predecessor, built from several moderate right-wing parties) sought to cover as the major party of the right. By more or less explicitly accepting the interpretation of sociopolitical reality put forward by the illiberal far right and its representations of what voters want,[77] it undermines its own ability to engage in self-criticism and produce a political alternative to the very strategy that has facilitated its decline.

The fact that their illiberal discourse is often presented, by Republican actors, as a proof of their loyalty to their Gaullist heritage—by turning back to what is supposed to be the original political system of the Fifth Republic, and the will of Charles de Gaulle, before the deepening of European integration, the abandonment of referendum-based consultations, or the extension of constitutional control[78]—should be considered the assertion of the party’s identity by focusing on its core, original characteristics. The adoption of such an illiberal discourse today could be viewed as merely the revival of the not-so-liberal foundations of the Gaullist Republic,[79] which had a profound impact on Republican actors’ political practice,[80] and perception of what the role of elected officials should be in a democracy. It can also be underscored that not all illiberal scripts are new in the French mainstream right’s history—whether it was, during the Mitterrand period, the neoliberal temptation,[81] the restriction of immigrant rights,[82] or cultural backlashes,[83] which appeared as an appropriate answer to the loss of their hegemonic position within the French party system and the rise of the National Front. However, regarding the unprecedented centrality of the illiberal political script in the discourse of Republican actors since the end of the 2010s, this history of the mainstream right must be seen as a sign of a favorable breeding ground for an illiberal discourse, activated by a new generation in the wake of a particularly deep organizational crisis and an unsuccessful Republican attempt at co-opting the far right.

However, this raises certain questions about the effects of illiberal discourse on the Republicans’ partisan image (that is, the synthetic and simplified representation that voters have of the party and which allows them to identify with it).[84] While different segments of the electorate may have different images of the same party without this necessarily being detrimental to it, these images (the party of the middle class, the party of authority, the party of defending traditions, etc.) are, in principle, not antagonistic. However, it is likely that illiberal actors on the right are blurring the image of the Republican party, which is supposed to be both a party of government and a party against the system—a tension embodied by Bruno Retailleau as interior minister. While this may correspond to an internal logic of insider illiberalism that allows established actors in the political system to become more valued at the expense of other institutions, it is doubtful that the argument for a form of revolutionary competence is understandable or even audible to right-wing voters, who have can choose from among alternatives with a much clearer image. And if the Republicans firmly believe in their electoral myths, it is reasonable to wonder whether belief in the effectiveness of limited and reasonable illiberalism can have any other consequence than to promote support for full-fledged illiberals—and those who would opportunistically rally to their cause.

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[1] Simon Barbarit, “État de droit: Les propos polémiques de Bruno Retailleau inquiètent, mais ne surprennent pas au Sénat,” Public Sénat, September 30, 2024, https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/politique/etat-de-droit-les-propos-polemiques-de-bruno-retailleau-inquietent-mais-ne-surprennent-pas-au-senat.

[2] Florence Haegel, “Nicolas Sarkozy a-t-il radicalisé la droite française? Changements idéologiques et étiquetages politiques,” French Politics, Culture & Society 29, no. 3 (2011): 62–77, https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2011.290305.

[3] This attempt to co-opt far-right issues had also existed at the time of its electoral emergence in the 1980s: Bonnie Meguid, Party Competition between Unequals: Strategies and Electoral Fortunes in Western Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 166–168.

[4] João Carvalho, “Mainstream Party Strategies toward Extreme Right Parties: The French 2007 and 2012 Presidential Elections,” Government and Opposition 54, no. 2 (2019): 365–386, https://doi.org/10.1017/gov.2017.25.

[5] Cas Mudde, “The Populist Radical Right: A Pathological Normalcy,” West European Politics 33, no. 6 (2010): 1173–1175.

[6] Joost Van Spanje and Nan Dirk de Graaf, “How Established Parties Reduce Other Parties’ Electoral Support: The Strategy of Parroting the Pariah,” West European Politics 41, no. 1 (2017): 1–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2017.1332328.

[7] Noam Gidron, and Daniel Ziblatt, “Center-Right Political Parties in Advanced Democracies,” Annual Review of Political Science no. 22 (2019): 17–35, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-090717-092750.

