The evolution of France's left and right politics, from the 1789 French Revolution to this year's election

Abstract

paper in the English version of The Conversation (on internet)

The left ans right labels date to 1789 when the National Constitutive Assembly met to decide if the king should have a veto power. The location of the representatives in the assembly was according their political choices. In the 19th century, the left-right divide was increasingly used, it distinghishes monarchists and republicans, then conservative and modernist republicans. After it opposes the defenders of Catholicism to the advocates of secularism. Since about the 1930's