[8] Bonnie Meguid, “Competition between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Strategy in Niche Party Success,” American Political Science Review 99 no. 3 (2005), 349, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055405051701.

[9] Russel J. Dalton and Steve A. Weldon, “Public Images of Political Parties: A Necessary Evil?” West European Politics 28, no. 5 (2005): 931–951, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402380500310527.

[10] Roger Eatwell, “The New Extreme Right Challenge,” Western Democracies and the New Extreme Right Challenge, eds. Cas Mudde and Roger Eatwell (London: Routledge, 2003): 62–80.

[11] Ilvo Diamanti and Marc Lazar, Popolocrazia: La metamorfosi delle nostre democrazie (Bari: Laterza, 2020); Vlad Surdea-Hernea, “The Populist Spiral: How Populist Rhetoric Spreads within Party Systems,” Party Politics, online first (2025), https://doi.org/10.1177/13540688251362306.

[12] Marlene Laruelle, “Illiberalism: A Conceptual Introduction,” East European Politics 38, no. 2 (June 2022), 304–307, https://doi.org/10.1080/21599165.2022.2037079.

[13] Raphaël Demias-Morisset, L’illibéralisme, aboutissement ou lendemain du néolibéralisme: Enquête sur le concept d’illibéralisme, PhD dissertation (Bordeaux: Université de Bordeaux, 2024), 315.

[14] Marlene Laruelle, “Introduction: Illiberalism Studies as a Field,” in The Oxford Handbook of Illiberalism, ed. Marlene Laruelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 4.

[15] Laruelle, “Introduction,” 4.

[16] Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, “Oxymore ou tautologie? La notion de Judicial Politics expliquée par la théorie du droit américaine contemporaine,” Cahiers du Conseil constitutionnel, no. 24 (2008): 90–95.

[17] Martial Mathieu, “La justice constitutionnelle en France, du rejet à l’adoption,” REJUR: Revista Jurídica da UFERSA, no. 12 (2022): 204–216, https://doi.org/10.21708/issn2526-9488.v6.n12.p204-216.2022.

[18] Bastien François, “Le Conseil constitutionnel et la Cinquième République: Réflexions sur l’émergence et les effets du contrôle de constitutionnalité en France,” Revue française de science politique 47, nos. 3–4 (1997): 377–404, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43121805.

[19] For instance, questioned in 1999 by the intellectual review of the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR, the UMP’s ancestor), on the “equilibrium between judicial system, elected officials and the media,” Michèle Aliot-Marie, who was the last RPR president and was still at the time a candidate for this office, only expressed vague concerns over the ability of judges to “weigh in on a government’s composition” with a legal proceeding which could end up being dismissed, and only called for respect for the presumption of innocence. See Une certaine idée, special issue, November 1999, p. 21.

[20] The Rassemblement national (RN, or National Rally), which is the new name the party adopted in 2018 for the former Front National (FN, or National Front).

[21] Laruelle, “Introduction,” 18.

[22] Demias-Morisset, L’illibéralisme, aboutissement ou lendemain du néolibéralisme, 516–519.

[23] Guillaume Larrivé, Le coup d’État Macron: Le Prince contre la Nation (Paris: Éditions de l’Observatoire, 2018), 155–156.

[24] Benjamin Lecoq-Pujade, “1971, une révolution de palais?” Revue française de droit constitutionnel 130 (2022): 283–308, https://doi.org/10.3917/rfdc.130.0283.

[25] This enables citizens to contest the constitutionality of adopted laws before the Constitutional Council. See Philippe Blachèr, “Le Parlement et la QPC,” Revue française de droit constitutionnel 116 (2018): 933–949, https://doi.org/10.3917/rfdc.116.0933.

[26] From its “Contribution to the States-General of the right” (organized by the then-party president Éric Ciotti), June 17, 2023.

[27] Larrivé, Le coup d’État Macron, 164.

[28] Charlotte d’Ornellas and Raphaël Stainville, “Laurent Wauquiez au JDD : ‘Faire sauter les verrous de l’impuissance,’ ” Le Journal du dimanche, February 18, 2024, https://www.lejdd.fr/politique/laurent-wauquiez-au-jdd-faire-sauter-les-verrous-de-limpuissance-142198. In this interview, he implicitly compares his program to “Augustus bringing the Roman Republic out of anarchy; Louis XI overthrowing feudal powers and enabling the French Renaissance; and General de Gaulle in 1958 understanding that it was necessary to move away from the Fourth Republic,” that is to say: three situations of authoritarian affirmation through force or cunning.

[29] Jean-Yves Camus, “The Transnational Networks of the European Radical Populist Right and the Beacon of Hungarian Illiberal Democracy,” Journal of Illiberalism Studies 2, no. 1 (2022): 47–54, https://doi.org/10.53483/WCJV3537.

[30] Sarah Belouezzane, “Pour LR, l’exclusion de Viktor Orban du PPE aurait été un ‘remède pire que le mal,’ ” Le Monde, March 21, 2019, https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/03/21/pour-lr-l-exclusion-de-viktor-orban-du-ppe-aurait-ete-un-remede-pire-que-le-mal_5439252_3210.html.

[31] Virginie Malingre, “La Hongrie de Viktor Orban peut compter sur LR au Parlement européen,” Le Monde, September 9, 2022, https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2022/09/20/au-parlement-europeen-sur-la-hongrie-lr-fait-de-la-resistance_6142327_3210.html.

[32] François-Xavier Bellamy, “Le Conseil de l’Europe promeut le hijab, un indice de plus de l’entrisme des islamistes,” Le Figaro, November 30, 2021, https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/francois-xavier-bellamy-le-conseil-de-l-europe-promeut-le-hijab-un-indice-de-plus-de-l-entrisme-des-islamistes-20211103.

[33] Laruelle, “Introduction,” 20.

[34] Nicolas Roussellier, “Les démocraties libérales entre crise économique et expansion politique (1974–1997),” in La démocratie libérale, ed. Serge Bernstein (Paris: PUF, 1998): 873–888.

[35] Demias-Morisset, L’illibéralisme, aboutissement ou lendemain du néolibéralisme, 519.

[36] If the idea that bureaucrats have too much power has existed for a very long time in France, the very term “deep state” (État profonde), as used in 2023, carries further Trumpian overtones.

[37] Nathalie Schuck and Valérie Toranian, “Laurent Wauquiez, le grand entretien,” Le Point, May 10, 2023, https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/exclusif-laurent-wauquiez-le-grand-entretien-10-05-2023-2519652_20.php. He also attacked, in a letter to his region’s farmers, the French Office for Biodiversity (Office français de la biodiversité: OFB) as a “coalition of ideologues”: Romain Bitot, “L’OFB qualifié de ‘coalition d’idéologues’: Un courrier de la Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes fait polémique,” France Bleu, February 24, 2025, https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/environnement/l-ofb-qualifie-de-coalition-d-ideologues-un-courrier-de-la-region-fait-polemique-2682929.

[38] Haegel, “Nicolas Sarkozy a-t-il radicalisé la droite française?” 249–250.

[39] For instance, despite representing most of the votes against making abortion a constitutional right in March 2024, a majority of Republican MPs still supported it (60% in the Senate, 73% in the National Assembly). See Romain Imbach and Manon Romain, “L’IVG inscrite dans la Constitution: Le détail des votes des députés et sénateurs réunis en Congrès,” Le Monde, March 4, 2024, https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2024/03/04/l-ivg-inscrite-dans-la-constitution-le-detail-des-votes-des-deputes-et-senateurs-reunis-en-congres_6220076_4355770.html.

[40] Margot Mahoudeau, La Panique woke: Anatomie d’une offensive réactionnaire (Paris: Textuel, 2022).

[41] Victor Boiteau, “LR : Anti-wokiste, tu perds ton sang-froid,” Libération, November 3, 2023, https://www.liberation.fr/politique/lr-anti-wokiste-tu-perds-ton-sang-froid-20231103_IXCFP3CPXRD6PGP4H3HGEMKWEA/.

[42] Mathilde Mathieu and David Perrotin, “Rapport sur les mineurs trans au Sénat: Enquête sur une manipulation,” Mediapart, May 3, 2024, https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/030524/rapport-sur-les-mineurs-trans-au-senat-enquete-sur-une-manipulation. For now, the issue remains less prominent than among the British Conservatives, who could nevertheless serve as a model for the French right wing. See Jessica Elgot, “Tories Will Allow Bars on Trans Women, Says Kemi Badenoch,” Guardian, June 2, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/02/tories-will-allow-bars-on-trans-women-says-kemi-badenoch.

[43] He himself had withdrawn subsidies from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region following accusations of Islamo-leftism leveled at Sciences Po Grenoble (a social sciences school) in the spring of 2021.

[44] Schuck and Toranian, “Laurent Wauquiez, le grand entretien.”

[45] Bruno Retailleau, “Lettre de Bruno RETAILLEAU aux Français: ‘Nous pouvons remettre la France en ordre,’ ” Force Républicaine website, November 5, 2020, https://force-republicaine.fr/lettre-aux-francais-nous-pouvons-remettre-la-france-en-ordre/?fbclid=IwAR1flbRSYvrcZWGoAsrhhvSxX16_uHl-W5NPYh4EpnSdtfBQJ9jFU9drZwo.

[46] Julie Carriat, “Christian Jacob élu président des Républicains dès le premier tour,” Le Monde, October 13, 2019,https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2019/10/13/christian-jacob-elu-president-des-republicains-des-le-premier-tour_6015358_823448.html.

[47] Georges Biseau, “Bruno Retailleau dans ‘Le Monde,’ adoubé par Philippe de Villiers avant de s’affranchir de toute tutelle,” Le Monde, September 25, 2024, https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2024/09/25/bruno-retailleau-dans-le-monde-adoube-par-philippe-de-villiers-avant-de-s-affranchir-de-toute-tutelle_6333262_4500055.html.

[48] He also came close to being a candidate in the 2021 Republican presidential primary, having released his aforementioned “Letter to the French People” as a trial balloon for his candidacy.

[49] For instance, Maël de Calan, Wauquiez’s rival for the party presidency in 2017, wrote a book against the “populist” temptation, then left the party along with Valérie Pécresse, becoming the first vice president of her movement, “Soyons libres” (“Let’s Be Free”). See Maël de Calan, La tentation populiste (Paris: L’Observatoire, 2018).

[50] Jérôme Jaffré, “Le macronisme reconduit mais diminue,” in Le vote clivé, ed. Pascal Perrineau (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2023), 141.

[51] Bastien François, “Macron et les institutions: Rien de nouveau sous le soleil?” in L’entreprise Macron à l’épreuve du pouvoir (Grenoble: Presses universitaires de Grenoble, 2022), 49–51.

[52] As I detail it at the end of the article, this insiders’ illiberalism remains closer to the far right than to the center, given how the National Rally has maintained illiberal proposals in the hierarchy of norms since before the Republicans took an interest in this, even though it has been expressed more as a necessary way to implement the National Rally’s radical program rather than a deep understanding of what was blocking previous attempts at reforming the country, coming from the politicians’ experience.

[53] Quentin Hoster, “Éric Ciotti: ‘Si nous ne défendons pas notre identité, nous allons disparaître,’ ” Valeurs actuelles, April 30, 2021, https://www.valeursactuelles.com/clubvaleurs/politique/eric-ciotti-si-nous-ne-defendons-pas-notre-identite-nous-allons-disparaitre.

[54] d’Ornellas and Stainville, “Laurent Wauquiez au JDD.” In another interview, Wauquiez added that “We will need experienced elected officials who have the courage to break down these barriers.” See Marion Mourgue and Alexandre Sulzer, “Laurent Wauquiez, après la large censure de la loi Immigration: ‘Il faut donner au Parlement le dernier mot,’ ” Le Parisien, January 25, 2024, https://www.leparisien.fr/politique/laurent-wauquiez-apres-la-large-censure-de-la-loi-immigration-il-faut-donner-au-parlement-le-dernier-mot-25-01-2024-4JNXQ3V7R5HGRLZRLYH3MR7V5A.php.

[55] Personal notes taken during the event’s attendance.

[56] Gil Mahely, “Maxime Tandonnet: ‘Le pouvoir a les pieds et les mains liés,’ ” Causeur, November 25, 2014, https://www.causeur.fr/maxime-tandonnet-30342.

[57] Florence Haegel, Les droites en fusion: Transformations de l’UMP (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2012), 221–224.

[58] Philippe Bezes and Patrick Le Lidec, “Politiques de l’organisation: Les nouvelles divisions du travail étatique,” Revue française de science politique 66, no. 3 (2016), 407–433, https://doi.org/10.3917/rfsp.663.0407.

[59] David Martimort, “L’État régulateur: Le pouvoir de ne pas toujours pouvoir,” Pouvoirs 177: 95–108.

[60] For instance, with the president of the Hauts-de-France region: see Martin Lagrave, “Xavier Bertrand (LR): ‘J’ai un profond désaccord avec Laurent Wauquiez sur la conception de l’État de droit,’ ” Le Figaro, January 26, 2024, https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/xavier-bertrand-lr-j-ai-un-profond-desaccord-avec-laurent-wauquiez-sur-la-conception-de-l-etat-de-droit-20240126.

[61] Haegel, Les droites en fusion, 135–139.

[62] From candidates’ responses to the questionnaire submitted by the movement Oser la France (“Daring France”) during the campaign. Hauts-de-Seine MP Philippe Juvin was the only one not wishing to challenge the hierarchy of existing norms, asking only for a renewed discussion of Article 8 of the ECHR on the right to family life.

[63] Les Républicains, “12 propositions pour réduire l’immigration,” April 18, 2018, p. 15.

[64] Christine Ollivier, “Immigration: Éric Ciotti, Olivier Marleix et Bruno Retailleau dévoilent le projet des LR,” Le Journal du dimanche, May 20, 2023, https://www.lejdd.fr/politique/exclusif-immigration-eric-ciotti-olivier-marleix-et-bruno-retailleau-devoilent-le-projet-des-lr-135954.

[65] Bill no. 1322 of the 16th Legislature, June 5, 2023, https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/16/textes/l16b1322_proposition-loi.

[66] Nicolas Kaciaf, and Enrique Klaus, “Médias: À droite toute?” Politiques de communication, no. 22 (2024): 5–53.

[67] A group of TV, radio, and printed outlets progressively taken over by conservative billionaire Vincent Bolloré since 2016, while adopting far-right ideas and rhetoric.

[68] Most of the quotes I present in this article come from these kinds of media outlets: Le Figaro, Le Journal du Dimanche, Valeurs actuelles, Causeur, etc. Being highly controversial—and thus attracting readership or viewership— such illiberal public statements can be organized as full-fledged publicity coups, whereby a politician benefits from a media tour following their publishing.

[69] Hugo Rondet, “ ‘Le thème de la liberté d’expression a migré à droite’: Pourquoi de nombreux élus LR et RN ont pris parti pour C8,” Le Parisien, February 20, 2025, https://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/tv/le-theme-de-la-liberte-dexpression-a-migre-a-droite-pourquoi-de-nombreux-elus-lr-et-rn-ont-pris-parti-pour-c8-20-02-2025-AJNDFL75URE2JKK2SWHCYMDXI4.php.

[70] Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, “Les juristes contre l’État de droit,” Pouvoirs 193 (2025): 49–62, https://doi.org/10.3917/pouv.193.0049.

[71] Jean-Éric Schoettl is quoted by Laurent Wauquiez in his interview with Le Parisien regarding his proposal to give Parliament the final say in cases of censure by the Constitutional Council; Noëlle Lenoir was a member of the 2nd Raffarin government; Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet participated in the Force Républicaine convention on “Reforming Democracy” on March 13, 2019, and in the 2018 summer school of Oser la France on the subject of, “Who dictates the law in France: Parliament, judges, public opinion, or the bureaucracy?”

[72] Marcel Gauchet, “À la découverte de la société des individus,” Le Débat 210 (2020): p. 155–168, https://doi.org/10.3917/deba.210.0155.

[73] Ludovic Vigogne, “The road to somewhere, ce livre de David Goodhart qui intéresse beaucoup la droite,” L’Opinion, August 12, 2018, https://www.lopinion.fr/politique/the-road-to-somewhere-ce-livre-de-david-goodhart-qui-interesse-beaucoup-la-droite.

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